Edwin Octavius Tregelles

Edwin Octavius Tregelles (19 October 1806 16 September 1886) was an English ironmaster, civil engineer and Quaker minister.

Family life

He was the youngest of the seventeen children of Samuel Tregelles (1766 1831) and his wife, Rebecca Smith (1766–1811) of Falmouth, Cornwall, United Kingdom[1] He married Jenepher Fisher (1808–1844), a Quaker from County Cork, on 3 July 1832. There were three children. On 4 December 1850, he remarried, to Elizabeth Richardson (1813–1878): there were no children.

Business

Edwin Tregelles's father had formed an Iron Founding partnership with his Quaker relatives in Falmouth, the Foxes and in South Wales, the Prices. Edwin was apprenticed to Joseph Tregelles Price (1784–1854) the manager of the Welsh wing of the firm, at the Neath Abbey Iron Works. He learnt a great deal of practical business and engineering. Around 1831, he set up on his own as a consulting engineer. He took part in many major projects, including the installation of town gas to many towns in Southern England, railway engineering and water and sewage projects. He was also involved with tin plating in County Durham and the family's coal mines.

Quaker and temperance activities

In 1853, he retired from business, in order to devote himself to religious and philanthropic work. He travelled in the Ministry to Ireland in 1839, with his cousin Robert Were Fox. He also travelled to the West Indies and Norway and many journeys in the Ministry in the United Kingdom.

He was on the Council of the United Kingdom Alliance, one of several Victorian bodies, promoting temperance.

Death

He died in Banbury, Oxfordshire on 16 December 1886

References

  1. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography article by Edward H. Milligan, Tregelles, Edwin Octavius (1806–1886) , accessed 1 Dec 2006.