First Name:
Lieutenant Colonel Henry and Elizabeth Sophia
Source:
Register Book of Christ Church Cathedral Newcastle. Baptisms p19
Details:
Occupation Lt-Col in the Army. Baptism of son Algernon Edward
First Name:
Lieutenant Colonel Henry and Sophia
Source:
Register Book of Christ Church Cathedral Newcastle. Baptisms p17
Details:
Occupation: Lieut-Col in the army. Baptism of daughter Harriet Maria Amelia
Surname:
Dumaresq (obit.,)
First Name:
Lieutenant-Colonel Henry
Source:
The United Service Magazine
Details:
DEATHS. We have to record, with unfeigned regret the death of Lieutenant- Colonel Henry Dumaresq , an old and much-valued associate—one of the survivors or Waterloo, who, from his years, might have expected to see many additional anniversaries of that great victory; but the severe wound he received on that memorable occasion, though temporarily subdued, eventually conquered by inducing paralysis, which finally carried him off at the age of 46, on the 5th of March last, at the establishment of the Australian Agricultural Company in New South Wales, in the management of whose large concerns as Chief Commissioner he succeeded a most distinguished member of the sister profession, Captain Sir Edward Parry. R.N., and repeatedly received the thanks of the Directors for his able and zealous conduct in the superintendence of the affairs of the Company Lieutenant-Colonel Dumaresq entered the army at the early age of 16, and, as detailed in an official record of his services at the Horse Guards:— ** He served in eight campaigns, of which six were in the Peninsula, one in Canada, and the last, that of Waterloo. "He was present in the thirteen battles for which medals were bestowed, besides many affairs of outposts, of advance and rear-guards; also at the sieges of Badajo* and Burgos, and at the assault of the forts of Salamanca: on the two former occasions he served as a volunteer with the Engineers, and on the latter (again a volunteer) being the foremost person in the assault of that redoubt, he received from the officer in command of the Vittoria Convent the terms of his capitulation, which document he delivered to the Duke of Wellington. "He attained the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel after nine years' service, and was gazetted to that grade in June, 1817, for services in the field. He was employed on the Staff upwards of eighteen years, and out of twenty-six years' service he was employed upwards of twenty two years abroad. He was twice dangerously wounded." At the battle of Waterloo he was on the Staff of Lieut.-General Sir John Byng, now Lord Strafford, and was shot through the lungs at Hougoumont; but, being at the time charged with a message for the Duke of Wellington, he, in spite of such a wound, reached the Duke, and delivered his message before he fell—being the officer of whom the anecdote is told by Sir Walter Scott in -Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk," as follows:—*' Amid the havoc which had been made among his immediate attendants, his Grace sent off an officer (Dumaresq ) to a General of Brigade, in another part of the field, with a message of importance; in returning he was shot through the lungs, but, as if supported by the resolution to do his duty, he rode up to the Duke of Wellington, delivered the answer to his message and then dropped from his horse, to all appearance a dying man." He is also mentioned in " Booth's Anecdotes of the Field of Waterloo."' The ball was never extracted, and is considered to have been the eventual cause of his premature death, by an unfavourable change of position in the neighbourhood of some vital part. It is, perhaps, not saying too much to assert, that of the many officers of superior merit whom the late war, so fertile in heroes, brought forth, no officer of his rank was of more distinguished merit than the subject of this memoir; in proof of which it is probably only necessary to refer to the fact here enumerated, and to the rapid promotion with which his services were rewarded. It may .however be proper to advert further to the last testimonial received from the Horse Guards by Lieutenant-Colonel Dumaresq , when about to retire from the army in the year 1834, in the following words, viz.;— ** Nobody is more sensible Lord Hill is of the value of your services, and of the Zeal and gallantry which you applied to the discharge of your duty, whenever an opportunity was offered you of displaying those qualities." In private life in talents and various merits and acquirements and his many highly endearing qualities, won for him the regard and esteem of a very numerous circle of attached friends, and secured the affections of his immediate relations. He was married in the year 1828 to Elizabeth Sophia, daughter of the late Hon. Augustus Richard Butler Danvers, son of Brinsley second Earl of Lanesborough, and has left his widow and seven young children to lament his irreparable loss. It is to be hoped that some of his sons may hereafter adorn the profession of which their father was so distinguished an ornament
