Francis Englehart

Born:

Died:

Married:

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Descendant: George Engleheart

Francis was the first member of the Engleheart family to settle in England. He was born in 1713 and was believed to have been orphaned in a bridge collapse. He came to England in the years around 1722.

He was a modeller in plaster, and many of the ceilings in Hampton Court palace were created by him.

He made enough money from this, which at the time was an esteemed artistic role, to be able to buy land in Kew and the districts of London.

Marriage

Fancis Englehart married Anne Dawney, the daughter of the vicar of the parish.

From the book

The family is said to have come from Franconia (an area in Bavaria, Germany) and Francis, born in 1713, is believed to have sprung from and ancient Wendish famaily, members of which wee to be found scattered throughout Franconia. In Upper Austria, between Ischl and Passau there is a village called Englehart, and the name is still not an uncommon on in that same district.

It is not known why Francis Englehart came to this country. He is said to have arrived when quite a youth, brought by a compassionate stranger, a fugative from political reasons, and his earliest recollections, which were of a very indistict character, were connected with a great commotion, a crowd of persons rushing over a bridge, the breaking down of the bridge and the loss in the waters of some of his nearest relations, and then a mysterious hiatus which he was never able to fill up.

A brother who is said to have come from the family home at the same time as Francis, was reported to have returned home again to Germany, and to have died leaving a considerable fortune to his widow, which she was anxious, it is said, to leave back again to the Engleheart family if they could but be found. This story was told many years later to Colonel Engleheart, the son of George the miniature-painter, when he was stopping at a house near to Cape Town enjoying the hospitality of a settler who knew the old lady referred to. He urged Colonel Engleheart to go at once to Worms, make friends with the rich widow, and secure the reversion of the estate ; but the Colonel's health at the time, and his unexpected decease soon after, prevented the adoption of this plan.

Another branch of this family seems to have settled in Russia, where Christine Engleheart married a Prince Potemkin, and had one daughter, who married her cousin Paul, and had in her turn a son Paul, who died quite recently at the age of eighty-two unmarried, and thus closed that line of the family.

Francis Englehart seems to have believed that he was from eight to ten years old when he reached England. At the age of twenty-one he was married. He had settled down in the royal domain of Kew, and it was the daughter of the Vicar of the parish, Anne Dawney, whom he married at that early age. He was by profession a modeller in plaster, and many of the ceilings at Hampton Court Palace owe their beauty to his handiwork.

References

Much of the information (and words) about Francis Englehart comes from the book "George Engleheart, 1750-1829, miniature painter to George III" by George C. Williamson and Henry L. D. Engleheart.