Mordaunt Ricketts

British, 1786 - 1862

BiographyMordaunt Ricketts was born at Grove Place, Hampshire, on June 5, 1786, the third son among five children of Sophia (Watts) (c.1753-1830) and George Poyntz Ricketts (1749-1800). He was christened exactly one month later at Saint Mary's Church, Marylebone Road, London. His father's family had a long history of military and civil service in the Caribbean; his great-great grandfather, William Rickards, had participated in the Parliamentary Army's conquest of Jamaica in 1655. His father, only son of Jacob and Hannah (Poyntz) Ricketts of Grove Place and Midgham, Jamaica, served as Governor of Barbados from 1794-1800. Mordaunt's maternal grandfather, William Watts, had been governor of Fort William in Bengal. Like his two elder brothers, Mordaunt entered the Foreign and Colonial Civil Service and was Resident (envoy of the East India Company) at the court of Lucknow, Oudh, from 1723-29. He was the first Resident to assume the honor of placing the crown and robe of state on the King of Oudh during the coronation ceremony. He married twice; first to Maria Elizabeth Crommelin, daughter of Charles Russel Crommelin, H.E.I.C.S., and secondly to Charlotte Elizabeth (Fitzgerald), daughter of Martin Fitzgerald and widow of George Ravenscroft. There were children from both marriages. Mordaunt Ricketts died on July 29, 1862.

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