Daniel Bolton

Major General Daniel Bolton (1793 – 1860) was an English military engineer of the Corps of Royal Engineers, who served in the Peninsular War (1813–1814), Netherlands Campaign (1814–1815), army of occupation in France (1815–1818), in Canada (1823–1843), particularly as superintending engineer in the construction of the Rideau Canal (1832–1843) and as Commanding Royal Engineer at Harwich (1846–1847), New Zealand (1847–1853) and Cape of Good Hope (1855–1860).

He also collected fossil, plant, insect and seashell specimens, particularly for the scientific collections under Sir William Jackson Hooker and Joseph Dalton Hooker at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, William Henry Harvey at the Herbarium, Trinity College Dublin, and Francis Walker at the British Museum.

Early years

Daniel Bolton, born on or about 11 April 1793, at Norwich, Norfolk, England, was the second of thirteen children of John Bolton (1767–1851), an excise officer, and Mary Jodrell (1767–1851), a daughter of the Rev. Daniel Jodrell, Rector of Hingham, Norfolk, and Mary Breeze. Bolton's sister mentions dates and the names of a few family members sufficient enough to identify the family: Mary, mother; Joanna Sophia Bolton (1798–1884), sister; and daughters of her sister Apollonia, Alice Rosa Muspratt (1844–1895), niece; Isabelle Diana Muspratt (c. 1839–1909), niece; Frances "Fanny" Laetitia Muspratt (1841–1900), niece. He was baptised at the church of St Peter Parmentergate, Norwich on 14 April 1793.

Regarding the family's connection with Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, ancestral records indicate that Daniel Bolton's first cousin once removed, Thomas Bolton, had married Horatio's sister, Susannah Nelson, in 1780.

Career

Daniel Bolton was commissioned 2nd Lieutenant in the Corps of Royal Engineers, Board of Ordnance, on 14 December 1811, and promoted lieutenant on 1 July 1812.

Europe

Peninsular War

Bolton is said to have been "present, among other actions, at the siege and storm of St Sebastian". The Commanding Royal Engineer, Sir Richard Fletcher, was killed in the final assault of the fortress on 31 August; thereafter the siege was conducted by Lieutenant Colonel John Fox Burgoyne, RE, who was severely wounded in that effort which ended on 8 September 1813. Elsewhere, Bolton is noted as serving at the Peninsula from October 1813 to the end of the war in 1814.

Netherlands Campaign

In May 1815, Bolton was lodged at Ghent, where Louis XVIII resided after quitting Paris in March, but as his superior had left without passing on instructions, he and his fellow engineers had little to do. Sir George Wood, commanding artillery, who had fallen in with them there, communicated their situation to Colonel Carmichael-Smyth. In consequence, Lieutenant John Sperling, RE, took charge from 1 April, with the two engineer officers, an assistant engineer and 250 men, to construct two earthen redoubts to defend the bridge over the river Scheldt and reinstate part of the city's misshapen rampart. The redoubts would burden the enemy with having to build a river crossing, as well as serve as a rallying point for troops retreating from the frontier. When Sperling departed on 10 April, Bolton took charge of the works and now 2000 workmen until the arrival of Captain Harris. The Battle of Waterloo was fought on 18 June 1815, some 43 miles away.

Occupation of France

Following the Napoleonic Wars and agreements to the Treaty of Paris in November 1815, Bolton served with the army of occupation in France to 1818.

Canada

Some five years after France, Bolton left London for Canada on 13 April 1823, landing at Quebec from the brig ''Susan'' on 23 May 1823. Under Lieutenant Colonel Elias Walker Durnford, Commanding Royal Engineer, he carried on works from Quebec City to Kingston, Ontario, including Fort Wellington at Prescott. In the course of the works he discovered a new species of trilobite in fossil limestone. It was described by John Jeremiah Bigsby who named it ''Paradoxus boltoni'', "after its discoverer, Lieut. Bolton, Royal Engineers", in 1825. The specimen had been found at Lockport, New York.

England and Ireland

Home again in England, Daniel Bolton married Ann Lawrence Hawkes, daughter of the late Judge John Lawrance of New York, widow of the late George Wright Hawkes, and mother of Adelaide and Wootton Wright Hawkes, at St Philip's Cathedral, Birmingham, Warwickshire, on Wednesday, 23 February 1825. Soon after, on 7 June 1825, he advanced to the rank of 2nd Captain. Their first child, John Lawrence Bolton, was born on 7 December 1825 at Drumcovitt House in the Parish of Banagher, County Londonderry, Ireland.

Canada and the Rideau Canal

Drawn out of retirement, Lieutenant Colonel John By was, on 21 April 1826, appointed Commanding Engineer for the Rideau Canal; the 200 kilometre military canal to be cut through the Canadian wilderness to connect Montreal to Kingston by a more secure route in the event of another American invasion. He landed at Quebec City on 30 May 1826, and headed on to Montreal a few days later to make a start on the canal project.

John Mactaggart, a civil engineer recommended by John Rennie for By's Clerk of Works, also joined the project. In October, Colonel Durnford at Montreal, recommended that By employ Bolton at Kingston, the canal's proposed terminal,
and accordingly Bolton was assigned to By's staff. MacTaggart soon noted Bolton's keen scientific interests: "Boulder Stones of all sorts and sizes, are met with in abundance in Lower Canada: my worthy and scientific friend, Capt. Bolton, R.E. who examined these with the care of mineralogist, expressed himself astonished at the great variety and value. There is little lime, however, in any of them." Soon after the Natural History Society of Montreal (NHSM) was formed in May 1827, Bolton was elected a founding member on 27 August 1827, along with By, MacTaggart and others that year, and contributed to the Society's programme.

Dogged by the unrealistically low estimates formed during the canal's conception before By's appointment, and despite early least-sum estimates at its inception, it was an impossible task to calculate the exact cost to construct the Rideau Canal—"135 miles long, through an uncleared country, with eighteen or twenty miles of excavation, some of which was rock, and deep cutting, with forty-seven locks to surmount, a difference of level of 455 feet, with a variety of extensive dams and waste weirs necessary to regulate the spring torrents of the Rideau River, which is the outlet of several lakes." In 1832, the year of the completion of the canal, By was recalled to England to explain construction costs. Bolton took over as Superintending Royal Engineer and moved into By's former Bytown residence.

England: Home for family

After almost seven years abroad, in New Zealand, Bolton arrived home to the reality of Britain and France's support for Turkey, and their declarations of war upon Russia in late March 1854. Bolton and his family were not unaffected.

Ann signed her will on 1 April 1854 and appears to have left England soon after. As the Crimean campaign invasion force assembled at Varna, Turkey, New York's ''Evening Post'' of 5 September 1854 reported from that scene of death—11,000 men from cholera, and more from dysentery and typhus— that Ann Lawrance Bolton, wife of Colonel Bolton, and daughter of the late Judge John Lawrance of New York, had died at Varna on 2 August. Some nine months later, on 25 May 1855, daughter Augusta married Lieutenant Edward Charles Acheson Gordon, RE, at Constantinople. Gordon had served in the campaign since the April 1854 start and, along with Lieutenant Pratt, RE, and a detachment of Sappers and Miners, had landed at Varna on 22 May 1854 from HMS ''Caradoc'' to build wooden piers for landing the troops, horses and ordnance in preparation for build-up of forces. Augusta's brother, Captain John Bolton, RA, served in the Crimea from 12 April 1855 and took part in the battle of Sebastopol.

Following leave and promotion to brevet colonel on 20 June 1854, Bolton took assignment to the Cape of Good Hope, largely at the insistence of Sir George Grey, now Lieutenant Governor of Cape Colony. On 13 December he advanced to rank of colonel, to relieve Colonel Pennel Cole, RE, as Commanding Royal Engineer.

Cape of Good Hope

Stationed upon the frontier at Grahamstown, Eastern Cape, in early 1856 Bolton was elected a member of the newly formed Graham's Town Literary, Scientific and Medical Society—founders of the Albany Museum. Bolton advanced to the rank of major general on 20 June 1859, in succession to the late Major General Thomas Blanshard, CB.

Death

Bolton carried on collecting botanical specimens throughout the district. During a long ride on 31 December 1859, several months after the Carrington Event, he was overcome by "sun-stroke" and nearly died. Having resigned his command, and whilst moving on toward Cape Town in the expectation of returning home to England, he suffered a second crippling apoplectic fit at Port Elizabeth and died on 16 May 1860, aged 66. In reporting the news to Sir William Hooker in July, Dr William Guybon Atherstone asserted that "he was a great lover of plants and an excellent geologist."

Bolton was buried at St George's burying ground, Cape Town, with full military honours. The services attended by the Lieutenant Governor General Wynyard, CB, Commander of the Forces, Colonel Alexander Gordon, RE, the whole of the garrison troops, officers and men of HMS ''Brisk'', and a large number of civilians and friends. The ''Grahamstown Journal'' wrote:

In May, 1855, Major-General Bolton came to this country, principally at the insistence of Sir George Grey, after a very short sojourn with his family in England; he was stationed, until with a few weeks of his death, upon the frontier, where his amiable qualities and intelligent mind won for him deservedly the admiration and esteem of all who had the good fortune to be thrown in contact with him. His memory will long hold a high place in the estimation of numerous friends who had the pleasure of cultivating his much-valued acquaintance.

That year, Bolton's sister anonymously published a book of personal poetry in his memory, called ''The Rainbow'', which included some of his poems.

Thomas Bernard Collinson, RE, recalling his time in New Zealand, wrote:

My commanding officer was Colonel Bolton, a most kind hearted and agreeable man; who took more interest in his friends than his Engineer duties. Whenever he came to inspect my district, we passed most of our time fishing for shells, some of which, like other animals & plants in N.Z. were of special Biological interest. He could not however tell me the special scientific interest of the " Trochus Imperialis", he was satisfied in its being a beautiful & a valuable shell! and many a splendid specimen we fished up in Cook Strait.

Legacy

Plant and animal species named after Daniel Bolton:
* ''Arctinurus boltoni'' (''Paradoxus boltoni''), a trilobite described and named by John Jeremiah Bigsby in 1825
* '' Myadora boltoni'', a New Zealand mollusc described and named by Edgar Albert Smith in 1880
* ''Leioproctus boltoni'', a New Zealand bee described and named Theodore Dru Alison Cockerell in 1904
* '' Asplenium boltonii'', an African fern collected at Grahamstown, Cape of Good Hope, named by Hooker
* ''Bonatea boltonii'', a southern African orchid named by William Henry Harvey 1860

He is remembered in Ottawa in Bolton Street and Major's Hill Park, a prominent downtown park in Ottawa; site of the former residence of Lieutenant Colonel John By, and Major Daniel Bolton and his family.

Publications

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Bibliography

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bolton, Daniel
1793 births
1860 deaths
Graduates of the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich
Royal Engineers officers
British Army personnel of the Napoleonic Wars
19th-century Canadian engineers
Rideau Canal
Canadian naturalists
British military personnel of the New Zealand Wars
19th-century New Zealand military personnel
19th-century New Zealand engineers
Botanists active in New Zealand
Botanists active in Kew Gardens
19th-century South African engineers
Botanists active in Africa
19th-century British botanists