Edwin Octavius Tregelles (19 October 1806 – 16 September 1886) was an English

ironmaster An ironmaster is the manager, and usually owner, of a forge or blast furnace for the processing of iron. It is a term mainly associated with the period of the Industrial Revolution, especially in Great Britain. The ironmaster was usually a large ...

, 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 KingdomOxford Dictionary of National Biography article by Edward H. Milligan, ''Tregelles, Edwin Octavius (1806–1886)'

accessed 1 Dec 2006. 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 Neath Abbey ( cy, Abaty Nedd) was a Cistercian monastery, located near the present-day town of Neath in South Wales, UK. It was once the largest abbey in Wales. Substantial ruins can still be seen, and are in the care of Cadw. Tudor historian ...

Iron Works. He learnt a great deal of practical business and engineering. He went into business as a civil engineer, superintended the introduction of gas lighting to towns in southern England. These included: Bridport, 1833; Dorchester, 1833; Bridgwater, 1843; Merthyr Tydvil, 1835; Exeter, 1836. In 1835 he was appointed engineer of the Southampton and Salisbury Railway, and later surveyed the West Cornwall Railway and in 1849 he reported on the water supply and sewerage of Barnstaple and Bideford. By 1850 he had become a tinplate manufacturer at Shotley Bridge, Co. Durham.

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 The United Kingdom Alliance (UKA) was a temperance movement in the United Kingdom founded in 1853 in Manchester to work for the prohibition of the trade in alcohol in the United Kingdom. This occurred in a context of support for the type of law ...

, one of several Victorian bodies, promoting

temperance Temperance may refer to: Moderation *Temperance movement, movement to reduce the amount of alcohol consumed *Temperance (virtue), habitual moderation in the indulgence of a natural appetite or passion Culture *Temperance (group), Canadian danc ...

. He died in Banbury, Oxfordshire on 16 December 1886, and is buried in the Friends burial ground, Sibford Gower.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tregelles, Edwin Octavius 19th-century English businesspeople English Quakers People from Falmouth, Cornwall 1806 births 1886 deaths British ironmasters