Michael Pakenham Edgeworth
Irish botanist and photographer in India (1812-1881)
Michael Pakenham Edgeworth (24 May 1812 – 30 July 1881) was an Irish botanist who specialized in seed plants and ferns, and spent most of his life working in India. He was also a pioneer of photography.
Early life and family relations
Edgeworth was born in Edgesworthstown, County Longford, Ireland on 24 May 1812, one of twenty-four children of Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1744–1817) and his four wives. His mother, Frances Beaufort, was the fourth wife. His older half-sister Maria Edgeworth, born to his father's first wife Anna Maria Edgeworth (née Elers), became a novelist. Among his other siblings were Honora (half-sister), Fanny (sister), Lucy (sister), and Francis (brother). With his wife Christina, whom he married in 1842, Michael had a daughter named Harriet and a second, Christina, who died in infancy.
Education
He attended Charterhouse School in England from September 1823 where his schoolmates included William Makepeace Thackeray and H.G. Liddell. He later studied oriental languages and botany at University of Edinburgh, Scotland, from 1827. A relative, Lord Carrington offered his mother a cadetship for one of her sons.
“Michael Pakenham Edgeworth” enters the record as irish botanist and photographer in India (1812-1881). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Michael, Pakenham and Edgeworth can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Michael Pakenham Edgeworth” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.