Title:
DIARIES AND NOTEBOOKS OF CHRISTOPHER PARSONS
Level: Category
Estate and Family records
Level: Fonds
DIARIES AND NOTEBOOKS OF CHRISTOPHER PARSONS
Scope and Content:
Farming details occur throughout the diaries, with frequent entries about farm produce being sent to London by barge. Other recuming themes are visits to London theatres, holiday trips, hunting, brewing and eating.
Admin History:
Christopher Parsons (1807 - 23 September 1882), farmer, landowner, botanist, ornithologist, meteorologist and entomologist, lived at The Lawn in Southchurch until his first marriage when he moved to Bowaters Farm in East Tilbury. On 17 June 1842, following the death of his grandmother, he moved to North Shoebury Hall. After the death of his father he was admitted tenant to the Lawn, on 15 June 1870, and moved there on 14 Feb. 1882.

Parsons married (i) 4 August 1840, Ann Jane Silversides, who died of typhus fever 25 March 1847; (ii) 5 December 1850, Mary Benton. Of the two, Mary Benton seems to have been the more active woman, accompanying her husband in most of his activities, while Ann Jane was frequently unwell.

Parsons was a prominent member of the landed gentry in South-East Essex, and from 1846 served as a member of the Board of Guardians of Rochford Poor Law Union. He is oredited with discovering the first recorded native specimen of the `Essex Emerald' moth (Curtis' British Entomology 7, plate 300, and Essex Naturalist 1, p.120).

For further biographical details see Edward A.Fitch, 'The late Christopher Parsons and his collection', Essex Naturalist 3, pp. 55-56. For a `Catalogue of the collection of pressed wild plants formed by the late Chris. Parsons, Junr, Esq. of North Shoebury Hall' compiled by Thomas M.F. Tamblyn-Watts, 1913-1917, see D/DS 68.