Articles

The Library's unique collections are a treasure chest of unusual, interesting and sometimes surprising material just waiting to be found. This anthology, written by the Editor, is based on an eclectic selection of our archive. The author asserts her copyright on all material on the Priaulx Library website except where copyright of other authors is expressly notified. Permission to reproduce material from this website and full attribution to the author is required in all cases.

19th century

The Fancy Ball, 7 January 1836

'Oh happy night, enchanting sight, 'Neath garlands gay and floods of light, Brilliant eyes, balmy sighs, Shaming flow'r and lustre bright.' A report from the Star of 11 January, 1836. The photograph is a late 19th-century carte de visite, one of several in the Library Collection of subjects in fancy dress.

Views of James Saumarez in 1801

'A good deal of the grimace of a Frenchman'. A short biography from The European Magazine, and London Review, for October 1801; and a less kind opinion of the Admiral, written by Admiral Thomas Byam Martin, a veteran of his campaigns who had fallen out with him, parts of whose account are often regarded as at the least fanciful. Saumarez was prone to depression, however.

The Doyle Cup

From the Library and Museum of Freemasonry.

A melancholy pleasure: Nicolas Dobree and the heroes of Cobo

'But oh! what a tragic story we have to relate.' The bravery of a group of men from the Castel and their untimely deaths on the Gros Rock, March 9th, 1818; Nicolas Dobree, R.N., the two brothers Henry and George Le Tissier, Daniel Nicolle, and Captain Collenette. The photograph above shows the rock. 'Ils ont peri, meme en accomplissant un oeuvre de charite.'

Eleazar Le Marchant (1743-1832)

An excerpt from Guernsey in the Thirties: Remininscences of the late Rev. M. Gallienne, part V, in the Star, February 1901.

On the Death of a Young Lady, Aged seventeen

Mercure, Saturday, February 15th, 1823. Thursday, after an illness lasting several days, Demoiselle Marthe Le Lièvre, daughter of Mr. Thomas Le Lièvre, of Hauteville.

Edward Pope: A Guernseyman abroad

From the Star of January 25, 1883. The Governor of Anticosti, now part of Quebec.

List of Subscribers to the Irish Poor, June 1822

From L'Indépendance, 8th June 1822.

Carteret Priaulx

A brief obituary of Carteret Priaulx, from the Independance of September 21, 1822.

The will of Eleazar Le Marchant, 1832

Eleazar was Lieutenant-Bailiff. From the French. On microfilm in the Library. The picture is from a photograph of a watercolour of what is said to be Eléazar around 1780, sitting outside the arch known as Sous La Porte. Still much as it was then, it formed the entrance to a Le Marchant property, now the Constables' Office. He is seated upon the bench nicknamed the 'Seat of the Idlers,' people-watching, as the residents of St Peter Port liked to do, next to his uncle, the Reverend Josué Le Marchant. The original is at Saumarez Manor.

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