Sir Rowland Blennerhassett, 1st Baronet explained

Colonel Sir Rowland Blennerhassett, 1st Baronet (1741 - 14 March 1821) was an Anglo-Irish lawyer and baronet.

Life

Blennerhassett was the son of Robert Blennerhassett and Frances Yielding. He was the great-grandson of Robert Blennerhassett MP.[1]

He trained as an attorney and practised law.[2] He was the colonel of the 'Laune Rangers' militia regiment of volunteers from 1779 to 1782. Between 1796 and 1797 he was a Justice of the Peace in County Kerry. Blennerhassett resettled his family at Cahirmoreaun, just outside Tralee, renaming both the house and the village Blennerville in his family's honour. He built a large new family home at Churchtown House, Knockane. In 1800 he was granted permission to hold four fairs a year and one market a week in Blennerville, which providing him with extra income. Blennerhassett established in Blennerville a windmill around 1800 which still exists and a Church of Ireland school, called the Erasmus Smith School, in 1812. On 22 September 1809 he was created a baronet of Blennerville in the County of Kerry, in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom. He was confirmed the right to bear the family coat of arms a year earlier.

Family

Blennerhassett married his first cousin, Millicent Agnes Yielding, the daughter of Richard Yielding, on 31 October 1762; she was killed in an accident in 1801, receiving a blow from one of the sails of their windmill. Together, they had five children:[1]

Notes and References

  1. John Debrett, Debrett's Baronetage of England: with alphabetical lists of such baronetcies as have merged in the peerage, or have become extinct, and also of the existing baronets of Nova Scotia and Ireland (J.G. & F. Rivington, 1835), 347.
  2. John Debrett, The Baronetage of England (F.C. and J. Rivington, 1819), 1178-9.