Valentine Blacker Explained

Valentine Blacker
Honorific Suffix:	CB
Birth Date:	1778 10, df=yes
Birth Place:	Armagh, Kingdom of Ireland
Death Place:	Calcutta, British India
Placeofburial:	South Park Street Cemetery, Calcutta
Allegiance:	East India Company
Branch:	Army
Branch Label:	Branch
Serviceyears:	1798–1826
Rank:	Lieutenant Colonel
Unit:	1st Madras Native Cavalry^[1]
Battles:	Third Anglo-Maratha War
Battles Label:	Campaigns
Awards:	Companion of Most Honourable Military Order of the Bath^[2]
Laterwork:	Surveyor General of India

Lieutenant Colonel Valentine Blacker (19 October 1778^[3] – 4 February 1826,^{[4] [5]} was an officer in the Honourable East India Company's Madras Army, and later Surveyor General of India.

Life and career

Blacker was born in Armagh, Northern Ireland where his family has an ancestral home in the barony of Oneilland East. He obtained a commission in the Madras Cavalry in 1798, was made a cornet in 1799, and aide-de-camp to a Colonel Stevenson in the Wayanad district in 1800, and quartermaster-general in 1810. He served in Deccan, 1817, and was promoted to lieutenant colonel. His son, Maxwell, was born in June 1822.^[6]

Blacker took over from John Hodgson as Surveyor General of India in 1823. In this capacity he made substantial contributions to the ongoing Trigonometrical Survey of India. He was stationed in Calcutta from 1823 until his death there from a fever in 1826. He was buried in South Park Street Cemetery in Calcutta.^[7] Andrew Waugh said that "Blacker, with the exception of Colonel George Everest, was the ablest and most scientific man that ever presided over this expensive department".^[8]

Writings

Blacker and his relative William Blacker were both lieutenant colonels and published authors. Because some of the work was published pseudonymously, the two are sometimes confused or conflated in texts.

His correspondence with his father concerning military and political news, as well as his observations about Indian life and culture, was published in 1798.

Blacker published a history of the Third Anglo-Maratha War, including discussion of the Battle of Khadki, in 1821.^[9]

Notes and References

1. The Viscount Sidmouth . The Career of Colonel Valentine Blacker, C.B. . Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research . 47 . 191 Autumn . . 1969 . 165–168 . JSTOR.
2. News: Whitehall, October 14, 1818 . The London Gazette . 17 October 1818 . 17409 . 1851 .
3. Book: Burke, John . 1835 . A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland, Enjoying Territorial Possessions or High Official Rank . 2 . R. Bentley for Henry Colburn.
4. Book: Holmes and Co., Calcutta . The Bengal Obituary; or, a Record to Perpetuate the Memory of Departed Worth: Being a Compilation of Tablets and Monumental Inscriptions from Various Parts of the Bengal and Agra Presidencies, to which is added Biographical Sketches and Memoirs of Such as have Pre-Eminently Distinguished Themselves in the History of British India, Since the Formation of the European Settlement to the Present Time . W. Thacker . London/Calcutta . 1851 . 208–209 .
5. Some sources give 1823 or 1827, e.g. Burke's Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry. Vol. 1. (1847). His grave marker gives 4 February 1826
6. Book: Eton College . The Eton Register. Part 1, 1841—1850 . Spottiswoode & Co. Ltd. . Eton . 15 . 1908 . . en.
7. Book: Markham, Clements Robert . Clements Robert Markham . A Memoir on the Indian Surveys . 2nd . W. H. Allen and Co. . London . 1878 . 96 . Internet Archive.
8. Book: Smith, J. R. . Everest: The Man and the Mountain . Whittles Publishing . 1999 . 226 . 9781870325721.
9. Book: Blacker, Valentine . Memoirs of the Operations of the British Army in India During the Mahratta War of 1817, 1818 and 1819 . Black, Kingsbury, Parbury, and Allen . London . 1821 .