Memoir of Ralph Carr-Ellison, Esq. 507 



Northumberland, in which County he was also owner of Prend- 

 wick, Bye^ate Hall, Lounges Knowe, Makendon, and Lumsdon 

 farms. His mother was Hannah, the eldest daughter of Mr 

 Henry Ellison, of Hebburn Hall, in the County of Durham. My 

 first acquaintance with him was made in 1833 at Geneva, where 

 he and Mrs Carr were spending the winter with their second 

 child, then an infant. Having been ordained to the curacy of 

 Eglingham in 1840, at which time Mr E. Carr was living at 

 Hedgeley in the same parish, I had frequent opportunities of 

 meeting him and enjoying his most cheerful and agreeable 

 society. He was extremely fond of Natural History and espe- 

 cially of the study of birds and trees. He was admitted as a 

 member of the Berwickshire Naturalists' Club, October 18th, 

 1843, and contributed many valuable papers, particularly on the 

 Anglo-Saxon element of our Northern dialect with which he was 

 well acquainted. 



In our conversations we often lamented the circumstance that 

 Newcastle had no Naturalists' Club similar to that of Berwick- 

 shire, and after much consideration wo determined upon making 

 an effort to found one. A meeting was held with this view on 

 April 25th, 1846, the then Vicar of Newcastle, the Eev. Dr E. C. 

 Coxe, being in the chair. It resulted in the formation of the 

 Tyneside Naturalists' Field-Club, of which Mr Ealph Carr was 

 elected the first President. This Club has now grown into 

 gigantic proportions, containing, as it does, about 700 members. 

 Its first meeting was held on May 20th, 1846, at Ovingham, 

 where I then lived as Vicar. It was a very suitable spot for 

 such a meeting, inasmuch as Thomas Bewick spent the earlier 

 part of his life, and was also buried in that place. But it was a 

 personal gratification to our excellent President that the Club 

 should assemble there for the first time, inasmuch as he had 

 been a pupil in the vicarage of Ovingham, under the tuition of 

 the well-known Eev. James Birkett. Mr Carr always expressed 

 the warmest afl'ection for Ovingham, and one of the last of his 

 manifold and varied acts of kindness was to offer a splendid 

 metal cross to be placed on the top of the church tower. 

 The cross was ready, but the giver passed away before the 

 necessary arrangements could be carried out for erecting it. 

 On leaving Ovingham, Mr Carr, who at the early age of 12 had 

 lost his father, went to Harrow, where he was for some years, 

 and then to Christ Church, Oxford. In 1830 he married 



