Samuel Carver

Robert Dighton, Geography bewitched! or, a droll caricature map of Ireland. This portrait of Lady Hibernia Bull is humbly dedicated to her husband the great Mr John Bull. Published by Bowles & Carver. © The Trustees of the British Museum. 1950, 0808.4.
Robert Dighton, Geography bewitched! or, a droll caricature map of Ireland. This portrait of Lady Hibernia Bull is humbly dedicated to her husband the great Mr John Bull. Published by Bowles & Carver. © The Trustees of the British Museum. 1950, 0808.4.

CARVER, Samuel (1756?-1841) — London

Map and print-seller in partnership with Henry Carington Bowles, trading as “Bowles & Carver”. Work is listed under Henry Carington Bowles.

Born about 1756, the son of Samuel Carver (d.1767) of Hitchin, Hertfordshire, a wheelwright, and his first wife Margaret Walker (d.1758), who had married at St. Ippolyt’s, near Hitchin, in 1754. Apprenticed (Joiners) to Carington Bowles (see BME 2011) on 1 May 1770. Free (Joiners) 7 Oct 1777. Became a partner in “Bowles & Carver” 1793. Papers relating to a “friendly” legal case brought by Carver in 1830 against the Bowles family and others survive in NA — the case brought to unravel the true intention of Henry Carington Bowles’s will and the complex provisions of an earlier marriage settlement. The matter was reported in full in “The Law Journal for the Year 1831”, pp.91-99. In 1841, at the age of eighty-four, Carver was living in Enfield with the younger Henry Carington Bowles (his partner’s son) and his family. He died there later that year at the age of eighty-five on 8 Oct 1841 and was buried at St. Andrew, Enfield. His will in NA (PROB 11/1952/130) leaves substantial bequests to the children of his step-brothers, as well as bequests to the wider Carver family and members of the Bowles family.

Myddelton House, Enfield — 1841

BBTI. BM. BNA. Information from Chris Carver. GL. Hannas. Hodson (1984). Howgego. NA.

Revised October 2022. We are most grateful to Chris Carver for pointing out a major error in our original entry.