SMITH, Cornelius (1822-1906) — Southampton
Ordnance Survey engraver.
Born in London and baptised at St. George in the East 5 May 1822, the son of George Smith (1783?-1876), an excise officer, and his wife Martha Belles (1795-1878), who married in 1816. A younger brother of the highly skilled landscape engraver George Belles Smith (1820-1875), who trained with George Gladwin (see BME 2011), and Cornelius may have followed a similar path. He was recorded as an apprentice engraver in 1841, still living with his parents. He married Lucy Allen (1830?-1875) at Shoreditch in 1847. He joined the Ordnance Survey in 1849 and by 1851 he was working and lodging in Southampton with his wife and an infant daughter. A son had also joined the family by 1861. In 1863, he was earning nine shillings a day as an outline and writing engraver. Still working for the Survey, he had become a widower in 1881. He had retired by 1891, living with his daughter and a servant. In 1899, his daughter married the widowed John Darling, who joined the Smith household. Smith died 9 Jul 1906. Probate was granted on effects of £6,100.14s.2d to William Jeremiah Bull, a retired stationer, who was a joint executor to both Smith’s parents’ estates thirty years earlier, and Smith’s now widowed daughter.
John Street, Tower Hamlets (home) — 1841
8 Onslow Road, Southampton (home) — 1851
6 Fanshawe Street, Southampton (home) — 1861
30 Dorset Street, Southampton (home) — 1871-1881
Iona, 30 The Avenue, Southampton (home) — 1891-1906
BNA. Census 1841-1901. OSP.