James Montgomery

MONTGOMERY, James. b. Irvine, Ayrshire, 4 November 1771; d. Sheffield, 30 April 1854. His father was minister of the Moravian congregation at Irvine. He was educated at the Moravian school at Fulneck, Pudsey, near Leeds. In 1783, his parents went as Moravian missionaries to Barbados, where they both died of fever when he was about twenty years old. He was apprenticed to a baker in Mirfield, Yorkshire, but was more interested in writing poetry or playing and composing music. He ran away from the baker’s and went to London, where he worked in a bookshop. Returning to Yorkshire, he worked in a shop at Wath-upon-Dearne, near Rotherham, before applying for a post as a clerk and book-keeper in...