David Hartley (1705 - 1757)

Born Jun 1705 in Halifax, Yorkshire, England

Husband of Alice (Rowley) Harley — married 21 May 1730 in England

Husband of Elizabeth (Packer) Hartley — married 1735 in Bury, Lancashire, England

Descendants

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Biography

David Hartley is Notable.

David Hartley FRS was an English philosopher and founder of the Associationist school of psychology.

David Hartley was born in 1705 in the vicinity of Halifax, Yorkshire. His mother died three months after his birth. His father, an Anglican clergyman, died when David was fifteen. Hartley was educated at Bradford Grammar School and in 1722 was admitted as a Sizar to Jesus College, Cambridge. He received his B.A. in 1726 and M.A. in 1729.^[1]

In April 1730 he became the first layperson to be Master of Magnus Grammar School (Magnus Church of England Academy), Newark, and it was there that he began to practice medicine. On 21 April 1730, Hartley married Alice Rowley (1705–31). The couple moved to Bury St Edmunds, and Alice died there giving birth to their son David Hartley (the Younger) (1731–1813).

While in Bury, Hartley met his second wife, Elizabeth Packer (1713–78), the fifth child and only daughter of Robert Packer (died 1731) and Mary Winchcombe, a wealthy and influential family with estates in Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, and Berkshire, including Donnington Castle, Shellingford, and Bucklebury, Berks. (Mary Winchcombe was the daughter of Sir Henry Winchcombe, Bart., and the sister of Frances, wife of Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke.) Despite the opposition of Elizabeth's family, David and Elizabeth wed on 25 August 1735, after agreeing to a severe set of restrictions that kept the £5,000 Elizabeth received upon her marriage completely out of the hands of her husband. Their first child, Mary (1736–1803), was born eleven months later. In 1736 the family moved to London, and then in 1742 to Bath, Somerset. When Elizabeth's last surviving elder brother died without issue in 1746, their son Winchcombe Henry (1740–94) inherited the family estates, making the family (though not Hartley himself) the possessors of significant wealth. Hartley died in Bath on 28 August 1757. He was buried at St. John the Baptist Church, Old Sodbury, Glos.

Sources

1. ↑ Allen, Richard C. (23 September 2004). Hartley, David (bap. 1705, d. 1757), philosopher and physician. 1. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press.

• Wikipedia contributors. "David Hartley (philosopher)." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Accessed 3 Oct 2019.