Reverend Simons

Identified on the album page as 'Rev. Simons,' this is possibly Reverend Edward Simons, the Rector of Ovington in Norfolk.

Born on 25 November 1781, the son of Revered Nicholas Simons and Elizabeth née Tucker, he was educated at Hastingleigh School in Kent, at both Eton and Rugby, and at St John's College, Cambridge (BA, 1804; MA, 1807). He was ordained a deacon on 16 November 1805 and became a priest on 24 May 1807. From 1806 to 1810 he was the Curate of Longstanton All Saints in Cambridgeshire. In 1810 he was appointed the Rector of Ovington in Norfolk, a post he filled for the rest of his long life.

On 16 April 1811 he married Susanna Maria Roberts, youngest daughter of William Roberts of Cambridge.

He appears on the 1861 census, aged 79, living at his Rectory in Ovington with his wife Susanna and two servants.

He died, aged 83, on 11 April 1865 at Ovington and was buried there two days later. He left an estate valued at £25,000.

Photographed by S. Barley (location not given).

The photographer is Samuel Hewitt Barley who died, aged only 30, at Watton in Norfolk on 22 June 1865. When the census was taken in 1861, he was an 'Artist' staying at the Bell Inn in Fakenham in Norfolk. When his daughter Edith Louisa Barley was baptised at Watton on 25 March 1864, his profession was recorded as 'photographic artist.' Similarly, the announcement of his death the following year in the Norfolk Chronicle (1 July 1865) specifically refers to him as a 'photographic artist.'

Watton lies only one-and-a-half miles from Ovington.