I wrote recently on the new Royalty Free Fiction blog about how a handwritten note in a historical source inspired me to write my novel, Kill-Grief. The note was what started me thinking about how many interesting lives (and lives are all interesting, aren’t they?) have passed by without leaving anything for the future to know them by.
While I’m researching my blog posts, I sometimes find similar snapshots of an individual’s life or death, that make me wonder who they were, how they faced the experiences that came their way and how other people related to them. In other words, what was their story?
This obituary, reproduced in several newspapers in 1783, is one such snippet. I haven’t been able to find out anything else about Thomas Poxton, but he managed to get his name in the papers for posterity – which is more than most of us will ever do.
