Charles Woodmason (c. 1720 – March 1789) was an author, poet, Anglican clergyman, American loyalist, and west gallery psalmodist.
In 1747, he was responsible for the removal of the organ used by George Frederick Handel from the deceased Duke of Chandos' private chapel at Canongate to Holy Trinity, where it still remains in use today.
Sometime in 1752, his son left England for America and settled in the colony of South Carolina where he initially prospered as a planter and store proprietor.
[12][13] In addition to his mercantile and agricultural pursuits, Woodmason published several poems in The Gentleman's Magazine,[14] One authority on colonial life described him as "South Carolina's brightest literary light".
[15] In addition to his mercantile and agricultural pursuits, Woodmason had a scientific bent and is numbered among the parson-naturalists who explored the surrounding world.
He wrote a detailed account on the production of indigo in South Carolina, accompanied by drawings of necessary equipment and a prospective budget for starting such an operation, which appeared in May June 1755 issues of The Gentleman's Magazine and then appeared as a book,[16][17] and composed a poem lauding Benjamin Franklin's recent electricity experiment, which was widely reprinted .
On Friday, 25 April 1766, Charles Woodmason was ordained a deacon by John Green, the Bishop of Lincoln, at the Chapel Royal, Whitehall, Westminster.
Not yet published research by Joseph R. Gainey indicates that the only Benjamin Woodmason of the right age to be his father was baptized as an infant by a Presbyterian minister ejected from his Devon parish by the 1662 Act of Uniformity.
This raises the unanswered, and possibly unanswerable, question: Was this due to Benjamin Woodmason's rejection of Presbyterianism and conformity to the Church of England?
It and his related writings (only a fraction of which have been published) constitute the most complete, if highly biased, account of the primitive conditions on the colonial American frontier known to exist.
regarding acts of Parliament, while these very same powerful men denied the Backcountry representation in South Carolina's Assembly, yet, expected them to pay taxes passed by that body.
[28] Patriot Christopher Gadsden published a response in a later issue filled with pro-Patriot rhetoric but leaving Woodmason's question unanswered.
In 1772, Woodmason accepted a parish in Virginia only to find upon his arrival that the vestry in their patriotic zeal had resolved to hire only native-born Americans.
That act, coupled with his refusal to publish at that service the "Brief for collecting Money for relief of the poor of Boston, (but in fact to purchase Ammunition)" according to Woodmason's 1776 memorial to the Bishop of London, led a local Patriot committee to advise him to "consult his safety".
From at least February 1776 through December 1777, he served as the curate of St. Michael and All Angels Parish, Dinder, Somerset (less than three miles southeast of Wells).
(The children are memorialized by a Francesco Bartolozzi plaque in St Peter upon Cornhill church, Leadenhall Street, City of London.
Fortunately, Charles Woodmason did not live long enough to see it end in a messy and very public Doctors' Commons lawsuit against the wife for abandoning her husband and family by returning to live with her father in France, obtaining a French divorce (which the British courts firmly refused to recognize) "on the ground of non-performance of conjugal rights", and committing bigamy by marrying a Parisian named Joseph Antoine Guibert (who, according to press accounts, was very much younger than Mary).
[39][40] A great-grandson, also named Charles Woodmason, along with several other family members, followed their friend John Henry Newman into the Roman Catholic Church.