William Barren
William Barren was my 3x great grandfather. He went to India in 1805 as a private in the 1st Battalion of the the 69th Regiment of Foot, later rising to the rank of sergeant. When the regiment went back to England, William remained behind and joined the Madras European Regiment.
William married in Bangalore in 1816. His wife’s first name was Elizabeth but no surname is given on the marriage record. It has been suggested to me that this was likely to be because she was Indian, but I have no proof that that was the reason.
William and Elizabeth had 5 children together, three of whom went on to have large families of their own. Barren descendants now number in the hundreds, scattered across the globe but also in India where they have remained and intermarried with members of the Anglo-Indian community. I am descended from William’s daughter Sarah, who married Jonathan Chadwick, a gunner with the Horse Artillery.
William Barren appears on the 69th Regiment’s 1815 muster roll, stationed in Bellary.
The second battalion of the 69th Regiment fought at Waterloo but William was in India with the first battalion and did not take part.
The 69th Regiment had the nickname “The Ups and Downs” because it was made up of young recruits as well as old veterans. It embarked for India in 1805, arriving at Fort St George, Madras, later that year.
Detachments from the regiment went to Vellore, but it is not known whether William Barren was among them. The detachments suffered heavy casualties in in 1806 mutiny at Vellore.
From 1807 to 1808 the regiment was in Trichinopoly It then joined a force destined for Mauritius where it took part in action to capture it and the island of Reunion from the French (see the featured image in this post).
After the Mauritius campaign the regiment returned to Madras and was then dispatched in 1811 to Indonesia as part of a force sent to capture Java from the Dutch. Following the Java campaign the regiment returned, this time to the west coast of India, first to Goa (1811-13) then to Seringapatam (1813-14).
From Seringapatam the regiment was next sent to Bellary (1815-16), then on the Bangalore (1816) where William may have met Elizabeth, his future wife. The movements continued, however, and the regiment was then committed to action in the Mahratta War taking part in the assaults on Wassota, Sholapoor and Copaul Droog.
A period of relative stability followed and the regiment was stationed in Cannanore on the west coast between 1818 and 1826. My great great grandmother was born in Cannanore in 1821.
After Cannanore the regiment went to Wallajahabad, where Elizabeth gave birth to a son, named William after his father.
William’s first two children, Sarah and William, were born while he was a member of the 69th Regiment. Mary, Thomas and Alexander were born after he had transferred to the Madras European Regiment and the family was settled in the cantonment at Kamptee.
| Date and place | Event |
| 1816 Bangalore | William and Elizabeth marriage |
| 1821 Cannanore | Birth of daughter Sarah |
| 1825 Wallajahbad | Birth of son William |
| 1825 Kamptee | Birth of daughter Mary1 |
| 1828 Kamptee | Birth of son Thomas |
| 1830 Kamptee | Birth of son Alexander2 |
| 1830 Madras | Death of William |
| 1874 Bangalore | Death of Elizabeth |
William’s daughter Mary died when she was five years old and it is not known what became of Thomas. The other children – Sarah, William and Alexander – had nineteen children between them and many of them also had large families.
William died in May 1830, 6 months before the birth of his fifth child, Alexander.
His wife Elizabeth got an army pension when he died and she continued to live in India with their children, supported by the pension. She died in Bangalore in 1874. That she returned to Bangalore, where she had married William, may suggest that she had family ties there.
- Baptism of Mary Ann Barren, United Kingdom, British India Office, Births and Baptisms, 1712-1965, FamilySearch, accessed 21 July 2024. ↩︎
- Baptism of Alexander Barren, United Kingdom, British India Office, Births and Baptisms, 1712-1965, FamilySearch, accessed 21 July 2024 ↩︎
Bibliography
FamilySearch.org