Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph D'Arcy

Joseph D'Arcy is the first person in this archive's English line — baptised at Portsea on 19 March 1780, son of Robert and Jean, the record that survived inside a twenty-two-month transcript. After that he disappeared. He signed his sister's marriage at Chatham in 1806 and then nothing, for a hundred and forty years of family memory. Here is the rest of him.

The death

Death registered at Lymington, Hampshire, March quarter 1848 — volume 8, page 159

And a will

LIEUTENANT-COLONEL JOSEPH D'ARCY, [late] of the Royal Artillery, formerly of PRIESTLANDS, NEAR LYMINGTON, but late of HOME MEAD, SOUTHAMPTON, who died on the 7th of February, at the age of 69, had EXECUTED HIS WILL IN THE MONTH OF FEBRUARY, 1844, leaving …

The obituary

Three papers carried the same notice and the digitised text breaks in a different place in each; the wording above is assembled from all three, with the breaks marked.

And the magazine of record did notice him

The Gentleman's Magazine for March 1848, page 328, in its county list of deaths for Hampshire. A fourth independent notice, and the only one from a national magazine rather than a newspaper.

It settles the age two to one

Three sources, three phrasings. The London Evening Standard says “in the 69th year of his age”, which means he had turned 68. The Morning Herald says “in his 68th year”, which means he had turned 67. The Gentleman's Magazine says flatly “AGED 68”. Two of the three agree, and they agree with the baptism: a man baptised at Portsea on 19 March 1780 and dying on 7 February 1848 was 67 and eleven months — so “aged 68” is the rounding and “in his 68th year” is the exact one.

Shah, not King

The Gazette of 1818 says the order was “conferred on him by the KING OF PERSIA”. The Royal Military Calendar of 1820 says “in the actual service of the King of Persia”. The Gentleman's Magazine of 1848 says “in the actual service of the SHAH of Persia”. The same phrase, three times over thirty years, with one word changing — which is how a fact travels rather than how it is invented.

Read 15 September 2026 in the full text of all twelve monthly issues of 1848 on the Internet Archive.

The service record, at last

This page has said for weeks that the archive “has not yet seen a service record, and does not know the years”. It has one now. The Royal Military Calendar of 1820 — the army's own published record of its serving officers — carries him among the Lieutenant-Colonels at entry 1667.

And Persia stops being an inference

This archive had the Persian service from an obituary and the order from a death notice, and graded the service as inferred because the two merely corroborated one another. The army's own book, printed in 1820 while he was alive and serving, states the service outright and in those words — in the ACTUAL SERVICE of the King of Persia. The chip on this page changes from inferred to documented.

Read 15 September 2026 in the free full text of the 1820 third edition, volume V, on the Internet Archive.

Five years in Persia

ABBAS MIRZA was the Qajar crown prince, and in the 1810s and 1820s he was rebuilding the Persian army on a European model with British officers to help him. That is what Joseph D'Arcy was doing there, and it is why a separate notice gives him as K.L.S. — Knight of the Royal Order of the Lion and the Sun, the Shah's decoration.

And a wife named Katherine

The Lady's Newspaper of 8 April 1848 carried the same will summary as the Morning Post and got a little further before the scan fails: he left his “property to his wife, KATHE[RINE] D'ARCY, to which she h[as] …”

And three letters after his name

One notice gives him as “Lieutenant Colonel D'Arcy, late Royal Artillery, K.L.S.” — Knight of the Royal Order of the Lion and Sun, a Persian decoration. It was given to British officers who served on the missions to the Shah's army in the 1810s and 1820s.

What this page said until 15 September 2026: This archive has not yet traced his Persian service, and will not assert it from three letters. What the letters establish is that he held a foreign order, which for a Royal Artillery officer of that generation points one way.

Priestlands, 1841

Twenty people under one roof: the family, a brother, a Mrs Pitt, and eleven servants.

Then eleven more: Laura Dillard, Joseph Hyde, Charles Hamby, Thomas Williams, Mary Finch, Jane Jennings, Ann Russ, Harriet Marshall, Rachael Barter, Loise Croucher and Jane Viney. A household of twenty with eleven servants is a gentleman's establishment, not a half-pay officer's cottage.

Elizabeth Pitt, aged 55

Living in the house in 1841, between the youngest child and the servants, is an ELIZABETH PITT, born about 1786. This archive's line runs through GEORGE PITT D'ARCY — the name recurs for four generations, down to a George Pitt D'Arcy born at Brisbane in 1864 — and nobody has ever known where the Pitt came from.

And a RICHARD DARCY, aged 57, born about 1784 — in the house, of Joseph's own generation and a year younger than George Pitt D'Arcy. The archive has never heard of him. Robert and Jean married at Portsea in June 1779 and baptised Joseph there in March 1780; a Richard of 1784 fits that family exactly, and the Portsea transcript stops in 1782 so his baptism would never have been found in it. Searched for him across Hampshire in every record type and found nothing further: he is a name, an age and an address, in his brother's house. Why his baptism would never have been found →

What is on record

And he left at least one son. The Cork Daily Herald of 3 October 1863 carries a marriage at Lymington of a D'Arcy “son of the late Colonel D'Arcy, R.A.” — the same town, fifteen years on. The OCR loses the groom's forename.

After him

She is not in the 1851 census under any Darcy spelling in Hampshire, which is a gap in the index rather than a departure — the subscription list puts her there the following February.

Joseph D'Arcy married the daughter of an earl, and had a family by her this archive never knew about

The five Milford children are his SECOND family. Two death notices, five years apart, name a first one — and name their mother.

“The late Lieut. Col. D'Arcy, Royal Artillery” is Joseph, who died at Lymington in 1848. The family tree has always given him a wife CATHERINE GEORGIANA WEST, married at BATH in NOVEMBER 1817, and this archive has never looked at the name. WEST is the family name of the EARLS DE LA WARR. Two newspapers, independently, call her LADY CATHERINE and make her a peer's daughter and a peer's sister.

Both baptisms found, the first son named at last, and the mother confirmed from a register

The notices gave a third son and a second. The first was never named anywhere, and he is now. Two baptisms at Westminster, to Joseph D'Arcy and Katharine Georgiana, complete the order the 1857 notice implied and close a gap this page has carried since it was written.

documented

And she is buried, with a date and an age

Three things fall into place. THE AGE: 36 in 1824 gives a birth about 1788, which makes her twenty-nine at the Bath marriage of November 1817. THE RESIDENCE: “OF BATH” — the town she married in, seven years later. AND THE DATE: she died in 1824, and Joseph married Katherine Lucy Eliza Hyde in November 1830, so the six-year gap between his two families is now measured rather than assumed.

The five children, and what became of them

Joseph's will of 1844 left his property to his wife and FIVE CHILDREN, and this archive has never been able to name them. All five are baptised at MILFORD, Hampshire, to JOSEPH and KATHERINE LUCY ELIZA — and the register calls him “Lt Col RA of MILFORD HOUSE”, an address this archive did not have.

These are the children of his SECOND marriage, to KATHERINE LUCY ELIZA HYDE in November 1830.

And a grandson, baptised five months after his father died

FRANK HAMILTON HYDE D'ARCY, baptised at CROYDON COMMON, ST JAMES, Surrey, on 26 NOVEMBER 1868 — father FRANK HYDE, occupation “GENTLEMAN”, mother ANNA MARIA, of ST JAMES ROAD, Croydon. His father had died at Worcester on 15 June. He died at Chelmsford, Essex, in 1910.

And the will has a second document

JOSEPH D'ARCY of Lymington, Hampshire, grant year 1848, court “PCC and Country Courts” — Index to Death Duty Registers 1796-1903, The National Archives IR 27/284. The Death Duty register behind that index (IR 26) states the value of the estate and names the legatees and executors, often in more detail than the will itself. That is now two documents at Kew rather than one, and the index reference for finding them.

What it would cost to read →

Why it matters

The archive now holds Robert D'Arcy's marriage, his career, his death and his funeral; his son George Pitt D'Arcy's marriage and Irish service; and his son Joseph's whole life — Saint-Domingue, Sicily, Walcheren, five years in Persia with the Shah's son, a Persian knighthood, a house in Hampshire and a widow named Katherine. Three years ago the family tree had a name and a rumour of Yorkshire.

The baptism → · His father's career → · His brother → · His father's death →