Clerke (Cavan)

St John Augustus Clerke was the second son of Jonathan Clerke, a medical doctor of Bandon, county Cork. St John A. Clerke became a Colonel and Major General in the British Army. He served in the Peninsular War, died in 1870, aged 74 and is buried in the graveyard of Christ Church, Bandon. He married Louisa, daughter of the Reverend Holt Waring of the Waringstown, county Down family and this may be the reason Griffith’s Valuation records him as holding land in the county Cavan parishes of Larah and Mullagh. He is mentioned in a court case relating to lands belonging to the Irwin family in county Roscommon, advertised for sale in the Encumbered Estates Court on 30 March 1852 (The Irish Jurist, Vol 18, 284). Walford’s County Families describes his son Holt Waring Clerke as a retired Lieutenant Colonel, son of General St John A. Clerke of Mamore [Mawmore], county Cork and Fort Brown, county Galway [Galway History and Society, page 409]. In the early 1850s Colonel St John A. Clerke bought the Fort Browne estate, county Galway, in the Encumbered Estates Court. Griffith’s Valuation for county Cavan, the landowners of Ireland (1876) and Hussey de Burgh all refer to Colonel St John A. Clarke/Clerke and to Major General Clarke/Clerke as two separate persons but they appear to be the same man. The General did have a son of the same name but he was killed at Lucknow, India, in 1858. Entry for his brother Thomas Henry Shadwell Clerke (1792-1849) in Dictionary of National Biography, Vol 11, 48