Barbara Rawdon-Hastings, Marchioness of Hastings

Barbara Rawdon Hastings, born Barbara Yelverton (20 May 1810 – 18 November 1858), in her own right 20th Baroness Grey de Ruthyn, by marriage Marchioness of Hastings, was a fossil collector and geological author.

Early life

Born at Brandon House, Warwickshire, Barbara Yelverton was the only child of Henry Yelverton, 19th Baron Grey de Ruthyn (1780–1810), and of his wife Anna Maria Kelham (1792–1875). On the death of her father, she became Baroness Grey of Ruthyn. Little is known of her early life or education.Dadley, Portia, "Hastings, Barbara Rawdon [née Barbara Yelverton] , marchioness of Hastings and" suo jure "Baroness Grey of Ruthin (1810–1858), fossil collector and geological author" in "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography" (Oxford University Press, 2004)]

Marriages and children

On 1 August 1831, Barbara Yelverton married George Rawdon-Hastings, 2nd Marquess of Hastings (1808–1844), and they had six children together. Soon after her first husband's death, on 9 April 1845 she married secondly Captain Hastings Reginald Henry RN (1808–1878), who in 1849 took the name of Yelverton by royal licence. They settled at Efford House near Lymington and had one daughter, Barbara Yelverton (12 January 1849 – 1 October 1924), who married John Yarde-Buller, 2nd Baron Churston [cite web | url=http://www.thepeerage.com/p1905.htm#i19047 | title=thePeerage.com | accessdate=2008-05-06]

During her first marriage, Rawdon Hastings was nicknamed 'the jolly fast marchioness', as she was fond of foreign travel and gambling.

Fossil collector and geologist

Rawdon Hastings was an avid collector of fossils, specializing in vertebrates. The palaeontologist Richard Owen wrote of the thousands of fossils in her private museum at Efford House, among them "some of the finest in the world". [Owen, R., "The Life of Richard Owen, vol. 1 (1894) p. 296] Her knowledge of local geology, especially of the Eocene, and her meticulous work on fossil remains, gave her an expertise which was respected by scholars. The geologist Edward Forbes said she was "a 'fossilist' and knows her work". [Wilson, G., Geikie, A., "A Memoir of Edward Forbes, F.R.S., late regius professor of natural history in the University of Edinburgh" (1861), p. 423]

Owen named a crocodile recovered from Hordle Cliff in Hampshire "Crocodilus hastingsae" to honour "the accomplished lady by whom the singularly perfect example of the species had been recovered and restored".

In 1847, Lady Hastings spoke to the Oxford meeting of the British Association, exhibiting two crocodile skulls and the shell of a turtle from Hordle Cliff. Richard Owen told the meeting that some remains from Hordle suggested "a new genus of Pachyderm", which he named Paloplotherium, falling between Palaeotherium and Anoplotherium.

Rawdon Hastings argued that crocodile remains found on the Hampshire coast and also on the Isle of Wight showed that the area of the Solent had been a freshwater river or lake.

In 1852 and 1853 she published papers on the stratigraphy of Hordle Cliff (which she called the Hordwell cliff), the first such accurate accounts of it. [Hastings, Marchioness of, 'On the Tertiary beds of Hordwell, Hampshire' in "Philosophical Magazine", 4th series (1853)]

Bibliography

*Owen, R. S., 'On the fossils obtained by the marchioness of Hastings from the freshwater Eocene beds of Hordle cliff', in "Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science" (1848), pp. 65–6
*Hastings, B., 'On the freshwater Eocene beds of Hordle cliff, Hampshire', in "Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science" (1848), pp 63–64
*Hastings, Marchioness of, 'On the Tertiary beds of Hordwell, Hampshire', in "London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine", 4th series, 6 (1853), pp. 1–10

References