Early Life
Benjamin Lucraft's family had settled in Broadclyst, Devon, in 1781 when his grandfather William Lucraft married Esther Newton in the parish church on 10 December 1781. Esther was the daughter of William Newton and Esther Leight, both Broadclyst families and Esther's grave still stands in the churchyard after her death in 1831, aged 71. The family had moved from the South Hams area of Devon in the 17th century.
Lucraft was born on 28 November 1809, in Exeter, the second son of Lucraft and his wife Mary. His father Benjamin came from Broadclyst where he been a wood worker and possibly a chair-carver. Lucraft was baptised at St. Paul church Exeter on 16 December 1809.
In 1819 around the age of 10 Lucraft was apprenticed in husbandry to his grandfather William according to his apprentice indenture. Some sources suggest that he was a ploughboy and was apprenticed in cabinet making at 14 years. The only story from this time is that he was later in life described as a boy reading the newspaper to his adult working colleagues on the farms where they worked.
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“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
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