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- [S1] MWS, Andries William De Villiers, (University of Witwatersrand).
Educated: Apprenticed to Dr Gibbings of Cork, and to Surgeon Todd (passed Licentiate of the College of Surgeons of Ireland); and at Edinburgh University (entered, 1812; MD, 1812). Married: 10 December 1823, to Alicia Frances Coane [or Cowan], the widow of the Revd Conolly Coane, and daughter of Major Henry Charles Sirr, Town Major of Dublin. [She died in Grahamstown in December 1869.] Ordained: Deacon in Colesberg on 12 November 1848, and Priest in St. George's Church, Grahamstown on 22 September 1850, by the Bishop of Cape Town, the Rt. Revd Robert Gray. Career: Medical practitioner, Dublin in Ireland, from 1814. Appointed Medical Inspector by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 1818 and 1820, and Cholera Inspector of Dublin by the Lords Justices, 1832. President, Court of Examiners, Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland. Founder, National Institution for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb of Ireland, Glasnevin in Dublin. Moved to Birkenhead, in England, circa 1834. Founder, lying-in hospital, Birkenhead. Sailed for the Cape to join three of his sons who were farming there, 12 January, and arrived 12 March, 1848. Settled in the Colesberg district, July 1848. Missionary (SPG), Colonial Chaplain, and Deacon (later Priest) in charge (licensed 13 November 1848; served until 159
1855), of Colesberg, in the diocese of Cape Town, and later - from 1853 - in the diocese of Grahamstown. Builder of Christ Church, Colesberg. Founder, Colesberg Public Library. He retired to live in Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape in 1855. Author of several publications, issued between 1813-1836. Died: Port Elizabeth, on 20/21 April 1856. "(He] was a man of great activity of mind, of considerable attainments, of deep personal piety, and soundness in the faith, and of a most benevolent disposition. If there were failings in this good man, which in any degree impaired his usefulness, and for time prejudiced some against him, they are to be attributed to slight eccentricities, and a defect in judgement" (The South African Church Magazine and Ecclesiastical Review). [Bishopscourt Archives, Letters of Orders, 1848-1985; Licences to Clergy, 1848-1963, p. 1. The South African Church Magazine and Ecclesiastical Review, vol. IV (June 1856), p. 188. EL Le Fanu, Life of the Reverend Charles Edward Herbert Orpen, M.D. (1860), pp. 1, 3-8, 10, 49-50, 69, 84, 97, 114, 123, 122-129, 136-137, 143, 237, 241. CF Pascoe, Two Hundred Years of the S.P.G. (1901), p. 895. C Pama, Heraldry of South African Families (1972), p. 229. RR Langham-Carter, "Orpen, Charles Edward Herbert", in The Dictionary of South African Biography, vol. IV (1981), p.437438. E Eshmade, St. Mary's Cemetery Port Elizabeth (1990), entry AB/E88,9.]
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