Selected Biographies

Bear, David – Born: Long Melford, Suffolk on 18.2.1820.[1]  Parents: Robert Bear (Agricultural Labourer) [see his military record below] and Sarah [née Aylward].  Home: Hall Street, Long Melford.  Occupation: Labourer [1837].  Service Record: David enlisted at Bury St Edmunds in 1837 with 43^rd Regiment of Foot.[2]

Bear, Robert – Born: Long Melford, Suffolk in 1792.  Parents: Robert Bear and Ann [née Wellum].  Family Connections: Father to David Bear [b1820].  Home: Hall Street, Long Melford (1841 to 1851), Southgate Street, Long Melford (1861) Hall Street, Long Melford (1871).  Occupation: Agricultural Labourer (1841).  Married: Sarah Aylward in 1817.  Service Record: Robert enlisted in 1808 at the age of sixteen with 2^nd Battalion, 24^th Regiment of Foot, his pensionable service however only counting from eighteenth birthday in 1810.  His unit was posted to Portugal in April 1809 as part of the Peninsula Campaign to wrest Spain and Portugal from Napoleon’s control.  The battalion’s first blooding came in July at Talavara where Bear’s unit lost 355 men killed and wounded.  Many other battles followed: at Fuentes de Oñoro in 1811, Salamanca in 1812, and Vitoria and the Pyrenees in 1813.  With the French in retreating north across the Pyrenees, Bear’s unit encountered elements of Marshal Soult’s forces at the border town of Etxalar on 2.8.1813 where he received a gunshot wound to his left arm.  Despite his injury he continued with the composite force of British, Spanish and Portuguese troops under Sir Arthur Wellesley, which was following hard on the heels of the French Marshal, meeting him in open battle at Orthѐs in south-west France on 27.2.1814.  The battle was an Allied victory, during the action however Private Bear was wounded in his right shoulder, the musket ball remaining lodged permanently in his deltoid muscle.  He was discharged from the Army in April 1816.[3]  Died: Long Melford on 10.1.1872 and buried in Holy Trinity Church, Long Melford.[4]

Notes – [1] Baptism Register 30.4.1820, Independent Chapel for Dissenting Protestants, Hall Street, Long Melford.  [2] Regimental Registers of Service, 1756-1900 [WO 25/266].  [3] Chelsea Pensioners British Army Service Records 1760-1913 [WO 97] and Regimental Registers of Pensioners [WO 120/214].  [4] ‘Death’ The Halesworth Times 23.1.1872.  My thanks to Anne Grimshaw for her research and for bringing this man to my attention.