Thomas Tennant Coar (1786–1859), Apothecary & Surgeon
Thomas Tennant Coar was born in Tottenham on 13 June 1786, and his birth was recorded by the registrar to the London & Middlesex quarterly meeting of the Quakers.
He was matriculated at the University of Oxford as a “pharmacopola” on 15 April 1822 so that he could trade in the city, and two years later on 17 July 1824 his marriage to Sarah Maria Davis was announced thus in Jackson’s Oxford Journal:
On Saturday last was married, at Kensington Church, by the Rev. John Page, Vicar of Gillingham, Thomas Tennant Coar, Esq. of this city, to Sarah Maria, youngest daughter of the late Thomas Davis, Esq. of Bicester.
Coar and his wife had the following children, all born in Oxford, probably in New Inn Hall Street:
- Maria Caroline Harriet Coar (baptised at St Michael’s Church on 18 November 1826)
- Julia Elizabeth Coar (baptised at St Michael’s Church on 18 March 1829)
- Charles John Coar (baptised at St Michael’s Church on 22 December 1830)
Coar was already described as a surgeon (rather than an apothecary) in the baptism register, and also as a surgeon in New Inn Hall Street in Pigot’s Directory for 1830, and again in Gardner’s 1852 directory.
In the 1851 census, Coar (62) was described as an “Apothecary and midwife”. He and his wife were living at 16 New Inn Hall Street with their daughters Maria (24) and Julia (22) and two servants. Their son Charles was then an undergraduate living at Balliol College.
By 1852 the family had moved to 15 Park Place (later 30 Banbury Road, and one of the houses demolished to make way for the Engineering blocks).
Coar died at Park Place at the age of 73, and his death was announced thus in Jackson’s Oxford Journal of 17 December 1859:
DIED Dec. 12, at his residence St Giles’s, Thomas Tennant Coar, Esq., Surgeon.
He was buried at St Sepulchre's Cemetery in Walton Street on 17 December 1859: see grave.
Coar’s family
His widow Sarah Maria Coar remained at 15 Park Place. The 1861 census for St Giles shows her living there at the age of 74 (and recorded as blind) with her two unmarried daughters, Maria (34) and Julia (32), plus a cook. She was described as a fundholder.
Coar's daughter Julia Elizabeth Coar died at Park Place at the age of 34 and was buried with her father at St Sepulchre's Cemetery on 15 July 1863. The 1871 census shows Sarah (84) living there just with Maria (44) and one servant.
Mrs Coar died at Park Place at the age of 86 and was buried with her husband and daughter at St Sepulchre's Cemetery on 28 February 1872.
The Rev. Charles John Coar, Coar’s eldest son, matriculated from Balliol on 30 November 1849, aged 19. He gained his BA in 1854, his MA at Magdalen Hall in 1869, and won a medal for serving as a Senior Chaplain in the Zulu war.
Maria Caroline Harriet Coar, his surviving daughter, married the surgeon Edward Law Hussey in 1874. She died in March 1895.