Rhenira Charlotte Maitland Purvis: A Fareham Naval Family
Rhenira Charlotte Maitland Purvis belonged to a family deeply connected with the Royal Navy and with Fareham.
She was born on 30 November 1772 at Gosport and was baptised at Alverstoke. In 1791, aged eighteen, she married George Purvis at Titchfield. George came from an established naval family and later lived at Blackbrook House, Fareham.
Rhenira and George had several children, including their only son, George Thomas Maitland Purvis, born in 1802. He followed the family tradition and entered the Royal Navy as a teenager. He later rose to the rank of commander. A nineteenth-century naval biography describes him as the son of George Purvis RN, who had served as secretary to Admirals Howe and St Vincent, and of “Renira Charlotte, daughter of David Maitland”.
Their son also created another interesting connection. In 1828 he married Mary Jane Austen, bringing the Purvis family into the wider Austen family network.
Rhenira died on 29 May 1823, aged fifty, at Vicar’s Hill House in Hampshire. Her husband survived her by three years and died at Blackbrook House in Fareham in 1826.
Her memorial at St Peter & St Paul therefore forms part of a much larger story. Through the Purvis family, the church is connected with several generations of Royal Navy officers, the great naval conflicts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and ultimately with the family of Jane Austen.
Rhenira herself did not command ships or hold public office, yet her place within this remarkable network of families makes her an important part of Fareham’s naval history.
