William Peppe
| William Peppe | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Died | 1890 | ||||||||
| Residence |
Grantee, Birdpore Grant, Goruckpore,Bustee, N.W. Province Birdpore Goruckpore, via Bella Harriya, India [1881] | ||||||||
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Contents
[hide]Notes
Office Notes
House Notes
proposed 1869.10.12
Peppe [last e acute] in List 1879 [so have changed from Pepper which I had originally]
death noted in report of Council for 1890 (may have occurred in 1889)
Notes From Elsewhere
William George or William Claxton??
In 1842, my great-grandfather, William [Claxton] Peppé, and his brother, George (both civil engineers from Aberdeen University), received a commission from a London firm to set up and run a sugar mill. After arriving they duly built the sugar mill and started production. Unfortunately George’s health broke down shortly after arriving and had to return home.
With George gone, William had expected to be made manager, but this failed to happen. It was then that William heard of a local widow who needed a manager to run an estate called Birdpur in Northern India on the border with Nepal. He applied and got the job.
The widow’s estate was on land acquired from the kingdom of Oude by the Honourable East Indian Company who offered grants of land called "Jungle Grants" with a 50 year lease. Part of the land deal for anyone obtaining the grant was that after 50 years the land would be theirs to own. Very few people succeeded.
This land lay between the foothills of the Himalayas and the Ganges plain.
And while it was fertile land with many rivers and was known as the "Gorakpur Tarai" it was covered with jungle and swamps, and was notorious for malaria. Few people could work the land other than the "Tharus" who were native to the jungle and hunter/gatherers. However, my great-grandfather, despite the difficulties of the terrain and threat of malaria was able to put a certain amount of land under cultivation each year.
William set about clearing the land and building reservoirs, dams, and canals to enable him to cultivate it - which he did successfully. Indeed, he was so successful at experimenting with different strains of rice that he eventually developed a Patna Rice, now known as American Long Grain Rice.
Furthermore, at the time of the Indian mutiny William fought with a band of his own loyal tenants against the mutineers.
For these services to the British government they gave him another estate and not content with this, he then went about buying two other estates adjoining Birdpur. Eventually the estate he managed was nearly fifty square miles.
William subsequently had a son - William Claxton – my grandfather, who became an assistant on the estate and when his father died he took over its’ management. He too had a son – my father, Humphrey Peppé.
After the 1st World War, in which my father fought, he studied civil engineering at Cambridge and then went out to India to be become my grandfather’s assistant. Eventually he took over the running of the estate when my grandfather retired.
However, on Indian independence, the estate was nationalised and my father spent another thirteen years in India trying to broker a deal with the government so as not to lose everything he, his father, and my great-grandfather had worked so hard to create.
The story brought forward by Bones of the Buddha is a fascinating one: one of the British Raj in India, when the amateur archaeologist W.C. Peppe plowed a trench through an enormous stupa and found the 4th century BC burial remains
The Bones of the Buddha is an historical entry in the PBS series Secrets of the Dead, published in 2013
William Claxton Peppè wasn’t interested in the objects’ religious value. His grandson says: “He was a strict but well-loved man, a Victorian Christian who had married a vicar’s daughter
Name: William C Peppe Birth: year Death: dd mm 1937 - city, Montgomeryshire, Wales
In January 1898, Mr W. C. Peppe, manager of the Birdpur Estate in north-eastern Basti District, U. P., announced the discovery of soapstone relic-caskets and jewellery inside a stupa near Piprahwa, a small village on this estate. An inscription on one of these caskets appeared to indicate that bone relics, supposedly found with these items, were those of the Buddha. Since this inscription also referred to the Buddha’s Sakyan kinsmen, these relics were thus generally considered to be those which were accorded to the Sakyas of Kapilavastu, following the Buddha’s cremation. The following year (1899) these bone relics were presented by the (British) Government of India to the King of Siam, who in turn accorded portions to the Sanghas of Burma and Ceylon.
William George Peppe, brutal murderer of 1857 in the eye of Hindustan (INDIA).
How William George Peppe became Hero For East India Company?
It was year 1857, The British were amazed and stunned. They could understand it well that the sepoy "Mutiny" has developed into a People's War and they realized it fully that the people's uprising is like a flood which sweeps away everything that comes in its way and spares nothing.
During this same period people of Mahua Dabar had killed Six British Army Officer in bits and peaces this was in revenge that British army had given to their fathers and to their village. In the early 19th century, the East India Company, eager to promote British textiles, had cut off the hands of hundreds of weavers in Bengal. Twenty weavers’ families from Murshidabad and Nadia had then fled to Awadh, whose nawab resettled them in Mahua Dabar and allowed them to carry on with their livelihood. Many of the first-generation weavers had already lost their hands, but they taught the craft to their sons and the small town of 5,000 people soon became a bustling handloom centre. It was around March-April 1857 when Zaffar Ali, a young man whose grandfather had migrated from Bengal, spotted a boat coming down the Manorama (a tributary of the Ghagra) on whose banks the town was located. The historians’ report names the six soldiers beheaded: Lt T.E. Lindsay, Lt W.H. Thomas, Lt G.L. Caulty, Sgt Edwards and privates A.F. English and T.J. Richie.
It was in consequence of this understanding that the Gorakhpur Judge W. Wynard and Collector W. Peterson appointed the Zamindar of Birdepur Willam Peppe as Deputy Magistrate of Basti and gave him half the troops of the 12th Irregular Horse Cavalry for his backing. Peppe was ordered to crush the people's uprising immediately by whatever means it may be possible.
So, on 20 June 1857, Peppe deployed the 12th eIrregular Horse cavalry and surrounded Mahua Dabar from all sides and burned the township murdered thousand of people and burned them to ashes. Razed the entire town of Mahua Dabar. After this event he also mentioned on the colonial revenue records, that the area was marked as gair chiragi (non-revenue land). Soon this message reached like fire in every home and town of Hindustan that if any one revolt against British Empire he or they will be crushed to the ground, and very soon British Army gained its power again in India for this great work Willam Peppe was rewarded by East India Company he was granted land is in Basti district, round Birdpur. He was first manager and then owner of a large European estate there, which is still held by his successors, h:s sons Messrs. W. C. and G. T. Peppe and Mrs. Larpent, his daughter. Annie Jane Peppe married Lieut.*Col. L. H. P. Larpent, H. C. S. (Eeferences : Gazetteer; Foster B., M. N page# 822).
William George Peppe died in 1889 Inscription •.—In memory of William Peppe, son of George Peppe, died 1 9th July 1889. He rendered valuable services during the troubled times of the Indian Mutiny, which Government rewarded by a grant of land in this district. [Deputy Collector during the Mutmy. The Mutiny narrative only mentions him as burning a Muhammadan village (Mahua Dabar) whose inhabitants had murdered six officers, refugees from Fyzabad. He also rescued some other refugees. He was in fact the sole representative of Government, and had great difficulty in preserving his own life. His grant of land is in Basti district, round Birdpur. He was first manager and then owner of a large European estate there, which is still held by his successors, h:s sons Messrs. W. C. and G. T. Peppe and Mrs. Larpent, his daughter. Annie Jane Peppe married Lieut.*Col. L. H. P. Larpent, H. C. S.]
Willam G. Peppe death date is Abstract from book CHRISTIAN TOMBS AND MONUMENTS IN THE UNITED PROVINCES…BY E.A.B BLUNT I.C.S.
