COPSEY, Ambrose
Ambrose Copsey was born around 1832 and baptised at Glemsford, Suffolk on 27 April 1834, son of Samuel Copsey (1802-1871), an agricultural labourer, and his wife Mary née Garwood (1803-1885). In 1851, Ambrose was a 19-year-old hand-loom weaver, living at Skates Hill, Glemsford with his parents and five siblings. He married at Bury St Edmund’s, Suffolk in 1855, Agnes Browne (1833-31 January 1900), who was born at St Pancras, London, and they moved to the adjoining town of Long Melford, Suffolk where Ambrose was a cabinet maker and keeper of 'The Sun' beer shop. By 1861, a 29-year-old photographic artist, living on the west side of Hall Street, Long Melford with his 27-year-old wife Agnes and four of their six children, Ambrose Brian 5, Alonzo Brown 3, Agnes J. 1 and newly born Archibald C., a further child Joseph Felix was born at Long Melford in 1863, and by 1866 they had moved to Sudbury when their sixth child Adonis B. was born. Ambrose was discharged from the Suffolk Militia in 1871, when a photographer & gilder at North Street, Sudbury, this was formerly known as Sepulchre Street. A member of the Ipswich Fine Art Club 1884-1886 exhibiting from Sepulchre [now North] Street a total of six works, the subjects being mostly local scenes, three in 1884 'Benevolence', 'Belchamp Walter Church' and 'Expectant' and three in 1885, ‘Old Lodge, Pentlow, Essex’, 'Old George Inn' and ‘A Cottage called the Barracks at Gestingthorpe, Essex’. On 22 March 1887 there was an auction of 'stock-in-trade' on relinquishing his business which included a large quantity of artist's material, but Ambrose Copsey died at Sudbury 17 days later, on 9 April and buried in Sudbury Cemetery on 13 April 1887, aged 55.