Major-General Sir William Nott (20 January 1782 – 1 January 1845) was a British military officer of the Bengal Army, East India Company in British India.
Early life
Nott was born in 1782, near Neath in Wales, the second son of Charles Nott, a Herefordshire farmer of Welsh background, who in 1794 became an innkeeper of the Ivy Bush Inn at Carmarthen in Wales. Nott was educated in Neath, and then at Cowbridge Grammar School but left education after his father became an innkeeper.).
He died at Carmarthen on 1 January 1845, aged 62.
Family
Nott was married twice. Firstly he wed Letitia Swinhoe with whom he had five children, including Charlotte, who married John Bower and was the father of Sir William Nott-Bower.
He married his second, much younger, wife in 1843. She was née Rosa Wilson Dore (died 1901), daughter of Major P. L. Dore. After her husband's death in 1845, she remarried Thomas Twisden Hodges, MP. When her second husband died in 1865 she resumed the name Lady Nott.
Statue in Carmarthen
thumb|upright|Statue in Nott Square, [[Carmarthen]]
A statue of General Nott was erected in his home town of Carmarthen in 1851. Sculpted by Edward Davis, it now has Grade II Listed status. According to the PMSA, "the bronze statue was cast from cannon captured at the Battle of Maharajpur. Queen Victoria gave 200 guineas to the memorial fund. The statue occupies the site of the market cross which was dismantled when the market was resited and Nott Square created in 1846."
Further reading
- Memoirs and Correspondence of Sir William Nott, edited by JH Stocqueler (2 vols, London, 1854)
- Charles R Low, The Afghan War 1838-1842 (London, 1879), and Life and Correspondence of Sir George Pollock (London, 1873)
- Sir JW Kaye, History of the War in Afghanistan (2 vols., London, 1851).