Obituary to Josiah Gilbert (d.1893)

Josiah Gilbert, the artist and author, died at his residence at Marden Ash, Ongar, on August
15th. Here he had resided for many years, and was well-known and highly respected; in his
Memorials of Afrs. Gilbert, formerly Ann Taylor, his mother, we read, “ but, perhaps, the
removal of her eldest son from London to the country was even more interesting to her, for it
was to Ongar that he came. Near the 1 three-wants-way,’ where visitors for the old Peaked
Farm used to leave the coach, and which, marked by an ash tree in the middle, was named
Marden Ash, stood a house well bowered in trees. There he made his home, and it became
a favourite haunt of hers for many years. Nor was the cause of the removal less interesting
to her, since it was the association of her son with her brother Isaac, in the artistic
management of his remarkable invention for applying mechanism to the delicate and
complex processes of line-engraving.” An important link with the Taylors of Ongar is now
snapped. Mr. Gilbert’s grandfather, the Rev. Isaac Taylor, was pastor of the Congregational
Church at Ongar for over seventeen years; his uncle, the famous Isaac Taylor, lived at
Stanford Rivers, near Ongar, for many years. It was in the little chapel there that David
Livingstone tried to preach his first sermon - in vain; and the Children's Hymns, and the
poems of his aunt and mother, Jane and Ann Taylor, have delighted many. Josiah Gilbert
was senior deacon and chief supporter of the Congregational Church at Ongar for
considerably over thirty years; he was a liberal supporter of many other local institutions, and
will be much missed in that neighbourhood. One year he was chairman of the Essex
Congregational Union. He was joint author of The Dolomite Mountains, and later of Cadore,
or Titian’s Country. More recently he wrote his History of Landscape Painting. When he died
he had reached the ripe age of seventy-eight; his remains were removed to his native
Nottingham for burial, the Rev. T. Chisholm, late pastor of the Ongar Chapel, officiating.