Charles Vallancey (394)

Charles Vallancey (c. 1726–8 August 1812) was a military officer, surveyor, historian, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1780. Vallancey was born in Flanders to French Huguenot parents and was educated at Eton College and the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. He was commissioned as an ensign in 1747 and was sent with his regiment to Ireland, where he would spend the rest of his life. Vallancey participated in a far-reaching surveying and map-making expedition of the Irish coast beginning in 1769. He rose through the military ranks slowly despite his demonstrable technical understanding of military engineering, eventually retiring with the title of general in 1803. Outside of his military service, Vallancey was an obsessive student of the history of the Irish language and culture. He was an advocate of the theory that ancient Irish civilization had its roots in Persian or Phoenecian cultures. Though his fellow scholars found this theory absurd and improbable, Vallancey managed to gain some acceptance in mainstream academic circles: he became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1784, a joint secretary of the Royal Dublin Society’s antiquities committee in 1772, and a founding member of the Royal Irish Academy in 1785. He helped this last institution obtain two important collections of ancient Irish literature: the Book of Lecan and the Leabhar Breac. Though his own publications were not highly regarded, his single-minded enthusiasm for Irish antiquity and mythology brought mainstream attention and new scholarship to the field throughout the 19th century. (DNB)