Cleverly, Osmund

Updated August 1, 2014

An opium hulk. Credit: Okinawa Soba, flickr.

Osmund Cleverly, marine surveyor, was listed as a resident of Hong Kong from 1841 to 1860. He was a ship captain, a merchant navy commander, a marine surveyor, an engineer, and the master of opium hulk William Hughes. He was a trustee of the committee of the Protestant Cemetery at Belle View, Macau in 1858. He was the British Consular Agent at Macau in 1860.

Cleverly, the eldest son of Samuel Cleverly, a medical practitioner, and Charlotte Louisa Worrall, was born in Levallois-Perret, France in 1813. He had four younger brothers: Oscar Worall Cleverly (born in1814); M. Frederic Cleverly (born in 1815); Alfred William Cleverly (born in 1817); and Charles Saint George Cleverly 基化厘, who was Hong Kong's Surveyor-General 量地官 from 1842 to 1850. Osmund Cleverly married twice. The first marriage [name of wife unknown] produced two children: Charles Osmund Cleverly (born in Hong Kong in 1842; he married Felicia Vicencia de Barros in Hong Kong on February 3, 1866); and Emily Cleverly. Osmund Cleverly married his second wife, Ellen Fagan, in Chusan (Zhoushan) 舟山 on October 2, 1845. Fagan was the daughter of an army officer, James Fagan of the 58th Regiment. Cleverly and Fagan had three children: Mary Cleverly (born in Ceylon in 1849; she married Louis Du Mesnil de Sommery, Ostend in Belgium in 1871); Alice Louisa Cleverly (born in Hong Kong in 1850); and Ellen Adelaide Cleverly (born in Hong kong in 1853). Osmund Cleverly died in London on June 1, 1861.

Selected Bibliography: Ancestry.co.uk [online]. The Cork Examiner, January 9, 1846. Geneanet [online]. Janus: Jardine Matheson Archive. The London Gazette, August 2, 1872, p.3468.