Valentine Blacker
Valentine Blacker (19 October 1778 – 4 February 1826) was a lieutenant colonel in the Honourable Company and later Surveyor General of India.
His relative William Blacker, also a lieutenant colonel, is sometimes conflated in attribution, as some works by William were published pseudonymously or under the attribution "Colonel Blacker."
Misattributed
[edit]- Put your trust in God, my boys, and keep your powder dry!
- From the poem "Oliver's Advice" by William Blacker, published under the pseudonym Fitz Stewart in The Dublin University Magazine, December 1834, p. 700. This line by a different Colonel Blacker is paraphrased from an attribution to Oliver Cromwell (hence the poem's title).
About
[edit]- Blacker, with the exception of Col Everest, was the ablest and most scientific man that ever presided over this expensive department
- Andrew Waugh quoted in J. R. Smith, Everest: The Man and the Mountain (1999), p. 226.
- Beneath are deposited the remains of Lieut-Colonel Valentine Blacker, Companion of the Bath, of the Light Cavalry on the establishment of Fort Saint George. During ten years, Quarter Master General of the Madras Army, and subsequently Surveyor General of India. Obit. iv. February MDCCCXXVI. Aet. xl. Lieutenant-Colonel Blacker was an Officer distinguished alike for professional ability, for public zeal, for private worth, and for manliness of character. In testimony thereof his friends and comrades have caused this monument to be erected to his memory.
- Gravestone.
