Talk:Frederick Stovin

Ionians
Stovin's being in the Ionians with the 28th is cited to the ODNB, but the article doesn't seem to mention it, only him being there with the 90th from 1821, and also says that the rebellion was while he was in command of the 90th, not when he was a major with the 28th. Should the ref be to Johnston instead, or had the sequence just got muddled? David Underdown (talk) 12:45, 15 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I think muddled - this is one of the cases where the DNB itself gets a bit confused. (He suppressed a rebellion when present with the 28th; his tenure with the 90th was pretty placid). I'll recheck the footnotes. Shimgray | talk | 13:07, 15 December 2009 (UTC)


 * ...and fixed. Johnston is quite clear that he put down a rebellion when there with the 28th in 1819/1820, and that - apart from disarming the islands, which was done completely peacefully in 1822 - the 90th didn't have much actively happen. I think this is the ODNBs error - there's a brief summary of the incident here, which corroborates Johnston.
 * On the theme of things missing from the ODNB, did you turn up a Gazette reference to him as brigadier-general? I couldn't find a reference to this anywhere, and it seems a bit odd to skip a step completely. Shimgray | talk | 13:21, 15 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Brigadier was not a permanent rank in this period, most people went straight from colonel to major-general. Brigadier was a temporary appointment given to field officers when brigades were needed, and no generals on the station.  Much like the usage of commodore in the RN which was given when a captain was needed to command a squadron of ships.  There seem to be a few errors of date in the ODNB article (it's mostly a lightly edited version of the original DNB article), sources are given as the Gentleman's Magazine, so the original error was probably theirs-it's now much esier to go back to the original Gazettes. David Underdown (talk) 14:36, 15 December 2009 (UTC)