1. Ardaseer Cursetjee Wadia FRS was an Indian Parsi shipbuilder and engineer belonging to the Wadia ship building family.
19 Facts About Ardaseer Cursetjee
1. 2.
Ardaseer Cursetjee is noted for having been the first Indian to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
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Ardaseer Cursetjee is recorded as having introduced several novel technologies to the city of Bombay, including gas lighting, the sewing machine, steam pump-driven irrigation and electro-plating.
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Ardaseer Cursetjee is presumed to be the first Parsi to have visited America.
5.
Ardaseer Cursetjee was the son of Cursetjee Rustomjee, a scion of the wealthy Wadia family of shipbuilders and naval architects, who was a ship builder at the Bombay Dockyard.
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In 1822, aged 14, Ardaseer joined his father at the dockyards.
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Ardaseer Cursetjee is described to have been particularly interested in steam engines.
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Ardaseer Cursetjee married a Parsi girl, Avabai, and the couple had several children who subsequently became the initial members of the wealthy Wadia business family of India.
9.
In 1837, Ardaseer Cursetjee was elected a non-resident member of the Royal Asiatic Society.
10.
Ardaseer Cursetjee recounted his journey in The Diary of an Overland Journey from Bombay to England, which was published in London in 1840.
11.
On 27 May 1841, Ardaseer Cursetjee was elected Fellow of the Royal Society.
12.
Ardaseer Cursetjee remained Chief Engineer at the Bombay Docks until 1 August 1857, when he retired.
13.
In 1858, Ardaseer Cursetjee made his last trip to London and decided to permanently live in the UK with his mistress, an English woman named Marian Barber.
14.
Ardaseer Cursetjee Wadia died, aged 69, on 16 November 1877 in Richmond, London.
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Ardaseer Cursetjee set up home with Marian Barber in England, living together although they never formally married.
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Ardaseer Cursetjee's second child, Gustasp Ardaseer, was born in Bombay in 1856.
17.
Ardaseer Cursetjee had a wife in India, Avabai, whom he left along with his children in India when he migrated to the UK.
18.
For example, Cursetjee Rustomjee, the grandson of Avabai and Ardaseer was sent to England to study for the Indian Civil Service examination and stayed with his grandfather in Richmond.
19.
St Mathias church in Surrey records that in 1879, one of his children, Gustasp Ardaseer Cursetjee, married Florence Neal.