Peter Fabyan Sparke Amery

• Born: Ashburton, 2 September 1839
• Died: 26 July 1907, during the Association's Axminster meeting
• Devonshire Association: member from 1869; treasurer from 1893 until his death; secretary of the Committee on Devonshire Folk-lore
• Also: member of the Barrow Committee from 1883; joint editor of Devon Notes and Queries; secretary of the Teign Naturalists' Field Club
• Local offices: bailiff and portreeve of Ashburton; magistrate; county councillor; lieutenant-colonel of the Ashburton volunteers

Peter Fabyan Sparke Amery, known as Fabyan Amery, was born at Ashburton in 1839 and educated at Ashburton Grammar School and at a school in Germany. He spent his life in the town: bailiff, portreeve, foreman of the leet jury, chairman of the School Board, governor of the Grammar School, a justice of the peace and a county councillor. He joined the volunteers in 1859 and retired in 1899 as a lieutenant-colonel.

For the Transactions of the Devonshire Association he was a steady worker. He was elected in 1869, became treasurer in 1893 on the death of Mr Vivian, and kept the post until he died. He was secretary of the Committee on Devonshire Folk-lore, whose yearly reports collected customs and stories sent in by members, and he joined the Barrow Committee in 1883. He and his brother were absent from the 1907 meeting at Axminster because of his illness, and news of his death reached the secretaries there.

His Dartmoor interests ran through the Barrow Committee (the body from which the Dartmoor Exploration Committee grew) and through the history of Ashburton, on the edge of the moor. The 1907 Association obituary calls his knowledge, literary and archaeological ability valuable to many committees. His brother John Sparke Amery (1845 to 1929), a magistrate and farmer at Druid House, Ashburton, succeeded him as treasurer in 1908; the name John Sparke Amery also appears in the Committee's later membership list. A window in the Ashburton Congregational Church, put up in 1934, commemorates the two brothers. He was the son of John Sparke Amery senior and Frances Windeatt, and was buried in Ashburton churchyard.

Sources: Obituary notice, Transactions of the Devonshire Association, vol. 39 (1907) | Twenty-seventh Report of the Barrow Committee, vol. 40 (1908) | Report of the Council, vol. 40 (1908) | Dartmoor CAM, the Dartmoor Exploration Committee | Old Ashburton, the Sparke and Amery families.