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Paxton of Sandford St. Martin, seventeen miles from Oxford. There he died, at his residence, Ledwell House, after a very short illness, on 12 March 1860, and was buried in the churchyard at Sandford. He married Miss Anna Griffin, who died in 1864, and one of his two daughters married the Rev. Henry Highton, headmaster of Cheltenham College.

Paxton was a man of strong religious feelings, and was highly esteemed by his friends and patients. His writings had much success. Their titles are: 1. ‘Specimen of an Introduction to the Study of Human Anatomy,’ 1830. 2. ‘An Introduction to the Study of Human Anatomy,’ London, 1831, 8vo, 2 vols.; new edit. 1841. This book was republished in America, where it went through three editions. 3. ‘The Medical Friend; or Advice for the Preservation of Health,’ Oxford, 1843. 4. ‘Living Streams, or Illustrations of the Natural History and various Diseases of the Blood,’ London, 8vo, 1855. He contributed ‘A Case of Scirrhous Pylorus and Mortification of the Stomach’ to the ‘Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal,’ xv. 328, and edited Paley's ‘Natural Theology,’ with ‘a series of plates and explanatory notes,’ Oxford, 1826, 8vo, 2 vols.

[Marshall's Account of Sandford; Rugby Advertiser, March 1860; information from Librarian of Royal College of Surgeons; Lowndes's Bibl. Man.] 

PAXTON, JOHN (d. 1780), painter, appears to have been of Scottish origin, and to have been a student in Foulis's art academy at Glasgow. He subsequently studied at Rome. He was one of the original members of the Incorporated Society of Artists, and signed their declaration roll in 1766. In that year he sent to their exhibition from Rome ‘Samson in Distress.’ In 1769 and 1770 he exhibited portraits at the Royal Academy, and in the latter year settled in Charlotte Street, Rathbone Place, where he had considerable practice as a portrait-painter. He continued to exhibit with the Society of Artists, of which he was director in 1775, sending chiefly portraits, but also scriptural, classical, and historical subjects. Subsequently he received some commissions to paint portraits in India, and went there about 1776. He died at Bombay in 1780. Paxton painted a portrait of Signorina Zamperini as ‘Cechina.’ A portrait by him of his fellow-pupil, James Tassie [q. v.], is in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery at Edinburgh. Paxton is alluded to in John Langhorne's ‘Fables of Flora,’ 1771.

[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Pye's Patronage of British Art; Catalogues of the Soc. of Artists, Royal Academy, &c.] 

PAXTON, JOSEPH (1801–1865), gardener and architect, born at Milton-Bryant, near Woburn, Bedfordshire, 3 Aug. 1801, was son of a small farmer of that place. He was educated at Woburn grammar school, and when fifteen was placed under his elder brother John, then gardener to Sir Gregory Page-Turner, at Battlesden Park, near Woburn. Two years later he was apprenticed to William Griffin, a skilful fruit-grower, gardener to Samuel Smith of Woodhall Park, Watton, Hertfordshire. In 1821 he returned as gardener to Battlesden, and there constructed a large lake. In 1823 he was for a brief period in the service of the Duke of Somerset at Wimbledon. But when, in the same year, the Horticultural Society leased the Chiswick gardens from the Duke of Devonshire, and engaged in reconstructing them, Paxton, to improve himself, obtained employment there in the arboretum. He became foreman in 1824, but in 1826 was on the point of starting for America in hopes of bettering his condition, as he was only earning eighteen shillings a week. His trim, manly, and intelligent bearing had, however, attracted the attention of the Duke of Devonshire, who was then president of the Horticultural Society; and he was appointed superintendent of the gardens at Chatsworth. In 1829 the woods were also placed under his care, and between 1832 and 1836 he superintended the erection of the stove, greenhouse, and orchid-houses, the formation of a magnificent arboretum—the cost of which was entirely defrayed from the sale of timber cleared off its site—and the making of many estate roads. In 1836 he began the erection of the great conservatory, three hundred feet in length, which was completed in 1840, and formed in some respects the model for the Great exhibition building of 1851. Having now been received into the duke's intimate friendship, he was invited to accompany him on a tour in the west of England; in 1838 they visited Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Asia Minor, Malta, Spain, and Portugal; and in 1840 they went together to the duke's estate at Lismore. Between 1839 and 1841 Paxton remodelled the village of Edensor, near Chatsworth, and his last great constructive work there was the fountains, the largest of which is 267 feet in height. In 1849 he was successful in flowering the ‘Victoria regia’ water-lily for the first time in Europe. In 1850, after 233 other plans for the Industrial exhibition had been rejected, one prepared by Paxton in nine days was accepted.