Valentine Blacker

Blacker was born in Armagh, Northern Ireland where his family has an ancestral home in the barony of Oneilland East. He obtained a commission in the Madras Cavalry in 1798, was made a cornet in 1799, and aide-de-camp to a Colonel Stevenson in the Wayanad district in 1800, and quartermaster-general in 1810. He served in Deccan, 1817, and was promoted to lieutenant colonel. His son, Maxwell, was born in June 1822.^[6]

Blacker took over from John Hodgson as Surveyor General of India in 1823. In this capacity he made substantial contributions to the ongoing Trigonometrical Survey of India. He was stationed in Calcutta from 1823 until his death there from a fever in 1826. He was buried in South Park Street Cemetery in Calcutta.^[7] Andrew Waugh said that "Blacker, with the exception of Colonel George Everest, was the ablest and most scientific man that ever presided over this expensive department".^[8]

Blacker and his relative William Blacker were both lieutenant colonels and published authors. Because some of the work was published pseudonymously, the two are sometimes confused or conflated in texts.

His correspondence with his father concerning military and political news, as well as his observations about Indian life and culture, was published in 1798.^[9]

Blacker published a history of the Third Anglo-Maratha War, including discussion of the Battle of Khadki, in 1821.^[10]