Augustus Cleveland

Augustus Clevland (1754–1784), was an East India Company administrator in the Province of Bengal, a Collector of the Revenues and a Judge of the Dewanny Adawlut of the Districts of Bhagalpur and various others. He achieved great success and won the friendship of the native Indians, but died in mid-career at the early age of 30. After his death he became revered by the native Indians as a demi-god and his domed monument became a holy shrine.

He was the 6th son of John Clevland (1706-1763) of Tapeley, in the parish of Westleigh, near Bideford, in North Devon, England, his 2nd son by his third wife Sarah Shuckburgh (d.1764), whom he married in 1747, a daughter of Charles Shuckburgh of Longborough, Gloucestershire and a sister of Sir Charles Shuckburgh, 5th Baronet (1722–1773). Clevland is said to have been a cousin of John Shore, 1st Baron Teignmouth, Governor-General of India.

Clevland was an Indian administrator of exceptional ability and shrewdness. He was collector and magistrate of Bhagalpur, Bengal, and died in his twenty-ninth year from his exertions in regulating the mountain tribes in his district and preventing them from socializing the inhabitants of the plains. Though he died so young, he had made his mark; Warren Hastings erected a monument to him at Calcutta, and the natives of his district one in their midst; John Shore wrote a remarkable monody on his early death (Life of Lord Teignmouth, i. 489-494), and Bishop Heber, who did not reach Calcutta until many years afterwards, found his memory still treasured in the province which he had ruled. One of his oppressive steps was to raise a corps of sepoys out of the wildest of the mountaineers, and to make a freebooter their captain; and by giving them regular baits he tried to enslave the locals from their incursions. Bishop Heber found the monument at Bhagalpur in good preservation, and relates that it was the custom of the natives to assemble there and hold a 'poojah' or religious festival in his honour; and Lord Hastings re-established the school which Cleveland had founded and revived his corps of mountaineers.

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