Henry Crocker Marriott Watson, born and educated in Tasmania, was the son of Brereton Rolla Ross Porter Pemberton Watson, formerly of the East India Company and Tipperary, Ireland and his wife, Catherine nee Wade of Tasmania. Watson went to Melbourne in 1858 and completed theological studies at Moore College, Liverpool, New South Wales in March 1860. He became an Anglican priest in Melbourne on 15 June 1862. In 1863, he married Annie McDonald Wright in Hobart; they had at least ten children. Throughout his eleven years in Victoria Watson was a missioner for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG). He held church appointments at Ballarat, Caulfield, Melbourne and in country parishes.
From 9 March 1873 until his death in 1901, Watson was the Anglican minister of St. John's Anglican Church, Christchurch, New Zealand . He was a vigorous champion of total abstinence, a leading Evangelical and an Orangeman. Watson made two trips to England in 1885-1886 and 1889-1890, acting as a deputational secretary for the SPG on both occasions. Watson died in Victoria but was buried in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Watson was the editor-founder of the Church Magazine and the founder of the Telegraph newspaper in Christchurch. The eldest son, Henry Brereton Marriott Watson (q.v.), followed his father's literary inclinations. Marriott Watson Senior published two futuristic fantasies, but a third novel, Ahmet and Neida, remains unpublished.
(Source: James Doig, 'Introduction', in H. B. Marriott Watson The Devil of the Marsh and Other Stories (2004): ix-xxii).
