Sir Anthony Coningham Sterling, eldest son of Captain Edward Sterling and Hester Coningham, was born in Dundalk in 1805. After several terms at Trinity College, Cambridge, he enlisted in the military and married Charlotte Baird. He was highly decorated for his part in the Crimean campaign of 1854 but became the center of an internal military scandal after the Indian Mutiny (1857-58). He authored a number of books including a translation of Russia under Nicholas I (1841) and Letters from the Army in the Crimea, written by a Staff Officer (1857). Sterling died in London on March 1, 1871.
John Sterling, younger brother of Sir Anthony Coningham Sterling, was born on the island of Bute on July 20, 1806. While studying at Trinity College, Cambridge, under Julius Charles Hare, Sterling became a member of the Apostles and befriended Richard Chenevix Trench and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, among others. Upon his departure from Cambridge, Sterling purchased and briefly edited the Athenaeum with Frederick Denison Maurice before marrying Susannah Barton in 1830. Despite declining health, he published the novel Arthur Coningsby (1833) and Poems (1839) and gathered literary friends such as Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill together at his monthly "Sterling Club" entertainments. He died of tuberculosis on September 18, 1844. Sterling is perhaps best known today as the subject of Carlyle's Life of Sterling (1851).
From the guide to the Sterling family papers, 1811-1950, (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
