Daniel and Samuel Lysons were the sons of the Rev. Samuel Lysons (1730-1804) and Mary Peach Lysons of Gloucestershire, England. Daniel Lysons (1762-1834) graduated from Oxford, and served as the curate of Putney (London, England) from 1789 to 1800. He was a noteworthy antiquary and topographer, and published Environs of London in four volumes from 1792 to 1796. In 1800, he inherited the family estates at Gloucestershire from his uncle, and the following year married Sarah Hardy (ca. 1780-1808). In 1813, he married Josepha Catherine Susanna Cooper (ca. 1781-1868). Daniel's younger brother Samuel Lysons (1763-1819) began studying law in Bath in 1780, where he first befriended Hester Lynch Piozzi (1741-1821) in January of 1784. He later courted two of Mrs. Piozzi's daughters, unsuccessfully. He relocated to London, was called to the bar in 1798, then served as Keeper of the Records in London from 1803 until his death in 1819. Samuel was also an engraver and antiquary, serving as director of the Society of Antiquaries from 1798 to 1809. He illustrated his brother's Environs of London, and the two collaborated on Magna Britannia, Being a Concise Topographical Account of the Several Counties of Great Britain, published in several volumes from 1806 to 1822. The work was cut short by Samuel's death in 1819.
From the guide to the Lysons family letters from Hester Lynch Piozzi, 1784-1820., (Houghton Library, Harvard College Library, Harvard University)
