PERSONALIA

 

£200

John Barber, born 4th October 1813, the son of John Houseman Barber and his wife Sarah, a Baptist family of Nottingham. John followed his father's trade as a grocer, and in later life became a JP and Alderman. He married Eliza Seals(?) in 1839, and they had at least four sons and two daughters. He died in 1907. The photographs come with a substantial archive of census copies, local directory photocopies, copies of wills, IGI entries, GRO certificates, family tree charts etc.

£250

Mary Buchanan (1788–1874) was second daughter of the Revd Gilbert Buchanan, rector of Woodmansterne, Surrey. On 7 August 1818 she married  (Sir) John Taylor Coleridge (nephew of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge), who pursued a successful career as a judge, and was a prolific writer. Mary Coleridge bore six children, Mary Dorothy Frances Coleridge (1819–1820); John Duke (1820–1894), the future lord chief justice; Henry James Coleridge (1822–1893), an Anglican priest who entered the Roman Catholic church in 1852; Mary Frances Keble Coleridge (1824–1898), who rejected a proposal of marriage in 1845 from Roundell Palmer, the future Lord Chancellor Selborne, to her father's deep regret; Alethea Buchanan Coleridge (1826–1909), who married J. F. Mackarness, the future bishop of Oxford; and Frederick William Coleridge (1828–1843). ODNB

£100

The young lady in the small ambrotype is more likely to be a daughter of Dickson, than a sister.

£30

Thomas Gibb Drummond was born in Stirling, Scotland, 30th November 1839, the son of James Drummond, a draper, and Eliza Gibb.

£120

Henry Frampton a farmer, was born in 1793, the son of Richard Frampton and Mary Badcock of Shrivenham, Berkshire. He is found in Newington, Oxfordshire in the 1851 census a widower, with his daughters Catherine and Mary, and son Henry. Mary plus other children Richard and Sarah, are found in Burghclere, Hampshire in the 1861 census.

£35

Handwritten paper labels tell us the sitters are William Fretson, solicitor, of Sheffield, and his wife Elizabeth Mary Fretson. William was born in 1818, the son of John and Mary Fretson of Sheffield.

£50

George William Harrison was born on 22 November 1805, at Great Driffield, Yorkshire, to James and Elizabeth Harrison. He married Martha Gregory 15th June 1830 in Wakefield, and was a corn merchant. He was elected the first Mayor of Wakefield in 1848.

£300

"Mrs Frier-Marreco" was Anna Laura Harrison, born in 1806 the daughter of John Fairweather Harrison, London Merchant, and his wife Sophia. Known as Annie, she married Antonio Joaquin Friere Marreco (1787-1850), a chemist and railway entrepreneur. Her husband came to England from Portugal in 1821, and entered into business with the William Harrison and his son Thomas Elliot Harrison, the railway engineer . The latter led him to relocate to County Durham where he became engaged in railway projects, and where he settled for some years with his wife Annie. Several of their children remained in the north-east, including Algernon who became a Professor of Chemistry at Durham University, and their son Hubert who married Jane Bainbridge in 1875.  Jane's mother Elizabeth is the subject of the 1/4 Plate ambrotype, who was born Elizabeth Wisker in 1802, the daughter of John and Elizabeth Wisker of York, optician. She married George Peacock Bainbridge in 1823.

£120

Hannah Flower married James Clements in Liverpool in 1817, and in the 1851 census they are living in West Derby, with two sons, both born in Liverpool. Hannah was born about 1797 in Hawksworth, Yorkshire, so her sister Ann was probably born in this same area (near Leeds). The age of the sitter is consistent with a birth circa 1790-1800.

£400

The daguerreotype of the young boy and the three cabinet card portraits all feature the same person, and can be identified as William Short Mahony Esq, the subject of the insurance document, and we can assume that the couple in the daguerreotypes are his parents (with whom there is a close likeness). William Short Mahony was born about 1842 in Essex to Michael John Mahony, iron broker, and Ellen Lucy Crawley (who married in 1837 in Stepney, London). Michael Mahoney was a partner in the firm of Short & Mahony, metal brokers of Cornhill, London, who it happens were defendants in a case before the High Court of Chancery about the time the daguerreotypes were taken (see the Law Journal 1848). William married Hermina Lydia Stow in 1876 in Southampton (GRO certificate comes with the archive), who was the daughter of William Crawford Stow, architect and surveyor. In the 1891 census William, described as a "member of the stock exchange", is living in Kensington with his wife Hermina, his son William, and cousin Mary Stow.

£75

£120

Members of the Myrick family are found concentrated along the SE United States in the mid 19th century.

£100

Arthur Charles Padday was born 1839, married Alice Hamilton Foster in 1874, and died in 1893 in Paddington, London. Two children, Arthur Campbell (b.1876) and Alice Isabel (b.1878) are registered in the christenings of the India Office in India. Following the Indian Mutiny of 1857, the Bengal Engineers were in 1862, amalgamated into the Corps of Royal Engineers, so we may presume this ambrotype pre-dates 1862, when Arthur would be in his early 20s. Further research into military records may be rewarding.

£30

In the 1861 census (before Mary's birth), we find Francis G Selby in Spalding, Lincolnshire, aged 8, the son of Francis J. Selby, aged 45, an attorney solicitor, and his wife Ellen, aged 31. There are 5 other siblings listed.

£100

Sarah Chisman Phipson was born in Birmingham in 1816, and in 1849 married Frederick Selby, a school master from Wareham, Dorset. They settled in Wareham where they ran the Elm Cottage Academy.

£100

Thomas Sharp was an locomotive engine fitter, born about 1835 in Leeds. He was married in 1857 in Selby, Yorkshire, and he and his wife Hannah had several children, of whom Kate, born in 1862 in Hull, (the informant in the death certificate) married Henry Lazenby Parkinson in 1886 in Bradford. In the 1861 census the Sharps are living  in York, and by 1891 in Selby. At both addresses there are a high proportion of neighbours working on the railways. The photograph was taken when aged 21, shortly before his marriage.

£300

Thomas Smith and his wife Elizabeth lived at Colebrooke Park, Tonbridge, Kent. Their daughter Elizabeth Solesby Smith (1828-1892) married William Benson JP in 1852, by whom she had six children, of which the eldest was William Arthur Benson (1854-1924). William, encouraged and supported by Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris, established himself as a successful metalwork designer. In 1884 he became a founder member of the Art-Workers' Guild, and the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society came into being through his initiative. After William Morris's death in 1896, Benson also became the first chairman of William Morris & Co. Decorators Ltd. (ODNB). The ambrotype of the lady is misattributed to Mrs Smith - Elizabeth wife of Thomas Smith died in 1853 aged 48, so cannot be the sitter given the photograph is dated 1857. It is undoubtedly instead Elizabeth Solesby Benson (nee Smith), who would have been 29 when the photograph was taken.

£300

Thomas Thursfield was born in Broseley, Shropshire in 1805, the son of William Thursfield, surgeon, and Elizabeth Asbury. He married Sarah Pardoe, and settled in Kidderminster, Worcestershire, where he practiced as a surgeon. The younger of their two sons, Sir James Richard Thursfield (1840-1923), was a well known naval historian and journalist (see ODNB).

£75

In the 1861 census we find in Limehouse, Middlesex, Emma Walker, age 40, born in Westbury, Wiltshire, the wife of Edmund Walker, age 41, "Manr. pat.topsails", with Edmund's four children, and Emma's nephew Edwin Eyres. Emma and Edmund married in 1858 in Westbury, Wilts.

£100

Henry Thornton Wharton was born in 1846 in Mitcham, Surrey, the son of Henry James Wharton (1798–1859), vicar of Mitcham, whose ancestors had long been settled at Winfarthing in Norfolk. His mother Mary was a daughter of Thomas Peregrine Courtenay. He was educated at Charterhouse and at Wadham College, Oxford, where he graduated with honours in natural science in 1871. He was best known for a book on Sappho (1885) which passed through four editions. He was also one of the joint compilers of the official list of British birds issued by the British Ornithologists' Union (1883), his special task being to supervise and elucidate the Latin nomenclature; and he contributed a chapter on the local flora to a work entitled Hampstead Hill (1889). (ODNB)