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| MARY & LUCY SANKEY 1830 |
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These two pieces have, almost certainly stayed together..moving from life to life, home to home, since they were both stitched around 200 years ago.
Part 1 - Susanna Sankey
Susan, as she clearly liked to be known, was born in Dover, Kent on the 23rd July 1821 and baptised on the 22nd August 1821 at St Mary's Church.
She marries John William Horsley, a priest, on the 20th July 1843 and with whom she has four children- John William (jr), Mary, Stephen & Susanah Elizabeth. Mary Horsley will become the prominent Dover historian).
John dies, whilst the family are living in Northern France, aged just 34 on the 30th June 1849 leaving Susanna (28) with four young children to support.
She quickly brings her children back to Kent and settles, initially, in the cathedral city of Canterbury, some 20 miles from Dover. She is recorded, in 1851, to be a teacher but with two servants to assist in her household she was clearly living with 'independent means'.
By 1871, she is living back in Dover with her now widowed mother Elizabeth and youngest daughter Mary Horsley (24) at 2 Guildford Lawn, Dover (now demolished).
Interestingly, ten years later she is visiting her aunt, one Frances Ottaway nee Sankey at 16 Haringey Park, London.
We have a wonderful surviving painting of Susanna, circa 1845's, from her time in France, looking wonderfully bohemian for the time
She will die after a full life on the 17th May 1904 aged 83 years. In her probate she left the sum of £9241 6s 9d (the equivalent today of some £300k)
Part II - Mary Charlotte Sankey & family
Mary C(harlotte) Sankey was born on the 24th January 1827 & baptised 13th June later that year. Tragically, for the family, she passes on the 28th May 1838 aged just 11 years old.
Susanna & Mary Charlotte were two of eight children born to William Sankey (prominent surgeon & architect!) and Elizabeth Thompson (dates), daughter of Edward Thompson, a former mayor of Dover. They married in 1819 but would only see four of their children reach adulthood.
One of their children, Arthur Henry Sankey, followed in his father's footsteps by qualifying in medicine at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London. However, he would die only a year later, aged 21 years, from that scourge of the period tuberculosis!
Indeed, Mary Charlotte herself was named after an earlier born sibling, who had died in her first year of life, some five years earlier.
See a contempory miniature of Elizabeth, probably painted around the time of her marriage circa 1820's |
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