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Author: Appleton, Elizabeth

Biography:

APPLETON, Elizabeth, later LACHLAN (d 1849: ancestry.co.uk)

No public record of her birth has been found and her age at death was given as 67. An online note at the Lancaster archives states that she was born in about 1790 at Bristol, the fourth child of William Henry Appleton (d 1802), a dabbler in the fine arts, and his wife Mary Barnet. Her father spent freely and the family was perpetually short of funds but Elizabeth had a good education and was employed by the Earl of Leven as a governess to his children. By about 1814 she was governess to the Walmsley family of Castlemere, Rochdale. In Feb. 1815 she wrote two letters to Walter Scott (q.v.) about a poem she hoped to publish, “The Condemned Vestal.” In Aug. 1816 she travelled to France and met William Porden and his daughter Eleanor (q.v.); she and Eleanor became friends. In 1821 Appleton, having made her name with educational books including Private Education, or, A Practical Plan for the Studies of Young Ladies (1815), moved to London and successfully ran a girls’ school at 6 Upper Portland Place. On 21 July 1825 at Holyrood Church in Southampton she married John Lachlan McLachlan. Also known simply as John Lachlan, he may or may not have been the man of the same name who graduated BA from Sidney College, Cambridge, in 1831. The marriage record gives Elizabeth’s age as 21 which she could not have been in 1825. Marriage was the beginning of a marked downturn in her fortunes. She gave money to an uncle, John Barnet, to purchase an advowson for her husband; the uncle’s bankruptcy meant she lost the money. They moved from Portland Place and she was unable to continue the school. She became a non-conformist only in the 1830s by the time she wrote Narrative of the Conversion (by the Instrumentality of Two Ladies) of James Cook (1832). The dedication is dated from 22 Euston Square. Towards the end of her life she was dependent on friends and family for support. She died at Rathbone Place, London, and was buried at St. James’s, Piccadilly, on 12 Sept. 1849. Two works, one including her diary entries, were edited by a medical friend and issued posthumously: Jehovah-Jireh (1850) and Magdalen’s Voyages (1850). Her other works include a novel, Edgar: A National Tale (1816), and Leonora; or, The Presentation at Court (1829). (ancestry.co.uk 28 Sept. 2022; Morning Post 5 Nov. 1821; London Evening Standard 12 Sept. 1849; archivecat.lancashire.gov.uk; ACAD; Millgate)

 

Books written (2):