Author: Bell, Bridget
Biography:
BELL, Bridget, formerly SAMPSON (1782-1828: ancestry.co.uk)
She was baptised on 1 Jul. 1782 at Swine, Yorkshire, the daughter of Thomas Sampson and his first wife, Nanny Holden. The family subsequently moved to Ferry Bridge where, according to Gideon Smales in Whitby Authors, she fell in love with her father’s gardener, now identified as Alexander Stirling Bell (1791-1864). They were married on 7 May 1815 at Holy Trinity, King’s Court, York, and moved to Whitby where he worked as a gardener and she as a teacher. They had two daughters. She became an active member in the Presbyterian congregation of the Rev. George Young, DD. He wrote a preface praising her novel Fanny; or, True Benevolence (1821), which also contained miscellaneous poems. Her half-brother the Rev. Theophilus Sampson (1796-1864) and his wife subscribed. According to Smales, the poems had earlier been printed by Richard Rodgers in a volume of 16 pages, but no copy has been located. Her husband subsequently joined the army and served abroad. She died on 9 Apr. 1828, off the South Downs, on board the Charles Grant, Indiaman, on its return from the Cape of Good Hope, and was buried at Rochester on the 14th. Her husband became a schoolmaster in Portsea, remarried, and had a further eight children. (Whitby Panorama May 1829, 2:160; Whitby Authors 53-4; ancestry.co.uk 12 Apr. 2021) AA
Other Names:
- Mrs. A. S. Bell