Author: Butler, Harriette
Biography:
BUTLER, Harriette (1810-36: ancestry.co.uk)
She was born on 6 May 1810 and baptised on 11 Nov. at St. Peter’s Liverpool, the daughter of Richard Butler, skinner, and Margaret Biggs, who had married in Bristol in 1796. Nothing is known of her education but her only volume of verse, Lays of the Heart (1833), contains the clues which have enabled identification. Her poems “Farewell to Liverpool” and “Recollections of My Childhood” record her early life. A number of poems to Luke (L.A., L.H.A., L-e) chart her unhappiness in love. Her father’s death is given as 2 Oct. 1832 and a sister’s as 12 Dec. 1832. A poem chastises her brother-in-law for remarrying only three months after her sister’s death. A poem on reading the Wesleyan Methodist Magazine is probably indicative of the family’s religious allegiance. The burials in Cheetham Hill Wesleyan Methodist Cemetery, Manchester, of her father Richard Butler (1773-1832) (buried 5 Oct.) and of her married sister Ann Massey (1807-32) (buried 16 Dec.) are consistent with Harriette’s reports of their deaths. There is no record of Harriette’s burial but her will, proved 11 June 1839, states that she died on 14 Dec. 1836. Her sister Mary Sawley (1818-82) and her friend John Hodgson were executors. She never married. (ancestry.co.uk 20 July 2023; findmypast.co.uk 20 July 2023; Lancashire Archives, C1511.27, C1054.55) AA