Author: Dark, Mariann
Biography:
DARK, Mariann, formerly STILES, later SAVORY (1793-1864: ancestry.co.uk)
She was born at Calne, Wiltshire, 12 September 1793, the youngest of at least seven children of Henry Stiles, a gentleman farmer, and his wife Winifred Howell. Her father owned Whitley Farm, Bremhill. The poet William Lisle Bowles (q.v.) was Vicar of their church and subscribed to her poems. She married another farmer, Stephen Dark of Maiden Bradley, on 24 Nov. 1814. He died in February 1815 and left her just under £2000. Her father died in January 1817 and left her £500. She prefixed a life of her father to her Sonnets and Other Poems (1818) which also included a number of poems to various family members and to Bowles. She married James Scott Savory (1779-1857) on 25 Aug. 1821. He had gone to India in 1797 and had been appointed judge and magistrate of Dharapooran, Coimatore in 1806. He had at least four children with a native woman whose name remains unknown. (He did not bring them to England when he left in 1817 but had them baptised, possibly to ensure they had access to Missionary English education.) He married in Southwark in 1817 but his wife, Theodosia Yerworth, died due to childbirth complications. He had a further six children with Mariann, four of whom died in infancy. Two sons survived, went to Oriel, Oxford, and entered the established church. In the 1841 and 1851 Censuses, Mariann and her husband were recorded as living in Bath. James Scott Savory died there in 1857, aged 78. She died of a heart attack at 3 Arlington Villas, Clifton, Bristol, 19 October 1864, aged 72. (ancestry.co.uk; findmypast.com; British India Office, Ecclesiastical Returns [Baptisms–Vepery, Black Town, Madras]; Bath Chronicle 4 June 1857 and 27 October 1864) AA