Author: Dorset, Catherine Ann
Biography:
DORSET, Catherine Ann formerly Turner (1752-1835: ancestry.co.uk)
The younger daughter of Nicholas Turner of Stoke, Surrey, and Bignor Park, Sussex, and Anna (Towers) Turner, she was born 27 November and baptised at Stoke, near Guildford, on 1 January 1753. Charlotte Smith (q.v.) was her older sister. Their mother’s early death meant that the sisters were cared for by their aunt, Lucy Towers. Catherine married Captain Michael Dorset (himself a poet, q.v.) in 1779 and had two children: Lucy Smith (b 1780) and Charles Ferguson (b 1782). Evidence from Charlotte Smith’s correspondence makes it likely that the boy died in infancy but no record has been found. Michael Dorset died in 1792, not 1805 as usually recorded; his will makes provision for his daughter but does not mention a son. Lucy married Charles Henry Fraser in 1803. Catherine had inherited Bignor Park through her father and she sold it in about 1805—according to Charlotte Smith, this was under persuasion from Charles Fraser. After both Lucy’s and Charles’s deaths (1811 and 1814), Catherine cared for her grandchildren, and she died at the home of one of them in Chichester. Her Peacock “at Home” was very popular but she also contributed anonymously to Charlotte’s collection of poems for children, Conversations Introducing Poetry (1804) and wrote an important memoir of Charlotte which was published, with notes by Walter Scott, in Scott’s Miscellaneous Prose Works (vol. 4, 1829). (ODNB 26 Oct 2018; ancestry.co.uk 26 Oct 2018; findmypast.co.uk 17 Sept. 2020; Judith Phillips Stanton, ed. The Collected Letters of Charlotte Smith [2003]; Brighton Gazette, 29 Oct. 1835; contributions from AA)
Other Names:
- Mrs. Dorset