Author: Fairbrother, Mary Ann
Biography:
FAIRBROTHER, Mary Ann, formerly FARRER (1775-1813?: ancestry.co.uk)
She was baptised on 15 Feb. 1775 at Wigton, Norfolk, the daughter of Hammond Farrer and his wife Philadelphia Colvin, who had married the previous year in Norwich. She married William Fairbrother, who was probably a mariner, on 27 Sept. 1791 at Little Walsingham, Norfolk. They had at least four children: William (1792), Richard (1794), Hammond (1796) and Mary Ann (1797). (Her poem, “Having a Child Frozen to Death by Shipwreck,” may record the death of one of her children but it is by no means certain.) At some point she probably moved to London where her husband was possibly the William Fairbrother from the central London parish of St. George’s, Hanover Square, who was buried 4 June 1807, aged 42, at St. George’s in the East, Wapping, a parish with long-standing sea connections. His death led her to publish by subscription Poems (1808), “to enable her to support four fatherless and entirely unprotected children.” The volume was well supported with the majority of subscribers from London, including a Mr. Farrer of Knightsbridge who took four copies and was probably a relative. Outside London, most subscribers were from Norfolk, with several from the birth parishes of her children, Redenhall and Harleston. Members of her grandmother’s family, the Dusgates, subscribed for multiple copies. It is, however, unlikely that the funds raised gave anything more than temporary relief. She may well have been the Mary Ann Fairbrother, from St. Martin’s workhouse, who was buried on 30 Jan. 1813, aged 38, at St. Giles, Holborn, although there is no corroborative evidence for this. (ancestry.co.uk 21 Jul. 2021; Poems [1808]) AA