Author: Falconar, Maria
Biography:
FALCONAR, Maria, later WILD, later WALKER (1770-1835: ancestry.co.uk)
She was probably the Maria Falconer (sic), daughter of James Falconar, a Scottish merchant, and his wife Elizabeth Milner, born on 2 Sept. 1770 and baptised on 30 Sept. at St. George the Martyr, Southwark. She first began to publish with her younger sister Harriet Falconar (q.v.) in the European Magazine 1786-7. They went on to publish three volumes together: Poems (1788), Poems on Slavery (1788), and Poetic Laurels (1791), the last of which included a cameo portrait of them by Richard Cosway. She married first John Wild, widower, at St. Michael, Wood Street, London on 13 Feb. 1795 and had one son. Her husband died in Jan. 1800. As Maria Wild she then married William Walker, an attorney and widower, of Thirsk, Yorkshire, on 15 Apr. 1800 at St. Mary Abbot’s, Kensington, where she was then resident. They had at least six children (1801-12). He died in Jan. 1819 and left her an estate of around £3000. She remained in Thirsk for some years bringing up her large family but eventually moved to London. After marriage she published no further volumes although a poem, "The Emigrant," appeared in The Times on 7 Jan. 1799. Her eldest step-daughter, Margaret Wild (with whom she was living in Chiswick and who was close to her sister Harriet’s son William Sidney Walker, q.v.), died aged 47 on 4 Dec. 1835 in Turnham Green, Hammersmith. Maria Falconar also died there, on 23 Feb. 1835, aged 66. Both were buried at St. John’s, Hampstead. Their deaths were reported in the Yorkshire Gazette which is the primary source for the identification of her father as “the late James Falconar, of Nairne, N. B. [North Britain].” (ancestry.co.uk 17 Feb. 2021; ECWP 451-2, 536; J. Moultie, The Poetical Remains of William Sidney Walker, [1852] and CUL Ms. Add 5942; Yorkshire Gazette 7 Feb. 1835 [Margaret] and 21 Feb. 1835 [Maria]; Law Times 11 Dec. 1880, 107) AA