Author: Fletcher, Eliza
Biography:
FLETCHER, Eliza, formerly DAWSON (1770-1858: ODNB)
The primary source for information about her life is the engaging narrative that she began at the urging of her surviving children. Edited by her daughter Mary (Fletcher), Lady Richardson, it was published as the Autobiography of Mrs. Fletcher of Edinburgh in Carlisle in 1875. She was born in Oxton, a village near Tadcaster in Yorkshire, to Miles Dawson and his wife, formerly Miss Hill, who had married in 1768. Her mother died shortly after her birth and her father never remarried, but she was raised by her father, grandmother, and aunts with the help of a school friend of her mother's, Mrs. Brudenell, who later left her a small estate. She attended the same boarding school in York that her mother had been to. On 16 July 1791, against her father's wishes, she married Archibald Fletcher (1746-1828), a lawyer and "distinguished Scottish patriot" in her phrase, and settled with him in Edinburgh. The marriage proved a happy one and her father relented when their first child was born. They had two sons and four daughters altogether. Both husband and wife held progressive political and social views. Eliza Fletcher took an active part in forming a Female Benefit Society to assist poor women in illness or distress; one of their daughters, Grace, died at 21 probably from illness contracted while tending an orphan child. She also had a wide circle of literary friends in Edinburgh, London, and the Lake District. After the death of her husband in Dec. 1828, she travelled to France and (with help from Wordsworth, q.v.) bought a summer home in the Lakes. The Autobiographyincludes her own memoirs of Archibald and Grace Fletcher. She died at Edinburgh on 5 Feb. 1858. (Eliza Fletcher, Autobiography [1875]; ODNB [both Eliza and Archibald Fletcher] 20 Sept. 2021; Orlando; ancestry.com 20 Sept. 2021; findmypast.com 20 Sept. 2021)