Author: Harris, John
Biography:
HARRIS, John (1783-1858: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 12 Apr. 1783 at Long Compton, Warwickshire, the son of Thomas Harris, corn dealer and later a shoemaker, and Ann Hall, who had married at Banbury, Oxfordshire, on 9 Sept. 1778. His younger brother Thomas (1788-1859) was also a Quaker author. Nothing is known of his education. At an unknown date he moved to East London, where he married Ann Knight (1781-1842) on 31 Aug. 1809 at Ratcliff, Wapping, and raised a family there. He was listed as a widower and retired coal-merchant in the 1851 census, living with his son John at Market Place, Kingston, Surrey. He died there on 19 Mar. 1858, aged 74. Tit for Tat; Original Poems for Juvenile Minds (1830), first published by Darton and Harvey, was reprinted with additions “for more mature minds” in 1853. He also published a number of short works on Quaker matters. The N&Q article of 1888 incorrectly assigns Rough Sketches at Bath (1819)--by Nathaniel Thomas Haynes Bayly--to him, on the basis of the signature “Q.” (ancestry.co.uk 8 Nov. 2024; findmypast.co.uk 8 Nov. 2024; Annual Monitor for 1843, 35-6, and for 1859, 109; Friends’ Books 1: 915-6; N&Q 7 Jan. 1888; GRO death cert.; Darton, 127; Friends’ Library (London) copy of Tit for Tat 1830, 550/5/38625, and Quaker Biography files) AA