Author: Instone, Sarah
Biography:
INSTONE, Sarah, later TOWNSHEND (1774-1815: findmypast.co.uk)
She was baptised on 6 March 1774 at Morville, Shropshire, the daughter of William Instone, a blacksmith, and his wife Esther Embry. Various members of both families subscribed to Poems on Several Occasions (1797). Hester (Thrale) Piozzi (q.v.) and her three daughters also subscribed but it is not known why. Several poems in her volume commemorated the early deaths of two sisters, Jane and Eliza. Her father died in 1785, leaving a widow and seven children. Sarah Instone married William Townshend, a butcher, on 23 April 1797, at Bridgnorth. They went on to have fourteen children. She died “after the confinement of her 14th child” and was buried at St. Leonard’s Bridgnorth on 31 Dec. 1815. Her brother Samuel was a well-known schoolmaster in Bridgnorth and she lived with him in Whitburn Street prior to her marriage. (ancestry.co.uk 21 Jul. 2020; findmypast.com 21 Jul. 2020; GM Jan. 1816, 92) AA