Author: Leonard, Eliza Lucy
Biography:
LEONARD, Eliza Lucy (c. 1786-1856: ancestry.com)
She was the daughter of Beaufoy (Bunn) and Charles Leonard, and was born at West Bromwich, Staffordshire. Her parents married at St. John’s, Smith Square, London, in 1771. Nothing is known of her education or early life beyond the publication of the two works for children in this bibliography. At Lichfield, Warwickshire, on 26 Jan. 1825 she married a widower with five children, Brueton Gibbins (1783-1855), a Quaker industrialist, in a Quaker ceremony. Gibbins was a partner with two of his brothers in a prosperous glassworks, first named the Aston Glass Works and later the Birmingham Plate Glass Company. By the time of the 1851 census he was managing director of the works at Kings Norton, Staffordshire, “employing 250 men and boys & 59 women.” Brueton Gibbins died at home at Smethwick, Staffordshire, on 16 Aug. 1855, leaving an estate of £25,000. Eliza Lucy died on 26 Nov. 1856 at Leamington Spa--although her death is registered at Birmingham in the civil and Quaker records. (ancestry.com 4 Jan. 2024; findmypast.com 4 Jan. 2024; Weekly Chronicle 18 Aug. 1855; Berkshire Chronicle 3 May 1856; Morning Post 2 Dec. 1856; Annual Monitor for 1858 [Quaker obit.])