Author: Mott, Frances
Biography:
MOTT, Frances, formerly RACKSTRAW (1781-1826: ancestry.co.uk)
Familiarly known as Fanny, she was baptised on 10 Aug. 1781 at All Saints, Oxford, the eldest of five children of Thomas Rackstraw (1758-1830) and his wife Ann Cox (1759-1830), who had married the previous year in Dorchester. Her father was an innkeeper and her mother ran a circulating library. (They later moved to Leamington Priors, Warwickshire, where he became a shopkeeper.) In Oxford, Fanny probably assisted her mother and also opened a boarding and day school in the Corn Market (Cornmarket). She married musician and later pianoforte maker from Birmingham, Isaac Henry Robert Mott (1790-1855) on 21 July 1813 at St. Aldgate’s, Oxford. They at least five children, three of whom survived infancy. After their marriage, they lived in Brighton but by 1817 had moved to London. (George IV had bought one of his pianos and his business flourished.) They moved to 95 and then 92 Pall Mall. She died there on 19 June 1826 and was buried at Trinity Chapel (Baptist) in the Dissenters’ Burying Ground, with her age incorrectly given as 43. Her husband remarried and went on to have at least another eight children. (ancestry.co.uk 7 Feb. 2021; Baldwin Hamey, "Isaac Henry Robert Mott," londonstreetviews.wordpress.com 7 Feb. 2021; OFHS; Oxford Journal 27 Apr. 1811; Morning Post 5 May 1825; Oxford University and City Herald 24 July 1813, 24 June 1826) AA
Other Names:
- Mrs. I. H. R. Mott