Author: Newman, Sarah
Biography:
NEWMAN, Sarah (1753-1832: findmypast.co.uk)
She was baptised on 4 Apr. 1753 at Odiham, Hants, the eldest daughter of Samuel Newman. Another daughter, Letitia (1754-92), married in 1774 and moved to Dogmersfield. Orphaned early, Sarah received a few lessons from a schoolmaster and later went to Alton where she worked in the boarding-school and as a domestic servant in various families. Elijah Waring (1787-1857) the Anglo-Welsh writer, encountered her poems in Alton, edited them, and raised a subscription of over 500 names for her. By the time of publication in 1811 she had moved to Long Sutton, near Odiham, where she survived on meagre savings, needlework, and seasonal employment in the hayfields for a local farmer. Waring noted that her “constitution is far from robust, and she has suffered much from distressing nervous affections, which at the age of nearly sixty have incapacitated her from laborious exertion.” She died at Long Sutton and was buried there, aged 80, on 28 Oct. 1832. (findmypast.co.uk 19 Dec. 2020; Poems [1811]; Friends' Books, 857; Christian Observer Oct. 1811, 644-9) AA