Author: Pointon, Priscilla
Biography:
POINTON, Priscilla, later PICKERING (c. 1740-1801: findmypast.com)
No birth record has been found and the names of her parents are not known, but she was a native of Lichfield, Staffordshire, blind from the age of twelve. Her opportunities for education were subsequently restricted both by her disability and by the demands of an “aged parent” at home. She composed poems with the aid of amanuenses, however, and was encouraged by friends to seek a wider public. In 1768 she advertised for subscribers for a volume of poetry which appeared in 1770 with an astonishing fifty pages of names. The list includes no Pointons but a few Poyntons; John Jones, a schoolmaster in Kidderminster who wrote the preface for the volume and also contributed an ode in her honour; and one “Mr. Pickering, Jun.,” of Chester, Cheshire, who might be the man she married ten years later. He was James Pickering, a saddler. They were married at Chester on 9 Aug. 1780 and do not appear to have had any children. After his death, at an unknown date, two of her supporters, John Moffitt and Joseph Weston (qq.v.), organized a second subscription collection in 1794. She died in Birmingham, Warwickshire, and was buried there at St. Philip’s on 1 June 1801. (findmypast.com 27 Oct. 2023; ECWP 272-3; [John Jones,] Preface to Priscilla Pointon, Poems on Several Occasions [1770])
Other Names:
- Miss Priscilla Pointon
- Mrs. Pickering