Author: Saffery, Maria Grace
Biography:
SAFFERY, Maria Grace formerly ANDREWS (1772-1858: ancestry.co.uk)
The daughter of James and Mary Andrews, she was born at Greenham, near Newbury, Berkshire (the ODNB records speculation about her parentage and place of birth but Newbury is confirmed by the 1851 Census.) The family moved to Isleworth (London) from where Maria went to Salisbury, living with her grandparents and attending the Brown Street Baptist church. In 1799 she married John Saffery (1763-1825), the Baptist minister. They were Reformed or “Particular” Baptists. She shared her husband’s religious and social commitments, including to the Baptist Missionary Society, and was involved in the anti-slavery movement. She taught at her own boarding school on Castle Street, Salisbury. After her husband’s death, she moved to Bratton, Wiltshire, to live with her daughter Jane who had married her cousin, Joshua Whitaker, a farmer. (Joshua was the son of Anne Andrews Whitaker, Maria’s sister). She died at Bratton. Maria’s two early works—Chet Singh (dedicated to Charles James Fox) and a novel, The Noble Enthusiast (1792)—were written when she was in her teens. On her death she left an unpublished manuscript, “Lyra Domestica,” which was probably written in the 1830s. She also left extensive papers (including her unpublished manuscript) which are in the Angus Library, Regent’s Park College, Oxford, and in the Bodleian Library. (ODNB 21 Sept. 2020; ancestry.co.uk 21 Sept. 2020; Alison Twells, “‘We ought to obey God rather than man’: Women, Anti-Slavery, and Non-Conformist Religious Cultures,” in Elizabeth J. Clapp and Julie Roy Jeffrey, eds. Women, Dissent, and Anti-Slavery in Britain and America, 1790-1865 [2011])
Other Names:
- Maria Grace Andrews
- Mrs. John Saffery