Author: Taylor, Hannah
Biography:
by
Ragaz, Sharon (SR)
TAYLOR, Hannah, formerly HARRIS (1774-1812: Memoir)
She was born on 21 Nov. but her birth year is uncertain. In her Memoir she states that she was twenty-one on 21 Nov. 1799 but her death record from 1812 gives her age as thirty-seven, suggesting a birth year of 1775. She was likely born in Yorkshire, the eldest of six children in a Quaker family. Her father, William Harris, was a mariner who died at sea when she was fifteen. She had married by 1799, the year with which her memoir begins. Her husband, Henry Taylor, was also born to a Quaker family; his father was Henry Taylor of North Shields who published Instructions for Young Mariners in 1792. Henry Taylor the son was in the navy and went to sea soon after their child, Anna, was born. Although the memoir does not give details, he seems later to have abandoned her; this and the death of their child were events from which she never recovered. She lived with her siblings both in Ireland and in Cumberland for the rest of her life. In Ireland she stayed with her sister Jane Jacob, a teacher at Clonmel which had a large and very active Quaker community. The memoir describes her illnesses and depression, the deaths of some of her siblings including a sister in Clonmel, and her attendance at Quaker meetings in England and Ireland. She died on 11 Feb. 1812 at the home of her sister, Eliza, in Thirsk, North Yorkshire, of a lung infection and was interred in the Quaker burial ground on 13 Feb. One of her sisters edited her diary and poems for publication. (ancestry.co.uk 2 Dec. 2021, 9 Oct. 2025; Friends’ Books; Memoir) SR