Author: Weller, Mary-Ann R.
Biography:
WELLER, Mary Ann Robertson, later WILLIAMS (fl 1802-20)
Public records are surprisingly scarce for this author but a few facts can be depended on. When she published her Pastoral and Descriptive Poems in Birmingham 1802 she must have been living in the Midlands. On 6 Sept. 1812 she married Henry Williams at St. Peter’s, Wolverhampton, Staffordshire. They lived on in Wolverhampton and had at least four children who were baptised between 1813 and 1820: Henry, John, Catherine Elizabeth, and Mary Anne. Henry Williams is probably the man of that name buried at St. Peter’s on 28 Feb. 1838; his occupation, if any, is not known. She may be either the Mary Ann Williams buried at Wolverhampton on 28 June 1827 or the one buried there on 7 Jan. 1829. Her poetry is predictably slight; the one odd thing about it is that many of the poems, especially the ones addressed to beautiful living or dead young ladies, adopt a masculine persona. The one solid internal clue is the dedication to “Mrs. Pott, Lady of Frederick Pott Esq., London”—i.e. Catherine Elizabeth (Weller) Pott (1773?-1847), whose husband John Frederick Pott (1766-1815) was an advocate at Doctor’s Commons in London and produced in 1810 a treatise on naval prize money, Observations on Matter of Prize. At the time of their marriage both bride and groom were Londoners resident in the parish of St. Andrew, Holborn. It would be gratifying to discover that the two Wellers were sisters but that does not appear to have been the case. They might have been cousins, in which case Mary Ann might have been the Mary Ann Weller born on 5 Nov. 1775 and baptised 3 Dec. at St. Leonard’s Shoreditch, London, daughter of Thomas and Ann Weller—but no confirmation has been found. (ancestry.com 4 May 2024; findmypast.com 4 May 2024; Star [London] 8 Jan. 1810)