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Author: WESTBURY, Eliza

Biography:

WESTBURY, Eliza (1808-28: Phillips)

She was baptised on 22 May 1808 at St. John the Baptist, Piddington, the daughter of William Westbury, a shoemaker, and his wife Elizabeth York, who had married there on 15 Nov. 1807, signing with a mark. Her father converted and joined the Particular Baptists at nearby Hackleton in 1809 and shortly afterwards helped set up the Baptist Sabbath School which Eliza would later attend. He died aged 22 and was buried at Hackleton on 17 Sept. 1811. Her mother was left with two young children but within a month Eliza’s younger brother, George, also died. Thereafter Eliza was probably brought up by her mother and two unmarried maternal aunts. She seems to have worked as a lacemaker for most of her short life. She experienced a Baptist conversion in May 1826 and composed around 150 hymns recording her experience. In early 1828, the Westbury family was probably struck by a form of cholera-consumption-infection which would later afflict the family of Sophie Dixon (q.v.), the Brontes, and many others. Her mother Elizabeth and aunt Charlotte (York) died in January. She died three months later on 11 Apr. 1828 and was buried on 14 April. A fortnight later, her aunt Harriet York was buried on 28 April, with the minister at Hackleton, the Rev. William Knowles, officiating at all four burials. Her Hymns by a Northamptonshire Female (1828) was posthumously published and contained 71 hymns and two poems, "On the Death of the Author’s Mother" and "Verses containing An Account of the Writer’s Experience." It was probably edited by the Rev. William Knowles, who also probably wrote "A Short Account of Her Life," prefixed to Hymns. (ancestry.co.uk 21 Nov. 2020; Sybil Phillips, Glorious Hope . . . 1800-1850 [2004] 203-65; "A Northamptonshire Lacemaker," The Hymn Society Bulletin 17 [2005] 309-18, Nancy Cho, "'The Ministry of Song': Unmarried British Women's Hymn-writing," PhD thesis Durham 2007; Hymns [1828]; Goodridge; Northampton Record Office; Johnson Cata, item 957) AA

 

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