Elizabeth Anna Attersoll

Attersoll, Elizabeth Anna, 1796—1873

by Benjamin Colbert

Elizabeth Anna Attersoll was the third daughter of Joseph Attersoll (d. 1812), malthouse proprietor and corn merchant, of Dorset Cottage, Crab Tree, Fulham and later 66 Portland Place, and his second wife (m. 1783), Martha Attersoll, née Webb (d. 1821), of All Hallows, London. The success of her father’s business ventures ensured a comfortable upbringing although when he died in 1812 debts outnumbered assets and a period of retrenchment must have followed.

Anna Attersoll (as she was generally known) and her two younger sisters Julia (b. 1797) and Emelie (1800-1864) remained unmarried, and are likely to have joined the households of their older married siblings, especially after their mother’s death in 1821 and that of their eldest brother, John Attersoll (1784-1822), the following year. It is thought that Anna Attersoll joined Martha Louisa Attersoll Blake (1790-1853) at her husband’s Renvyle House estate in Galway, Ireland, and she is likely to be the correspondent who signs herself under the initial ‘A’ in the Blake family’s collaborative Letters from the Irish Highlands (1825).

Little is known of her life thereafter. At some point, she and her younger sister, Emelie, both spinsters, relocated to Tunbridge Wells, leasing out their father's property at Crab Tree, Fulham, as late as 1852. Anna Attersoll died at Southborough, near Tunbridge Wells, on 7 December 1873.

Sources:

Blake Family of Renvyle House, Letters from the Irish Highlands [1825]. Ed. Kevin Whelan. Clifden, Galway: Gibbons Publications, 1995. Print.

‘Renewal of a Lease’. 1852. Property Records. Middlesex Deeds. ACC/0081/003. London Metropolitan Archives.

The Standard, no. 15408 (Tues., 16 Dec. 1873): 7. Gale Databases: British Library Newspapers, Part II: 1800-1900. Web. 13 Oct. 2017.

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