Hannah Harrison (Read), my great-great-great-grandmother.
Hannah Read was born in 1792 in Mells, Somerset, to Hester and Thomas. She married George Harrison on May 7, 1821, in Surrey. She passed away in London in March 1878, at 86.
In the late 1700s, Mells in Somerset was a small rural village like many others in the English West Country. Most people worked in farming, wool and cloth production, or mining. Now, there is a large limestone quarry just south of the village.
She married George Harrison in 1821 at St Andrew’s Church, probably in Cobham, which is about 11 kilometres from Epsom. They lived in Epsom and had two children: Jane, born in 1826, and Mary Ann, born in 1829. I have not found much about their years in Epsom, except that George is listed as a groom on his daughters’ baptism records.
The 1841 census shows that Hannah had moved from Epsom to the St Pancras area of London, living at 20 Calthorpe Place. She lived there with her daughter, Mary-Ann, and worked in a laundry. There is no record of her older daughter, Jane, or her husband, George, at this address.
By 1851, she was living at 280 High Holborn in London with her two daughters, her daughter-in-law Ann, her grandson Henry, and her niece Hester Cook from Mells in Somerset. The original house no longer exists. It is possible that 280 High Holborn was also used by the carver, gilder, and looking-glass maker Gatini Copini. In the mid-1800s, High Holborn was a bustling, crowded, and important street in London, revealing both the wealth and the struggles of Victorian life. The area was a centre for business, travel, and social life, and showed the city’s sharp contrasts between rich and poor, and old and new.
At age 69, Hannah lived at 9 New North Street with her daughter Mary Ann, and both worked as dressmakers. Ten years later, Hannah was still in the Holborn area and had moved to 2 Portsmouth Street with her daughter, Jane, who worked in a laundry.
‘The Old Curiosity Shop’ sits at 14 Portsmouth Street and claims to be one of the oldest shops in London, and also to be the shop immortalised by Charles Dickens. But it is a fake.
Hannah Harrison died at New North Street at the age of 86 and was buried on 22 March 1878 in Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park.
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