Kate F Ackland to Mary Anne Ackworth

I am just about to finish the A’s who signed the petition- It will take a day or so to sort out the Avery women ,who signed in Tenterden and Battle. I have just found a neat survey of Tenterden graveyards which is very helpful where, for instance, the signature is Mrs T Avery Snr. Tenterden.

The first signature of the petition is , out of order, Sarah Avery of Battle, and that made me realise that I need to list all the women, especially those I have not managed to trace…so here I go. Perhaps you can add information

After Sarah Avery
Kate Fanny Ackland signed the petition at 14, Buckingham Street, Strand London WC. She was born in February1844 in Birmingham and in the 1861 census her father James is a Parliamentary election agent. James Acland (1799–1876), according to the DNB had begun compiling electoral statistics, published as The Imperial Poll Book of All Elections from 1832 to 1864 (1865; 2nd ed, 1869). Acland was a radical, who had been a clerk, an actor, sub-editor of the journal the British Traveller, and editor of The Portfolio, or, Memoirs and Correspondence of an Editor (1831–3), after which he worked in Paris and then, from 1838 to 1846, as a lecturer for the Anti-Corn Law League. His experience as an election agent from 1846 onwards led naturally to his book.[1]
The family lived at Birkbeck House, Holloway Road at that time before moving to Buckingham Street. In 1871 the family were there but Kate had left by then. Early in 1867 Kate married Frederick Berridge, an attendant at the British Museum Library. They later lived at 2, Camden Terrace, Peckham, and had a daughter, Harriet E F Berridge
Mrs Annie Elizabeth Ackworth was born in 1841.(Anne Elizabeth Shaw Andrews) Her husband Edward Acworth MD was 31 years her senior., and she married him in 1864 in Ashford, Kent. He died in 1874, the year after the Amberley’s visited them at Elfinswood for a spiritualist session which they describe in the Amberley Papers (pp 533-536) Annie did not remarry, and died in Cuckfield in the middle of 1903. Kelly's Post Office Directory of Essex, Herts, Middlesex, Kent, Surrey and Sussex, 1867 records Edward Ackworth MD resident at Elfinsward. In the same volume he is also recorded as resident in Regency Square, Brighton The Amberley’s mention that she was a relative of Mrs Green- who was probably Betsy Matilda Pelham Green. Betsy Matilda was a witness at Annie’s wedding as Miss Acworth and was married to George C Green . Betsy Matilda and Mrs Catherine Ackworth Green- both signed the petition in Camberwell- This link is the first of many complex family networks which the census helps to reveal. The invitation to sign issued initially from the members of the Kensington Society (See my Groups article in the on-line DNB)

Mary Ackworth, Mary Ann Ackworth, Scarborough Rawdon Villas
Mary Brindley married James Ackworth, a Baptist college teacher in about 1830. She was his second wife, and they were married in Chatham, Kent. Their daughter Mary Ann was born in Leeds in 1833 and died in Stockton in 1911. She never married. In 1861 they were living in Westfield House, Rawdon, Yorkshire and James Ackworth LLD is described as a farmer of 3 1/2 acres employing one man and President and Theological Tutor of Rawdon College for the training of Baptist Ministers
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That’s enough for one day! I will continue to fill in gaps in my next.

[1] DNB