Harriet Palmer
Harriet Palmer was a woman born in St George’s, Bermuda. Her father was Bermuda's Attorney General.[1] Harriet and her parents, returned to England in 1802. Her siblings, Esther and Robert John, and Fanny remained in Bermuda.
Sheila Johnson Kindred, who wrote a biography of her younger sister Fanny, suggested that 16 year old Harriet had joined her parents on their return to England because her health was "delicate", and because it was more likely for her to find a suitable husband there.[1]
Her father's political career in Bermuda seemed to have hit an impasse.[1] He had tried, and failed, to win a seat in the Bermuda legislature, and her grandfather had died, in 1801, leaving her father multiple properties in England and Ireland.
Her younger sister Fanny met Charles Austen, in Bermuda, when he was the commanding officer of a sloop, in the Royal Navy, and they married in 1807.[1] Fanny and Charles moved to England in 1811, when he was promoted to Captain. Fanny died in childbirth in 1814, and Harriet, in turn, married Austen in 1820.[2]
Her husband died of fever, in the far east, while on active duty, in 1865.[2]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Sheila Johnson Kindred (2017). "Jane Austen's Transatlantic Sister: The Life and Letters of Fanny Palmer Austen". McGill University Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1vjqqb3. Retrieved 2023-05-25. "'A VERY PLEASING LITTLE WOMAN, she is gentle and amiable in her manners, and appears to make [Charles] very happy' (Fig. 1). Such were the words of Cassandra Austen when she and her sister Jane first met Fanny Palmer, their brother Charles’s Bermuda-born wife."
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 "harriet". https://gw.geneanet.org/tinagaquer?lang=en&n=palmer&oc=0&p=harriet. Retrieved 2023-05-25.
