Martha
Martha ("Patty") Barkley (1802-1867) married Robert Grant Shaw (1794-1842)
Robert Grant Shaw was born in Enfield, the son of William Shaw and Elizabeth Morrice.
Martha and Robert were married at Sunbury-on-Thames on 13th May 1824. They lived in Hackney and Robert Grant Shaw was a business partner with members of his mother's family in a firm of merchants, Farquhar, Morice & Co., later Morice, Shaw & Co., whose offices were at St Helen’s Place, Bishopsgate.
Martha's life in the West Country after over four years travelling in Europe has been well described by one of her descendants.
http://www.boxpeopleandplaces.co.uk/martha-shaw-at-middlehill1850.html
This photo was taken in a Paris portrait studio in about 1853. Martha would have been about 51 years old. I'm grateful to Martha's three times great granddaughter for permission to use it on this website.
Martha was a diligent diarist. Fortunately some of her diaries have survived and been transcribed by her descendants. They provide insights into her life and she also comments on the affairs of her older sister, Jane, and her two brothers, John Charles and Charles Francis. Some of her diaries are available online here.
After the sudden death of her husband in 1842 Martha moved to Cuckfield, Sussex and her mother came to live with her for the last two years of her life. After her mother's death in 1845 Martha embarked on a tour of Europe. With her five daughters and one son in tow, together with a French governess, Mademoiselle Aurelie Hubert de Fonteny, she swooped through France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. Each morning her daughters executed drawings of Venetian palaces, or wrote essays on the history of landscape painting, while in the afternoon Mademoiselle instructed them in French and Italian.
Younghusband: the Last Great Imperial Adventurer (Penguin, 2011) by Patrick French.
French describes Martha as "a fervent Evangelical, viewing Continental travel as a means to self-improvement and ethical instruction". The purpose of her European tour was "essentially moral rather than aesthetic".
Martha and Robert had six children:
1. Emily Shaw (1826–1892) - further information here
2. Frances Martha Shaw (1828–1893) - further information here
3. Anna Shaw (1830–1905) - further information here
4. Clara Jane Shaw (1832–1891) - further information here
5. Laura Shaw (1834–1914) - further information here
6. Robert Barkley Shaw (1839–1879) - further information here