Volumes 5-8 of my series, Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, are heavily indebted to materials deposited by Marjorie Reeves in the Angus Library (what is now the Attwater Papers and the Saffery/Whitaker Collections) and in the Reeves Collection, Bodleian Library. Volume 5 contains more than 230 poems, published and unpublished, of Maria Grace Saffery, along with a small collection of poems by Anne Whitaker and Jane Saffery Whitaker (1805-84), Maria Saffery’s daughter and Anne Whitaker’s stepdaughter. Volume 6 is comprised of letters that passed between the two sisters, 1788-1846; a small collection of letters by Mary Egerton Scott to Maria, Anne, and their mother (1788-95); some forty letters addressed to Maria Saffery from Richard Ryland, his wife Harriet, his daughter Harriet and son Croft, 1805-14; as well as a large number of letters that passed between Maria and Anne and various members of their immediate family and close friends, including a letter to Anne Whitaker by the poet Ann Taylor of Ongar in 1812. Most of the manuscript poetry of Saffery and her relations as well as a significant portion of their correspondence have been calendared on this site (click here). The remaining portions can be found in the collections at the Angus Library. 

Little is known of the early years of the Andrews sisters. At some point during the mid-1780s, James Andrews moved his family from Newbury to Isleworth, where they lived in the old Manor House ‘opposite the Mill’, the location to which many of the early letters in Volume 6 of Nonconformist Women Writers are addressed. Mary Andrews died sometime in 1791, and it does not appear that James Andrews ever remarried. Like Frances Ryland, Mary Scott, Mary Egerton Scott, Elizabeth Coltman, Maria Saffery, Anne Whitaker, and possibly Sophia Williams, Mary Andrews put to work whatever education she had acquired and opened a boarding school for girls in the Manor House sometime in the 1780s. Not only did she bequeath a love of education to her two daughters, but also a love of literature. Both girls were composing poetry in their teens, with Maria Grace completing Cheyt Sing by the age of fifteen and The Noble Enthusiast before her twentieth year. Cheyt Sing was published in London (and sold in Salisbury) in 1790, and dedicated to the liberal Whig MP, Charles James Fox.

At some point in the mid-1780s, Mary Andrews hired a young, well-educated assistant named Mary Egerton. Egerton was the sister of Thomas Egerton, and John Egerton, with whom Thomas partnered from 1784-95. Thomas Egerton also operated the Military Library from 1796 to 1802, for their father had been a military man. Egerton’s greatest claim to fame as a book publisher is the fact that he was the first London publisher of the novels of Jane Austen. During her time at Isleworth, Egerton became a close confidant to Maria and Anne Andrews, serving as both teacher and friend. By summer 1788 she had left Isleworth and was living in Grovesnor Square, London, but she remained a surrogate ‘sister’ to the two Andrews sisters for many years thereafter. By 1789, Mary Egerton had become an outspoken evangelical, and her commitment is evident in her letters to Mrs. Andrews in 1789 and 1790. In 1790 Egerton moved into the home of the Evangelical minister and biblical commentator, Thomas Scott, in Chapel Street, near Grovesnor Square, most likiely as a  governess/teacher to her four young children. In 1791 she became his second wife. Both Maria and Anne Andrews would correspond with Mary Egerton Scott for many years.

Maria and Anne may have met John and Elizabeth Saffery prior to Maria’s arrival in Salisbury in late December 1791, but it is clear from the surviving correspondence that by the spring of 1792, the two sisters had become friends and correspondents of the Salisbury couple.  John (1763-1825) and Elizabeth (1762-1798) Saffery left Portsmouth for Salisbury in early 1790. John Saffery had just been called as the new minister to the Baptist congregation in Brown Street, replacing the recently deceased Henry Philips, the close friend of Jane Attwater. The Safferys, like the Steeles, Attwaters, and Whitakers, espoused an evangelical Calvinism made famour by Andrew Fuller in his influential work, The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation (1785). Within a few months of her arrival in Salisbury, Maria Andrews had become a regular attendant at Brown Street; in the next six years, she and her sister would become very close to the Safferys, at times even living in their home. 

In late December 1797, Philip Whitaker, Jane Attwater’s nephew, enquired with the Safferys about the possibility of courting Anne Andrews. She had rejected a suitor earlier that year, but in this case, despite having had very little prior contact, she was more amenable. Most likely they first met at church at Brown Street, where Whitaker would have attended on various occasions, especially at meetings of the Western Association of Particular Baptist Churches, to which on several occasions he was a delegate from the Bratton church.  In order to begin a formal courtship, he had to seek approval from one of the Safferys, now acting in loco parentis for Anne and Maria. He and John Saffery met in the Safferys' parlour to discuss his marriage proposal for Anne. Approval was granted and they were married on 19 June. Not long after their marriage, Elizabeth Saffery died. After only one month, John Saffery began making enquiries about Maria Grace Andrews.  Within three months he made his intentions known to Philip Whitaker that he wished to make Maria his second wife. They were married on 20 August 1799. 

      After 1800, the lives of Maria Grace Saffery and her sister Anne Whitaker would revolve primarily around their large families in Salisbury and Bratton, their churches, their schools, their continued close friendship as expressed through their correspondence, and, in the case of Maria Saffery, the continuation of the religious poetry she had commenced in the mid-1790s, with the addition of numerous poems written to her children, other family members, and various friends, extending a poetic tradition begun by Anne and Mary Steele in the middle of the previous century into the 1840s.  The complete poetry of Maria Grace Saffery can be found in vol. 5 of Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840. The complete correspondence of Maria Grace Saffery and Anne Whitaker can be found in vol. 6 of Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840. Maria Grace Saffery's early novel, The Noble Enthusiast (1792), has been republished in vol. 7 of Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840. For selections from Maria Saffery's poetry, click here; for selections from her hymns, click here; for selections from the correspondence between the two sisters, click here. 

Timothy Whelan