Elizabeth Horsey Saffery

Elizabeth Horsey Saffery (1762-98) was the daughter of the Revd Joseph Horsey (1737-1802), Particular Baptist minister at Portsea, 1773-1802. She married John Saffery (1763-1825), also of Portsea, and in 1790 they came to Salisbury where he commenced his pastoral duties at the Baptist meeting in Brown Street, the same church Jane Attwater (1753-1843) attended. In 1792, Maria Grace Andrews (1772-1858) and her sister, Anne (1774-1865) began attending during visits to the grandparents in Salisbury. Though raised as Anglicans, they were influenced strongly by their friendship with Elizabeth Saffery to join the congregation in Brown Street. Elizabeth Saffery died after a prolonged illness in May 1798, and about a year later Maria Grace Andrews became the second wife of John Saffery. She would enjoy a long career as a significant Baptist woman poet. Several letters addressed to Elizabeth Saffery by Anne and Maria Andrews can be found in Whelan, Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, vol. 6 (vols 5 and 6 contain the poetry of Maria Grace Saffery and her extensive correspondence with her sister, Anne, and other members of her family).  Like her friend Jane Attwater Blatch, Elizabeth Saffery maintained a diary, a portion of which has survived among the collections of the Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford. Her diary chronicles her spiritual state and family concerns during her last illness, beginning in March 1797 and ending in mid-April 1798, just one month before her death. For a complete account of the life of Elizabeth Saffery, as well as the complete text, with notes, of the surviving portion of her diary, see Timothy Whelan, ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011),  8.399-436.