Ellen [‘Nelly’] Weeton

Ellen [‘Nelly’] Weeton (1776-1849), was a letter writer and governess from Lancaster. Her writings consisted mainly of nine letter-books into which from 1804 she meticulously copied the long letters which she sent to friends and relatives. One of these letter-books contains a short memoir, ‘The retrospect’, which gives information about her early life. A separate manuscript volume includes ‘Occasional reflexions’, written in 1818, and ‘The history of the life of N. Stock’, composed in 1824. Only the second, third, and seventh letter-books (the seventh ending in 1825) are extant. In Wigan in the late 1820s she joined the Hope Independent Chapel, bequeathing her letter-books to William Marshall, the pastor, upon her death in 1849.  See Edward Hall’s Miss Weeton: a Journal of a Governess (2 vols, 1936), reprinted as Miss Weeton's Journal of a Governess (2 vols, 1969), with introduction by J. J. Bagley.