Annajane Blatch, Bratton, to Miss Cross, attached to a letter by Jane Attwater Blatch, Bratton, to Maria Saffery, Salisbury, c. 1804.

  My dear Miss Cross will I hope excuse the Liberty I take in addressing to her a few lines in my simple style you know my dear I promised to write you a few lines wch I trust beg you to answer at the first opportunity –

  The purpose of this letter is to Inform you my mama purposes for me to go to school very soon to Mrs Safferys at Salisbury. Will you my dear forgive me if I express ye wish of my heart that you would ask your mama to let you accompany me  I love your Society so much at Bratton that I think I should feel highly gratified to have it a year at School together.  What say you my dear Friend will you be willing to accompany me? a line very soon will greatly oblige your ever affecte Friend

                                                                                 A B

My mama & papa unite in love to you  please to present their compts tho unknown to yr papa & mama

Dear Madm

  Will you permit my dear Anna into your Family & affection  She has been for a considerable time very desirous of going to school & since she was at your house is more determined on it yn ever.  She was always partial very partial to Mrs Saffery & now she cannot take a denial but must become your pupil  what think you my valued Friend are you willing to undertake ye charge of one of my greatest Earthly treasures?

    Separate from the maternal fondness of a mother I trust her capacity & will is so suited for Instruction that she will not discredit her Instructor & the grateful affection of her heart will strive to merit their love. I have reason to bless God for many pleasing traits of character & I earnestly pray that those virtues may be crownd with that grace wch will make her useful in life happy in Death & blest in Eternity.  Nothing would make me willing to sacrifice that fond delight I feel in her society but ye hope & desire of her further improvement, happy for me & her she is now arrived at those years wn reason dawns with sufficient light to show her the necessity & utility of learning & her will is so much bent on Improvement that she is peculiarly unhappy without exhausting every means likely to produce this valuable End.

Text: Timothy Whelan, ed. Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 8, pp. 169-72 (fully annotated version); Reeves Collection, Box 19/2/i, Bodleian Library, Oxford.  Both these letters have been copied onto a single sheet of paper by Jane Attwater Blatch. Despite the above letter, there is no other surviving evidence that Anna Jane actually attended at Salisbury. Instead, the evidence suggests that Anna Jane attended a Miss Dyer’s school for girls in Frome.