Ann Hawkshaw

Ann Hawkshaw (14 October 1812 – 29 April 1885) was an English poet. She published four volumes of poetry between 1842 and 1871.

Ann Hawkshaw (née Jackson) was born on 14 October 1812, third child of the Reverend James Jackson, dissenting Protestant minister of the Green Hammerton Independent Chapel in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and his wife Mary (née Clarke). There were fourteen children in total, with only seven surviving into early adulthood. The Clarke family had worked the land in Green Hammerton for over three hundred years and Ann lived here until she was fourteen when she left to board at the Moravian School in Little Gomersal, about forty miles from the family home.

During the 1820s Ann met John Hawkshaw. They were married on 20 March 1835 in Whixley, moving to Salford shortly after. Whilst in Manchester the Hawkshaws mixed socially with the Unitarian community, including John Relly Beard, William and Elizabeth Gaskell and their close friends the Dukinfield Darbishires, and Catherine Winkworth. John's election to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society in 1839 brought the Hawkshaws into contact with many of Manchester's prominent thinkers including Richard Cobden and John Dalton.

Ann and John had six children: Mary Jane Jackson (1838), Ada (1840), John Clarke (1841), Henry Paul (1843), Editha (1845), and Oliver (1846). Ada died of hydrocephalus in 1845. Oliver died in 1856 having contracted typhoid fever whilst the family were holidaying in Pitlochry, Scotland. In 1850 John Hawkshaw set up as a consulting engineer in Great George Street, Westminster, and the family moved to London. From the early 1850s the Hawkshaws employed a governess, Mary Pugh, who was later employed by Charles Darwin at Down House.

On 24 June 1862 the eldest of Hawkshaws' children, Mary, married Godfrey Wedgwood, with her brother John Clarke marrying Godfrey's sister Cecily in 1865. Mary and Godfrey's first child, Cecil Wedgwood, was born on 28 March 1863 and fifteen days later Mary died from puerperal mania. Three of the Hawkshaws' six children had now died.

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