1792-isooj The Wedgwoods of Harracles 5 



never married, were important members of the group. 

 Emma Allen was the only plain woman among the sisters. 

 She spoke of her " half -formed face," and was quite aware 

 how much more Jessie and the piquant Fanny were sought 

 after. But she had no doubt of her welcome at Maer. She 

 wrote in 1803 to her sister Bessy (sixteen years older than 

 herself) : " I have a very earnest desire to have some other 

 communication than letter writing with my dear Bessy, 

 whom it is now four years since I have seen. I do long to 

 see you very much, and your children, and I am determined 

 to pay you a visit soon after Christmas or at least before I 

 return home to Oesselly. It has always been a subject of 

 regret to me to have spent so little of my life with you, 

 whom I so dearly love and admire more than anybody in 

 the world." 



Fanny Allen was more like a sister than an aunt to her 

 elder nieces. She was very pretty, vivacious, and clever, 

 with some sharpness in her marked character and great 

 charm a pet of Sir James Mackintosh, and a fierce Whig 

 and devoted admirer of Napoleon. I remember her in her 

 old age as a delightful companion, full of life, and still as 

 straight as a dart. 



Of the two brothers it is not necessary to say much, as 

 there are no letters to or from them in the Maer collection. 

 John Hensleigh Allen became the Squire of Cresselly after 

 his father's death. He had a sunny, happy disposition, and 

 was, like his own son Harry, a good raconteur. Lancelot 

 Baugh, called Baugh, was Master of Dulwich College, where 

 his sisters often visited him. 



The first record of the Wedgwoods is in 1299, as villeins of 

 Lord Audley in the Manor of Tunstall. Afterwards they 

 were yeomen farmers at Blackwood-in-Horton. Before 

 1500 they became the Squires of Harracles. 1 The ancestors 

 of the Wedgwoods of Etruria separated from the senior 

 branch 1 about 1600, and became absorbed in the business of 

 potting. Josiah Wedgwood ( 1 730 1 795) founded the town 

 of Etruria in Staffordshire, where he carried on his re- 

 nowned pottery works. His daughter, Susannah, married 

 Dr Robert Waring Darwin of Shrewsbury, and was the 

 mother of Charles Darwin. 



The Darwins came originally from Lincolnshire, William 



1 The Wedgwoods of Harracles possessed some portion of these 

 estates until the middle or end of the eighteenth century, when they 

 became extinct. 



