Orphaned twelve-year-old Anna, and her difficult brother Henry, were, in 1856, taken in by her uncle and aunt to their elegant Georgian house in Beech Grove Terrace, now within the curtailment of the University of Leeds.  Anna was sent away to school from where she wrote the first of many letters to ‘My very dear Aunt’. 

She was married, or was it married off, at nineteen to a man ten years older than she was.  He was a good and principled man, a devout Baptist and the managing director of Joseph Town and Sons, a family papermaking and merchandising company based in Leeds.  He provided for Anna well but left her a widow at forty-seven with eight surviving children. 

Anna lived in Leeds for twenty-seven more years as her children grew up, found employment or didn’t, married or didn’t, but between them provided her with eleven grandchildren.