Miss Agnes Merivale
(1847-1872)
19 March 1863

Volume 10, page 120, sitting number 12,847.

[The sitter is identified as ‘Miss A. Merivale’ in the Silvy daybooks.]

Born on 21 December 1847 and baptised on 9 February 1848 at Christ Church in Albany Street, London, Agnes Merivale was the daughter of the civil servant and historian Herman Merivale and his wife Caroline Penelope née Robinson.

At the time of her birth, the family were living at 26 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington. They were still at the same address when the census was taken in 1861. By then, Herman Merivale had become the Under-Secretary of State for India.

On 10 August 1870 in the parish church of Kington St Michael, a village near Chippenham in Wiltshire, Agnes Merivale married John Townsend Trench, son of William Steuart Trench of Cardtown, Queen’s County [now County Laois], Ireland (Cork Examiner, 16 August 1870).

Mrs Agnes Trench died, aged only 24, on 8 January 1872 at 13 Cornwall Gardens, South Kensington. The cause of death was ‘Puerperal Inflammation (blood poisoning) / 12 days.’ The informant was her father, who was ‘present at the death.’ She was buried on 11 January 1872 in Brompton Cemetery, London.

Her widower married secondly Leonora Wray, daughter of George Cecil Gore Wray, on 25 April 1874. This marriage produced five children.