Mrs Thomas Holman
(1796-1870)
28 July 1862

Volume 8, page 331, sitting number 10,945.

[The sitter is identified as ‘Mrs Thomas Holman’ in the Silvy daybooks. The next sitting is her sister, ‘Mrs Peck.’]

Born in Folkestone in 1796, Anne Minter was the daughter of merchant John Minter and his wife Anne née Robinson. She was baptised in Folkestone on 9 October 1796.

On 22 June 1815 she married Thomas Holman. 'At Folkestone, Thomas Holman, Esq. to Miss Minter, third daughter of Mr John Minter’ (Kentish Weekly Post, 27 June 1815). 

The couple appear on the 1841 census, living in Upper Sandgate Road, Folkestone. The household included four servants, all female, one of them a nurse. 

‘On the night of the 24th ult., the larder of Thomas Holman, Esq., Sandgate Road, was entered and cleared of its contents, amongst which were about twenty score of pork, some cheeses, fowls, &c. The thieves regaled themselves upon a couple of rice puddings, and got clear off, leaving the tap of a beer barrel running’ (Canterbury Journal, 6 May 1843). 

Thomas Holman died, aged 74, at the beginning of 1848. He was buried in Folkestone on 4 January. 

In the summer of 1857 a local newspaper reported on a nasty accident:

‘NARROW ESCAPE — On Thursday last an accident occurred on the road leading from Hythe to Bargrove. Mrs Thomas Holman, accompanied by a friend or two, being out for a drive in her carriage, had just alighted for the purpose of walking up a very steep ascent on this road. A short distance ahead a dray, drawn by one horse, belonging to Mr Mackeson, of Hythe, had been left by the driver while he went into a house to execute an order; from some unexplained cause the horse started at full speed down the hill, and coming into collision with the carriage of Mrs Holman, the shaft of the dray penetrated the side of the horse, killing it on the spot. The ladies fortunately escaped unhurt, though much alarmed. The dray horse continued its career, and next ran into the cart of Mr Rigden, of Lyminge, who was quietly driving his horse up the hill. Mr Rigden, seeing his danger, immediately leaped from his cart, by which he sustained some trifling bruises; the cart however was almost dashed into pieces’ (Folkestone Chronicle, 18 July 1857). 

Mrs Holman appears on the 1861 census, aged 64, living with her sister Sarah Peck, also a widow, in Upper Sandgate Road, Folkestone. Their sister Mary Hobday was living in the house next door .

Mrs Anne Holman died in Folkestone on 27 October 1870. She left an estate valued at £18,000.