Mrs James Edwards
(1839- ? )
10 June 1862

Volume 7, page 91, sitting number 8611.

Born in or about 1839 at Kelso in Roxburghshire, Harriet Main was the youngest daughter of George Main of Kelso. She was baptised at Kelso on 8 December 1839.

On 16 December 1859 she became the second wife of Dr James Edwards ‘of Benarth, near Conway, Deputy Lieutenant and late High Sheriff of the county of Carmarvon’ (Morning Advertiser, 17 December 1859). According to other reports, the marriage took place ‘St John’s Episcopal chapel, Edinburgh’ and the bride came from Kelso in Scotland (Chester Chronicle, 17 December 1859).

Dr Edwards had previously been married to Jane Main, daughter of Richard Main of Ravensbourne Park in Kent. That marriage had produced four children before Jane’s death on 3 January 1845. Two infant daughters had soon followed their mother to the grave.

The second Mrs Edwards was a cousin of the first Mrs Edwards.

Dr Edwards’s second marriage produced a son, born at Benarth on 21 May 1861 (Morning Post, 27 May 1861). Another son was born on 28 August 1862 (North Wales Chronicle, 30 August 1862). 

Dr James Edwards died, age 76, on 26 August 1886 at Benarth. He left an estate valued at £927.

In 1901 Harriet Edwards was still living at Benarth Hall, now with her son, artist Lionel Dalhousie Robertson Edwards, aged 22, and her ‘stepson-in-law’ Philip Hall Peters, a ‘retired architect.’

She was still alive in 1911. Aged 71, she and her son Lionel and his family were living in the village of Norton in Worcestershire.