Harriet Anne Stirling Hogg

Having always wondered who this miniature on ivory represents, it’s a relief to be able to identify her, mainly from her likeness in the group photo featured in an earlier post. Harriet’s father was Sir Walter Stirling of Faskine, and her mother Lady Caroline Frances Byng. The Stirlings were a family with a long and proud naval tradition, but there is no record to explain why Harriet was in West Bengal. She was 18 when she married Charles Swinton Hogg on 29 December, 1860, in Kolkata. They had 4 surviving children; Mary Alice, who married Robert George Wardlaw Ramsay, was the third. Robert arrived in Kolkata in 1871, and may have met the little family after the loss of the father, Charles, who died in 1870 aged 45. His widow was presumably preparing to return home with her 4 children. How did they survive? I’m sure the families rallied round. She must have moved to London at some point, as she was buried in Brompton Cemetery in 1919: I mean to clean up her gravestone next time I’m in London.