Mary Roberts (4) (1788–1864)

Mary Roberts was born in the Homerton district of east London, England, a daughter of Daniel Roberts, a Quaker merchant, and his wife Ann. Her maternal great-grandfather was the botanist Thomas Lawson. Little is known about her early life. As a small child, she moved with her parents to Painswick in Gloucestershire, where she grew up. After the death of her father in 1811, she and her mother returned to London. She began writing books about natural history, and eventually produced some 15 works on conchology, zoology, plants, vegetables, and trees. Some of them, including Domesticated Animals (1833), were reprinted numerous times. She left the Society of Friends in 1826 to become a follower of the millenarian clergyman Edward Irving and his Catholic Apostolic Church.