Mary Anning Biography

Mary Anning Biography

Born in the coastal southern English town of Lyme Regis in Dorset, Mary Anning was marked out for an unusual life at the age of 15 months when in 1800 a lightning strike inthe village caught four people in the open. Three died but Mary survived.
Mary's father, Richard, was a cabinet maker who supplemented his income by mining the coastal cliff-side fossil beds near LymeRegis, and selling his finds to tourists. Richard Anning moved to Lyme from Colyton in Devon. He married Mary Moore on 8 August 1793 in Blandford. Returning to Lyme, the couple lived in a house builton the town’s bridge, and attended the local Congregational Church, where their children were baptized. Soon after their marriage a daughter Mary was born. She was followed by a second daughter,Martha, who died almost at once, then by a son Joseph, in 1796. In 1798 a second son, Henry, died in infancy and the eldest child, Mary, was burned to death, either sitting too close to the fire, orfalling into it. When another daughter was born the following May, she was given the name of her dead sister, Mary. At least four more children followed: Henry, 1801; Percival, 1803; Elizabeth, 1804; andRichard, 1809. All died within a couple of years of birth, leaving only two surviving children, Joseph and Mary, when their father Richard died in 1810 at age 44. When he died of tuberculosis theAnning family was left without support. Mary and her brother Joseph began collecting fossils full-time in an effort to earn some income. Fossil collecting was in vogue in the late 18th century and early19th century, at first as a pastime akin to stamp collecting but gradually transforming into a science as the importance of fossils to geology and biology became understood. Anning catered to thecommercial side of the field, selling her finds. She soon forged relationships within the scientific community, whose passion for fossils grew to be a major source of income for her. One of Anning's first...