Pease, Rachel, 1831-1912

Biography

Rachel Pease (1831-1912). Third daughter of Joseph and Emma Pease (nee Gurney). Marries Charles Albert Leatham of Wakefield in 1851, with great festivities accompanying the event. Charles and Rachel had five daughters: Rachel Mary Leatham (b. 1852, m. 1874), Emma (b. 1853, m. 1875), Margaret (b. 1855, m. 1875), Elizabeth (b. 1856, m. 1880 to Leonard Pelly, d. 1930) and Jane (b. 1857, m. 1878), and apparently a son who died in infancy (“Male Leatham” in birth records from Darlington, 1858). 1851 census records show Charles and Rachel living at Southend, the estate of Rachel’s father Joseph, but later records made after Charles’s death show Rachel and her family, along with servants, a governess, nursemaid, and cook, living in their own household. Charles died in 1858 and Rachel later married William Fowler (1828-1905), her brother-in-law by her sister Elizabeth’s marriage, in 1875. William was one of five sons of John Fowler, a dedicated member of the Religious Society of Friends. According to the DNB, he rose to prominence as a politician and financier after a period of economic lows during the 1860s. William and two of his brothers took over John Fowler’s steam plough business after John’s death in 1864. Rachel Pease was William’s third wife. Census records show them living in London in 1901. They had no children together, although William had eight children from his first marriage to Rachel Howard.