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Description area
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History
Robert Howard was a member of an old Quaker family who set up in business as a metal and tinplate worker in London in the mid-eighteenth century. His place of business was in Old Street. He associated with A Argand, the Swiss inventor of the standard oil lamp and his son Robert spent some time in Geneva working with Argand {ACC/1270/004}. Another son of Robert Howard, Luke, married Mariabella Eliot, daughter of a wealthy Quaker, eventually bringing to the Howards most of the Eliot property.
Luke Howard was a scientist of note, making a considerable reputation for himself in meteorology {ACC/1270/053, 058, 088, 093}. Goethe was so impressed by Howard's work that he composed a poem in his honour {ACC/1270/085, 086}. Luke Howard purchased the Villa Ackworth near Pontefract, Yorkshire as a place of retirement and both he, his wife and daughter Rachel, took much practical interest in the Quaker schools of the district. He had, before moving to Ackworth, lived for a time at Tottenham, and it was there at Bruce Grove that his son Robert lived after his marriage to Rachel Lloyd, daughter of Samuel and Rachel Lloyd of Birmingham. Howard likewise took a house in the Tottenham district, Lordship Lane, to live in with his wife Maria Crewdson, daughter of William Dilworth Crewdson of Kendal.
Luke Howard inherited through his wife the west country Eliot estate at Ashmore in Dorset {ACC/1270/062, 064, 068, 070}. Throughout the letters of Mariabella Howard, there are afforded glimpses of the controversy that plagued the Society of Friends during the 1810's and 1840's. The American Society of Friends had split over the pressing to its furthest limits of the doctrine of the "inward light" to the neglect of the Scriptures and this provoked a counter-movement in England, spearheaded by Isaac Crewdson's "Beacon of Light". Many Friends left the Society and joined more orthodox evangelical churches. Mariabella Howard was no exception, formally leaving the Society in 1810 {ACC/1270/051}, her son Robert having presumably done likewise {ACC/1270/671}.