his two sons, who continued the publication as far as the twenty-seventh volume in 1859, when it was altered to a weekly print as ‘The Gardener's Weekly Magazine,’ finally passing into the hands of Collingridge, the printer, and under a new editor it became the current ‘Gardener's Magazine.’ Harrison also edited ‘The Horticultural Register,’ vol. i. 1831, in conjunction with J. Paxton; ‘The Gardener's and Forester's Record,’ 1833; ‘The Garden Almanack’ for 1843; and ‘The Gardener's and Naturalist's Almanack,’ commenced in 1853 and still in progress.
[Pref. Flor. Cab.; manuscript information; Brit. Mus. Cat.]
HARRISON, MARY (1788–1875), flower-painter, born in Liverpool in 1788, was the daughter of William Rossiter, a prosperous hat manufacturer of Stockport and Liverpool. In 1814 she married William Harrison and visited France after Napoleon's abdication. Her eldest son was born at Amiens, and she had to return home in haste in 1815. Settling again in Liverpool her husband joined partnership in a brewery, in which he lost all his capital. Mrs. Harrison then turned as a means of support for her family to the art she had loved for its own sake. She became a favourite teacher in Liverpool, Chester, and the country round. In 1829 she came to London, and on the foundation in 1831 of the New Society (now the Royal Institute of Painters in Water-Colours) she became one of the original members. her art, though of limited scope, was of a very delicate and refined nature. Her fruit and flower pieces, unfailingly exhibited year after year at the gallery in Pall Mall, bore unmistakable marks of taste, feeling, and close observation of nature. Her first works, executed in the second decade of the century, followed the prim fashion of the time in representing detached specimens of fruit or cut sprigs of garden flowers, or a branch of blackberry blossom lying near a bird's nest. As she progressed, the beauty of growing plants, especially of wild flowers, engaged her attention. Delightful groups of viollets, cowslips, wood anemones, and primroses would vie with snowdrops, crocuses and the most beautiful roses, in her annual supply to the society's exhibitions. She painted primroses in three panels, 'Infancy, maturity, Decay'. Specimens of her work are to be seen in the gallery of the South Kensington Museum. Graves gives the number of the pictures she exhibited as over fifty. After a life of unending, but not unpleasant, labour she died at Hampstead on 25 Nov. 1875 in the eighty-eighth year of her age, having previously ascertained that the pictures she had just been preparing for the winter exhibition of her society had been despatched to their destination. Her two sons, George Henry and William Frederick, are separately noticed.
[Athenæum, No. 2510, 4 Dec. 1875, p. 758; Bryan's Dict. 1886; Grave's Dict. of Artists who have exhibited.]
HARRISON, RALPH (1748–1810), nonconformist divine and tutor, son of William Harrison, presbyterian minister of Chinley, Derbyshire, was born at Chinley on 10 Sept. 1748. He was descended from Cuthbert Harrison (d. October 1680), ejected from Lurgan, co. Armagh. In 1763 he entered the Warrington Academy, of which John Aikin, D.D. (1713–1780) [q. v.], was divinity tutor. In 1769 he was appointed assistant to Joseph Fownes (1715–1789) as minister of High Street Chapel, Shrewsbury. On 29 Dec. (elected 17 Nov.) 1771 he succeeded Joseph Mottershead (1688–1771) at Cross Street Chapel, Manchester. His theology was Arian. From 1774 he kept a school, and gained great repute as a teacher, among his pupils being the sons of the Marquis of Waterford. From the institution of the Manchester Academy (22 Feb. 1786) till 1789 Harrison was professor of classics and belles-lettres there. He died, after long illness, on 10 Nov. 1810. Soon after settling in Manchester, he married Ann, daughter of John Touchet. His son William (d. 30 Nov. 1859, aged 80) was minister at Blackley, Lancashire (1803–54); another son, John, (1786–1853), was a Manchester merchant and father of John Harrison, Ph.D. (d. 1866), minister at Chowbent, Lancashire (1838–47), Brixton, Surrey (1847–61), and Ipswich (1861–3).
Harrison published: 1. ‘Institutes of English Grammar,’ &c., Manchester, 1777, 12mo. 2. ‘Sacred Harmony,’ &c. [1786], 4to, 2 vols. (contains psalm tunes of his composition). 3. ‘A Sermon … at Manchester … on occasion of the Establishment of an Academy,’ &c., Warrington [1786], 8vo. 4. ‘Account of the Author,’ prefixed to John Seddon's posthumous ‘Discourses,’ Warrington, 1793, 12mo. Posthumous was 5. ‘Sermons,’ &c., 1813, 8vo (prefixed is ‘Biographical Memoir’ by his son William). Also some geographical manuals.
[Calamy's Continuation, 1727, i. 572; Monthly Repository, 1810 p. 601, 1814 p. 264; Harrison's Biographical Memoir, 1813; Astley's Hist. Presb. Meeting-House, Shrewsbury, 1847, p. 19; Roll of Students, Manchester Academy, 1868; Baker's Memorials of a Dissenting Chapel (Cross Street, Manchester), 1884, pp. 44 sq., 109, 143 sq.; manuscript list of Lancashire and Cheshire Presb. chapels.]
