Migration Stories: Marian Harriet Harrison - from Petrograd to Standish
Posted on 23rd Oct 2025 by AWL Team
Marian Harriet Harrison was born 8 March 1852 in Petrograd, Russia (Modern-day St Petersburg). Her Father, Robert was part way through writing a travel book, "Notes of a Nine Years' Residence in Russia, from 1844 to 1853, with Notices of the Tzars Nicholas I. and Alexander II."
The writing would take him to meeting Napoleonic Generals, Russian Monks and American diplomats. By May, Marian had been baptised in the English Chaplaincy in St. Petersburg.
St. Petersburg at the time had a burgeoning English expatriate population. Since the Napoleonic wars, English merchants had set up in the ‘English Quay’ trading British manufactured goods for Russian timber and flax. British maritime prowess also came in handy with the proximity to the principal Russian naval base, Kronstadt, just a few miles out to sea from the quayside.
Marian’s early childhood however involved uprooting from Russia, where her parents had worked as librarians and researchers, and travelling to Britain. In October 1853 the Crimean War erupted pitting Russia against a coalition of Turkey, France, Britain and Sardinia over the rights of the Russian Navy to dominate the Black Sea. In the climate of War, it was no longer safe to stay in Russia and initially Marian and her family arrived in London.
At the Age of 23 in 1875 she met a budding Librarian, Henry Tennyson Folkard and married him in St Mark’s London, Middlesex. Henry was a colleague of her father at the London Library, who was at the time chief Librarian. Soon he was invited to become chief librarian of a new lending and reference Library to be designed by Alfred Waterhouse and opened in 1878. The family would move to this new library in Wigan.
The family initially lived at a house on Thornhill, Standish, and later at Haigh. As Chief Librarian, Henry was given the tenancy to live in Wingate house on Wigan Lane, the property of the Earl of Crawford, Lord Balcarres. Balcarres was a good friend of Henry through the Freemasons; this friendship allowed a large repository of freemason records and memorabilia to be displayed at the public library. By 1911 they were living with their son, Henry Easter, and four daughters, Ellen, Murielle, Helena and Dorothy, and their servant, Edith Harward. In 1916, Henry Folkard sadly died in an incident on the road.
Marian moved south again to Upper Norwood, Surrey where she lived until 1921 where on 31st March she died. She left her son an inheritance of £488 18s 3d. She is buried in Lambeth.
By Cameron Fleming