Marie Belloc Lowndes

Marie Adelaide Belloc was the daughter of Louis Marie Belloc (1830-1872) and Elizabeth Rayner Parkes (1829-1925), born in George Street, Marylebone, London. Marie's mother, better known as '*Bessie*', founded the Woman's Suffrage Committee in England in 1866 with her best friend Barbara Bodichon. 'Bessie' Parkes was the granddaughter of Elizabeth Ryland (c.1769-1824) and Joseph Priestley, Jr. (1768-1833). Those maternal grandparents were respectively the children of Samuel Ryland (1745-1817), industrialist of Birmingham, England, and Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), the Unitarian minister who …