Joseph de Carle Sowerby and The Reverend Herbert Sowerby

Joseph de Carle Sowerby (1829-1871) was a son of James de Carle Sowerby. He does not seem to have followed the family tradition, and in 1861 was working as a commercial clerk in Hackney, married to Grace Seguier, a school mistress. He later became a tax collector. Joseph and Grace had five children. One of their sons, Herbert Sowerby, who was born in 1856 in Dalton, Middlesex went into the church and was later to become the Reverend Herbert Sowerby. 

Some time in the 1870s, probably, Herbert came into contact with Ann Fanny Wombwell, quite possibly through Mrs Wombwell, whose connections after all would have been wide and varied. It looks like Ann Fanny Wombwell now took to the church in a serious way, and joined the massed ranks of Victorian Christian idealists who saw around them a world in urgent need of redemption. And before long, both Herbert and Ann Fanny were on their way to China, to be married in Shanghai in 1881. Ann Fanny reported the profession of her father, George Wombwell junior as a musician.