Miss Heelis
(1838-1907)
27 June 1862

Volume 8, page 133, sitting number 10,150.

Identified in the Silvy daybooks as 'Miss Heelis,' the sitter visited Silvy's studio with her younger sister Arabella in the summer of 1862. Their older brothers John and Arthur had sat for their portraits by Silvy two days earlier. 

This is therefore probably Miss Ann Elizabeth Heelis, elder of the two daughters of Salford solicitor and attorney Stephen Heelis, who left a fortune amounting to £40,000 when he died in 1871. 

She was baptised at St Thomas's Church in Pendleton on 27 September 1838. 

On 19 June 1878 she married the Reverend John MacNaught, a widowed clergyman from Sussex Square in London. Her husband had caused a great stir in 1861 by resigning his incumbency of St Chrysostom’s Church in Liverpool when he became convinced that not all parts of the Bible were divinely inspired. According to Religion in Victorian Britain (ed. Gerald Parsons), he 'went to London, where he thought of becoming a lawyer or a Dissenting minister, though he longed to return to the Church of England. [...] Finally, in 1867, he set up a proprietory chapel in Bath, a place of worship on the fringes of the Anglican communion, which catered for the spiritual needs of a shifting holiday population.'

Reverend MacNaught died on 13 May 1890 at 2 Rutland Gate, Knightsbridge.

Mrs Ann Elizabeth Macnaught died, aged 68, on 4 January 1907 at 18 Sumner Place, South Kensington. She left effects valued at £17,733.