On 30 August 1832 Elizabeth married a Unitarian minister, william Gaskell, in Knutsford. They spent their honeymoon in North Wales, staying with her uncle, Samuel Holland, near Porthmadog. The Gaskells then settled in Manchester, where william was the minister at Cross Street Unitarian Chapel. Manchester's industrial surroundings influenced Elizabeth's writing in the industrial genre. Their first child, a daughter, was stillborn in 1833. A son, william, (1844–45), died in infancy, and this tragedy was the catalyst for Gaskell's first novel, Mary Barton. Their other children were Marianne (1834), Margaret Emily, known as Meta (1837), Florence Elizabeth (1842), and Julia Bradford (1846). Marianne and Meta boarded at the private school conducted by Rachel Martineau, sister of Harriet, a close friend of Elizabeth. Florence married Charles Crompton, a barrister and Liberal Politician, in 1863.