Sarah Slack Staples was born on the Cambridgeshire/Suffolk border, she was baptised on 17th March 1850 at Kirtling, near Newmarket. Sarah was the daughter of William Hatch Staples, 25yrs, Farmer of 121 acres and employer of 5 men, and Mary Fuller Slack, 26yrs; she had 3 older siblings, Mary, 5yrs, William 4yrs, (died 1856), and Joseph 2yrs, a sister, Harriet, was born in 1853. In 1858 a brother, William, was born, and Sarah's mother died. Her father was now employed as a farm bailiff and the family lived in Suffolk.
Sarah's father remarried, her stepmother was Caroline Bird, and 7 half- siblings were born over the next 10 years.
On 23rd October 1872, at St. Mary Magdalene, Eltham, Essex, Sarah, 22yrs, married James Foster Dunning, they had 5 children, Maud b.1874, Percy b.1880, Cyril b.1884, Ethel b.1885, and Louis b.1890. Sarah was widowed in 1892 when James died, aged 41yrs.
Sarah, 47yrs, married again on 11th March 1898, at St. George, Bloomsbury, Camden, her husband, Thomas Charles John Harrison, 35yrs, of Breaston, Derbyshire, was a civil engineer, granted membership of the Institute of Civil Engineers in 1899 and Sarah and her younger children moved to his home, in Breaston, Derbyshire.
Sarah died while staying at Capri, Wordsworth Road, Worthing, Sussex, on 10th November 1920, aged 70yrs. Bingley Cass, the rector of Breaston, conducted her funeral at Heene on 16th November 1920.