Sarah Elizabeth Robinson was the eldest surviving child of Rev William Robinson and Mary Richardson Robinson. She born in Bath and attended a girls’ boarding school in London, but suffered from frequent bouts of ill-health. After her mother died in 1789, she stayed at home to look after her father, and it was not until after his death in 1803 that she married Samuel Truman, who was twenty years her junior. They had two children, Matthew and Mary; Matthew qualified as a physician and published a book on nutrition. Sarah died in 1834 at the age of seventy-one.