{73} Ruvigny Addition: Descendants of Harriet (née Milbanke) Tilghman (1765-1835)

Harriet (née Milbanke) Tilghman (1765-1835)

In May of 1788, Abigail Smith wrote a letter to her mother Abigail Adams (the future First Lady of the United States) about her voyage home from England and two of her fellow passengers: “We were in all six cabin passengers. I wrote you from Falmouth of a Mr. and Mrs. T[ilghman]; he is a native of Maryland, sent early to England for his education; but it is not easy to discover that this was the motive of his visit, unless to be thoroughly knowing in the career of New-Market, Brooks, and every species of gambling, extravagance, and dissipation, was the education intended for him; he is a Lieutenant of the British Navy, was on board the Somerset, and a prisoner in Boston during the war. Three years since he ran off with, and married the daughter of the Admiral, a step which I believe every person but herself, thinks she has much cause to repent of. It is said he has run through his own fortune, and a fortune of five thousand pounds, which his brother, who died in the East Indies, left him; and is now much in advance. They are now upon a visit to his father, who is a man of property in Maryland; and strange as it may appear, although Mrs. T—— is of a most amiable disposition, pleasing in her person and manners, she appears greatly attached to him, and to be happy. I never saw two persons, who excited in my mind so much surprise.”

Meanwhile in Chestertown, Maryland, thirty-year-old Mary 'Molly' Tilghman, wrote a few weeks later, in July 1788, about her brother 'Phil', to their cousin Mary 'Polly' Pearce, "we heard of
Phil [Tilghman]'s arrival; since which time I have been in so anxious a state of suspense, and expectation that I have hardly even thought of writing to any body out of the family. Phil wou'd have been here a Month ago, but for the indisposition of little Harriet, who has never been able to travel till now. She caught a violent cold off the Banks of Newfoundland, and was very ill when they landed. I have had three letters from Mrs [Phil] Tilghman, who seems very impatient to get here. They got to Philad[elphi]a yesterday week, and meant to leave it last Thursday, which they did not, or they wou'd have been here before this. I have no words to express my astonishment when I first heard they were at New York. To you, my dear Polly I will own that my feelings were far from being joyful ones. I was indeed extremely shock'd. When Phil left America, it was with an idea of never seeing it again, which makes me fear that something disagreeable has happen'd. As yet we are all in the dark as he prudently defers all explanations till he can make them in person. Such has been our situation for the last Month and I need not add that it has been most harrassing. Every post we have expected to hear that we shou'd see him in a day or two and as often have we been disappointed. Since Saturday we have been in hourly expectation of them and of course constantly on the watch. Indeed I am almost exhausted. Every Carriage that I hear throws me into a tremor."

Map of the Chestertown area
[Image from Historical Society of Kent County]

The couple eliciting such excitement and judgment was Philemon Tilghman and his wife Harriet (née Milbanke), who were travelling from England with their infant daughter (also named Harriet), to the Tilghman family on Maryland's Eastern Shore, where Phil's father and siblings would meet his wife and daughter for the first time. Harriet was in the early months of pregnancy with their second child.

The fifth of the six sons of attorney James Tilghman of Chestertown, Maryland, and of Philadelphia, Philemon 'Phil' was undoubtedly the most impulsive of Tilghman's ten children[*1]. Aged eleven when his mother Anne, a sickly woman, died, Philemon (named for his notable great-grandfather Philemon Lloyd of Maryland) was living with his elder brothers James Jr. and William on their father's plantation in Queen Anne's County when the war for American Independence broke out in 1775. James Tilghman was an important and respected government official in Philadelphia, who was a political moderate with a dread of civil war. Zealous patriots viewed him suspiciously as a Loyalist, and he was one of about forty persons who was arrested by Pennsylvania's Supreme Executive Council in the summer of 1777. Philemon's sixty-year-old father was now a prisoner-of-war. Upon hearing the news of his father's arrest, sixteen-year-old Phil ran off to join the British. Admiral Lord Howe's fleet was sailing up the Chesapeake to deposit troops on the way to Philadelphia, when Phil Tilghman appeared asking for a commission in the British army or navy. Howe quickly made the lad a midshipman on the 64-gunner Somerset. James Tilghman was given parole and permission to visit his Maryland home, and on his return there learned of Phil's "rash and indiscreet" action. He tried to get his son out of the British navy for the next two years, to no avail. "I hope and believe you acted upon Principle," James wrote to Phil, "and therefore I cannot abandon you or withdraw my affection unless I should have the misfortune to hear that you have departed from the principles of virtue and honour." It wouldn't be until after the Revolutionary War when Phil abandoned those principles.

H.M.S. Somerset

The H.M.S. Somerset ran aground off of Provincetown in 1778, and Phil Tilghman was one of over 100 of its men who were taken prisoner and forced to walk over 125 miles to Boston. He later ended up on ships involved in the relief of Gibraltar. There, he was put under the command of Vice-Admiral Mark Milbanke, and young Tilghman eventually rose to the rank of Lieutenant. But his career in the British navy came to an abrupt halt when in 1785, 24-year-old Lt. Tilghman eloped with Admiral Milbanke's beautiful 20-year-old daughter Harriet. With no career, and an inclination towards gambling and partying rather than the pursuit of one, Phil apparently relied on financial assistance from Richard 'Dick' Tilghman, an older brother who, like Phil, was an Anglophile, and had left America for good in 1776 for a career with the East India Company. Tragically, Dick drowned at sea on a voyage back to England from India in January 1786. Phil and Harriet's first child arrived a year later. Unable to turn to Admiral Milbanke for assistance due to their elopement, the young couple were clearly in a bind in London, so Phil made a solo trip to his father in Maryland at the end of 1787, which apparently did not go so smoothly, since when he departed back to England in January 1788, his sister Molly Tilghman was left with the impression that she would never see him again. Thus her mixture of surprise and annoyance when she learned that summer that Phil was returning to them, this time with his wife and infant daughter.

The Plantation
[Image from Metropolitan Museum of Art]

By all accounts as amiable as she was beautiful, Harriet Tilghman seems to have won over her husband's family, especially Molly. Phil, on the other hand, seems to have remained as arrogant as he was unemployable. A few weeks after the birth of his second child, daughter Caroline, Molly Tilghman wrote to their cousin Polly Pearce, "Her name is a whim of her fathers, who is hardly yet reconcil'd to his second Daughter. He was in as terrible a friz on the occasion, as if a title and vast estate had depended on the birth of a son.” Phil seemed to completely lack the skills and talents of his brothers: the eldest, Tench Tilghman served as George Washington's most trusted aide-de-camp during the War, and afterwards returned to a prosperous career as a merchant, in which he was joined by youngest brother Thomas. James Jr. and William both took seats in the Maryland legislature, and William, an attorney like their father, went on to become Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Phil and his growing family lived with his father James in Chestertown, until the latter's death in 1793, after which he removed to one of the Tilghman plantations, Golden Square, where he himself died prematurely in 1797, at age 36, just 17 months after the birth of his eagerly anticipated son. Phil had outlived all but three of his siblings - his only surviving brother was William, the attorney in Philadelphia. Harriet Tilghman found herself widowed in her early 30s, with five young children aged 10 to 2, and the responsibility of a small plantation on Maryland's Eastern seaboard, staffed with slaves. Unable (Tilghman was in such massive debt at his early death that creditors were still trying to collect from his estate as late as 1810) or, hopefully, unwilling (Harriet's first cousin Sir Ralph, who had just succeeded as baronet and head of the Milbanke family back in England, was an active politician and anti-slavery crusader) to run the plantation on her own, Harriet returned to England with her children.

By this point her father Admiral Milbanke was in his late 70s and retired. He and his wife had a townhouse in the fashionable London neighbourhood of Portman Square, but they had no huge fortune or country seat. Harriet made her home in Portman Square, and the Admiral bequeathed her and her children what he could in his 1805 will, but it was Harriet's younger sister Eliza Emily and her husband, the talented Liberal politician William Huskisson, who became the patrons of Harriet's children. The Huskissons had no children of their own, and the Tilghman siblings benefitted tremendously from their influential uncle. Eldest sister Harriet Tilghman married Rev. Richard Cockburn, the curate of Eartham in Sussex, where William Huskisson's country seat was situated. Youngest sister Charlotte Tilghman married Molyneux Nepean, the son and heir of Sir Evan Nepean, one of Huskisson's closest friends and political allies in Parliament. And it was Huskisson who secured his nephew Richard Milbanke Tilghman a position in the Honourable East India Company. Middle sister Emily Tilghman's marriage to Jeremiah Hoffman, the London representative of a successful Baltimore mercantile family, seems to have been the only one made without the influence of the Huskissons.

College of the East India Company, Hertfordshire

History would repeat itself in 1834 when Harriet's only son Richard Tilghman died prematurely at age 38 in India, leaving five young children aged 12 to 3. Unlike Harriet's children however, these next generation Tilghmans were completely orphaned, their mother having died just a few months before their father. They were taken to England, and put in the care of their unmarried aunt Caroline Tilghman, and under the patronage of their widowed great aunt Eliza Emily Huskisson. She made the elder of her Tilghman great nephews, the one named for her late husband, her heir. On her death in 1856, William Huskisson Tilghman inherited Eartham Place and changed his surname to Huskisson. His own premature death in 1865 at age 37 brought an end to the male line of Philemon and Harriet Tilghman. None of his three surviving sisters married: one, Emily Eliza Tilghman, ended her days in a mental institution, and the other two as solitary spinsters on the English coast, distant echoes of the Tilghman-Milbanke elopement that had caused such a stir in the social circles of the newborn United States.

Details of why the Milbankes of Halnaby, Yorkshire are additions to Ruvigny's 1911 Mortimer Percy volume can be found in a previous post. Harriet Tilghman and her descendants below would be additions to that volume.

Nave of Winchester Cathedral

HARRIET MILBANKE, b. Chester Deanery, co. Durham, bap. 30 Sept. 1765 St Mary & St Cuthbert Church, Chester-le-Street; d. 4 Apr. 1835 Portman Square, London, bur. 11 Apr. 1735 St Etheldreda Church, Bishops Hatfield, er dau. of Admiral Mark Milbanke of Portman Square (1724-1805, descended from Edward IV) and Mary Webber (c.1740-1812); m. (eloped) 1785, Lt. PHILEMON TILGHMAN of Golden Square Plantation, Queen Anne's County, Maryland, b. 29 Nov. 1760 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; d. 11 Jan. 1797 Golden Square Plantation, yr son of James Tilghman of Philadelphia (1716-1793, descended from Edward III) and Anne Francis (1726-1771), and had issue, one son and four daughters[*2].

Issue of Harriet (Milbanke) and Philemon Tilghman:

1) HARRIET TILGHMAN, b. 3 Jan. 1787 Westminster, bap. 16 Apr. 1787 St James Church, Westminster; d.s.p. 26 July 1863 Winchester, Hampshire; m. 12 Dec. 1808 St Margaret Church, Westminster, Rev. RICHARD COCKBURN, Prebend of Winchester Cathedral 1825-31, b. 1769 Yorkshire; d.s.p. 24 Nov. 1831 Winchester, bur. 30 Nov. 1831 Winchester Cathedral.

2) CAROLINE ELIZA TILGHMAN, b. Dec. 1788 Chestertown, Kent County, Maryland; d. unm. 6 Sept. 1867 Portman Square, London, bur. 13 Sept. 1867 St Margaret Church, Eartham, Sussex.

3) (ELIZA) EMILY TILGHMAN, b. 1790 Chestertown; d. 14 June 1813 Russell Square, Bloomsbury, London, bur. 21 June 1813 St Etheldreda Church, Bishops Hatfield; m. 19 Oct. 1811 St Marylebone, London, JEREMIAH HOFFMAN of Chatsworth House, Baltimore, Maryland, b. c.1780 Maryland; d. Oct. 1844 Baltimore, yr son of Peter Hoffman of Baltimore, merchant (1742-1809) and Mary Dorothea Stirlin Lloyd (1745-1811), and had issue, one son and one daughter.

Harriet (née Hoffman) Weld
(1812-1892)

Issue of Eliza Emily (Tilghman) and Jeremiah Hoffman:

3A) HARRIET EMILY HOFFMAN, b. 19 July 1812 Russell Square, London, bap. 17 Feb. 1813 St George Bloomsbury; d.s.p. 1892 Maryland, bur. Old St Pauls Cemetery, Baltimore; m. 30 May 1843 Baltimore County, Maryland, HENRY THOMAS WELD of Mount Savage, Allegany County, Maryland, b. 31 Jan. 1816 London; d.s.p. 18 July 1893 Mount Savage, er son of James Weld of Archers Lodge, Hampshire (1785-1855, descended from Edward III) and Hon. Juliana Anne Petre (1789-1862, descended from Charles II).

3B) GEORGE WILLIAM HOFFMAN, b. June 1813 Russell Square; d. there 14 June 1813, bur. 21 June 1813 St Etheldreda Church, Bishops Hatfield.

4) CHARLOTTE TILGHMAN, b. c.1793 Chestertown; d. 26 June 1838 Portman Square, London, bur. 6 July 1838 St Mary Magdalene Church, Loders, Dorset; m. 30 Aug. 1813 St Marylebone, as his 1st wife, Sir MOLYNEUX HYDE NEPEAN, 2nd Baronet of Bothenhampton, b. 28 Sept. 1783 Westminster, London, bap. 21 Oct. 1783 St Margaret Church, Westminster; d. 4 June 1856 Lee Hall, Hexham, Northumberland, est son of Sir Evan Nepean, 1st Baronet of Bothenhampton (1752-1822) and Margaret Skinner (1760-1833, descended from Edward I), and had issue, three sons and eight daughters.

Issue of Charlotte (Tilghman) and Sir Molyneux Nepean, 2nd Baronet:

Sir Molyneux Hyde Nepean, 3rd Baronet
(1814-1895)

4A) Sir MOLYNEUX HYDE NEPEAN, 3rd Baronet of Bothenhampton, b. 2 July 1814 Charmouth, Dorset, bap. 28 July 1814 St Matthew Church, Charmouth; d.s.p. 13 Mar. 1895 Loders Court, Dorset, bur. 16 Mar. 1895 St Mary Magdalene Church, Loders; m. 27 Apr. 1841 Old Kilpatrick, Dunbartonshire, Scotland, ISABELLA GEILS, b. 1812 Cardross, Dunbartonshire; d.s.p. 17 Mar. 1895 Loders Court, bur. 22 Mar. 1895 St Mary Magdalene Church, Loders, dau. of Col. Andrew Geils of Dumbruck House, Dunbartonshire (1773-1843) and Mary Noble (1783-1853).

4B) CHARLOTTE NEPEAN, b. 26 Oct. 1815 Loders Court, bap. 29 Oct. 1815 Holy Trinity Church, Bradpole, Dorset; d. unm. 16 July 1838 Eartham House, Sussex, bur. 26 July 1838 St Mary Magdalene Church, Loders.

4C) THOMAS NEPEAN, b. 11 Dec. 1816 London, bap. 5 Feb. 1817 All Saints Church, Chelsea, London; d. unm. Oct. 1846 Jamaica.

4D) Capt. EVAN PHILIP TILGHMAN NEPEAN, b. 17 Feb. 1818 Camesworth House, Dorset; d. unm. 7 Mar. 1854 Dinapore, Bengal, India.

4E) ELIZA EMILY NEPEAN, b. 7 Feb. 1819; d. 21 Aug. 1827 Mapperton House, Dorset, bur. 29 Aug. 1827 St Mary Magdalene Church, Loders.

4F) MARGARET HARRIET NEPEAN, b. 27 May 1821 Hinknowle, Netherbury, Dorset, bap. 23 June 1821 St Mary Church, Netherbury; d. 28 Feb. 1830 Mapperton House, bur. 8 Mar. 1830 St Mary Magdalene Church, Loders.

4G) CAROLINE NEPEAN, b. 7 Dec. 1823 Hinknowle (twin with a stillborn sister), bap. same day; d. 12 Dec. 1823 Hinknowle, bur. 13 Dec. 1823 St Mary Magdalene Church, Loders.

St Mary Magdalene Church, Loders, Dorset

4H) MARY NEPEAN, b. 10 Nov. 1824 Hinknowle, bap. 2 Aug. 1825 All Saints Church, Mapperton; d. 20 June 1826 Mapperton House, bur. 25 June 1826 St Mary Magdalene Church, Loders.

4I) ELEANOR ANNE NEPEAN, b. 16 Jan. 1828; d. 6 Aug. 1842 Marylebone, London, bur. 12 Aug. 1842 St George Hanover Square, London.

4J) JANE ISABELLA NEPEAN, b. 29 Jan. 1829 Mapperton House, bap. 1 Mar. 1829 All Saints Church, Mapperton; d. 13 Dec. 1833 Jamaica.

4K) FRANCES AUGUSTA NEPEAN, b. 1 Dec. 1834 Jamaica, bap. 20 Sept. 1838 St Mary Church, Netherbury, Dorset; d. 8 Dec. 1880 St Andrews House, Lyme Regis, Dorset, bur. 13 Dec. 1880 St Michael Church, Lyme Regis; m. 1st 28 Jan. 1857 St George Hanover Square, London, Commander JAMES BLAIR GROVE of Edinburgh, b. 15 Mar. 1832; d. 10 July 1865 Plymouth, Devon, bur. Dean Cemetery, Edinburgh, son of Capt. Francis Grove of Edinburgh (1799-1864, descended from Edward III) and his 1st wife Emily Ure (d. 1838), and had issue, two daughters; m. 2nd 29 Aug. 1871 St Andrew Church, Charmouth, Dorset, as his 2nd wife, SAMUEL LOWNDES of Esher House, Surrey, b. 5 Nov. 1825 Bloomsbury, London, bap. 25 Apr. 1826 St George Bloomsbury; d. 16 Sept. 1903 Walton Lodge, Guildford, Surrey, son of William Loftus Lowndes of Lincolns Inn (1793-1865, descended from Edward III) and Eliza Cox (1793-1885), and had further issue, two stillborn children.

5) RICHARD MILBANKE TILGHMAN, officer Honourable East India Company, b. 30 July 1795 Chestertown, Kent County, Maryland; d. 1 June 1834 Hamirpur, Uttar Pradesh, India; m. 30 Oct. 1818 Bengal, India, CAROLINE FLEMING, b. 1799; d. 10 Feb. 1834 Hamirpur [*3], and had issue, five sons and three daughters.

Issue of Richard Milbanke and Caroline (Fleming) Tilghman:

Tilghman Coat of Arms
[Per fesse sable, and argent, a lion rampant-
reguardant double-queued, counterchanged,
crowned or]

5A) RICHARD MILBANKE TILGHMAN, b. 30 Oct. 1820 Calcutta, Bengal, India, bap. there 27 Jan. 1821; d. young.

5B) CAROLINE TILGHMAN, b. 19 May 1822 Patna, Bihar, India, bap. 15 Oct. 1822 Dinapore, Bengal, India; d. unm. 25 Mar. 1911 Bournemouth, Dorset.

5C) EMILY ELIZA TILGHMAN, b. 14 Aug. 1824 Patna, bap. 15 Nov. 1824 Dinapore; d. unm. 9 Jan. 1878 Great House, Low Leyton, Essex.

5D) WILLIAM HUSKISSON TILGHMAN, b. 9 Aug. 1827 Allahabad, Bengal, India; d. there 18 Aug. 1827, bur. there same day.

5E) WILLIAM HUSKISSON TILGHMAN [later HUSKISSON] of Eartham House, Sussex, b. 17 May 1828 Allahabad; d.s.p. 5 Aug. 1865 Regents Park, London, bur. 12 Aug. 1865 St Margaret Church, Eartham; m. 21 Jan. 1858 All Souls Church, Langham Place, London, ELIZA MARY RIVETT CARNAC, b. 23 May 1835 Baker Street, London, bap. 9 July 1835 St Marylebone, London; d.s.p. 18 Mar. 1905 Vevey, Vaud, Switzerland, dau. of Admiral John Rivett Carnac of Portman Square (1796-1869) and Maria Jane Davis (c.1804-1882).

5F) HARRIET LOUISA TILGHMAN, b. 10 July 1829 Calcutta, bap. there 28 Oct. 1829; d. unm. 5 Mar. 1911 Westbourne, Bournemouth, Dorset.

5G) Capt. RICHARD MILBANKE TILGHMAN of Portland Place, b. 4 June 1831 Simla, Bengal, India, bap. there 10 Oct. 1831; d. unm. 23 Oct. 1861 Richmond Barracks, Dublin, Ireland, bur. 6 Nov. 1861 St Margaret Church, Eartham.

5H) CHARLES JAMES TILGHMAN, b. 17 Sept. 1833 Hamirpur, Uttar Pradesh, India, bap. there 10 Nov. 1833; d. young India.

[*1] For a comprehensive, well-researched account of James Tilghman and his family during the American Revolution, see Maryland historian Jennifer A. Bryan's article 'The Horrors of Civil War': The Tilghman Family in the American Revolution," Maryland Historical Magazine Vol. 103 (2008).

Sworn statement of Richard Milbanke Tilghman
regarding his birth from his 1810 application
to the College of the East India Company

[*2] When Richard Milbanke Tilghman applied to the College of the East India Company in 1810 he was required to produce proof of his age, and wrote on his application, "I have caused search to be made for a Parish Register whereby to ascertain my age, but am unable to produce the same, there being none to be found; and further I make Oath, and swear, that from the Information of my Parents (and other relations) which Information I verily believe to be true, that I was born in the Parish of Chester, in the County of Kent, in the State of Maryland, one of United States of N. America, on the thirtieth day of July 1795." Without a register for Chester Parish for this period, we can only estimate the birthdates of (Eliza) Emily and Charlotte Tilghman, but it is certain that Emily was older than Charlotte, and Charlotte in turn, older than their only brother Richard.

[*3] Various Tilghman family genealogies identify the wife of Richard Milbanke Tilghman as "Augusta, daughter of Lord Elphinstone," though no such lady existed. Tilghman's marriage notice in the East-India Register and Directory identifies her only as "Miss Caroline Fleming."

A noteworthy observation about this family group is that of the twenty-one grandchildren of Philemon and Harriet (née Milbanke) Tilghman, eleven lived to adulthood, but only one of those left issue of her own. Jean Elizabeth (née Hope) (b. 1937), wife of Sergio Pizzicaria, an Italian attorney, and any children and/or grandchildren they may have, are today the only living descendants of Admiral Mark Milbanke, his daughter Harriet, and her husband Philemon Tilghman of Maryland. Mrs. Pizzicaria is the great-granddaughter of Frances Augusta Nepean (see 4K above). I hope to detail her descent in a future post.

The next blogpost will examine the two lines of descent from Edward III for Lt. Philemon Tilghman.

Cheers,                                      ------Brad