Guest Post - Queen Charlotte’s Fictitious Sister

I am delighted to welcome Geri Walton as my guest today.


Geri is a history graduate and writer. Her first book, Marie Antoinette’s Confidante: The Rise and Fall of the Princesse de Lamballe, examines the relationship between Queen Marie Antoinette and Marie Thérèse, the Princess de Lamballe. Based on a wide variety of historical sources it captures the waning days and grisly demise of the French monarchy. 

Guest Post - Queen Charlotte’s Fictitious Sister

When Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz arrived in England, no one would have called her a beauty. However, she did have other impressive qualities. She had an agreeable manner, "unaffected modesty," and a graceful and expressive way of speaking. Charlotte was also unbendingly loyal to her servants and there were no household upheavals related to party connections or political issues. Yet, of all the Queen's qualities, it was her goodness that shone the most and the thing that many people remembered.

Pastel of Queen Charlotte
 with her eldest daughter Charlotte
by Francis Cotes in 1767,
Courtesy of Wikipedia

An example of the Queen’s goodness was demonstrated around 1771. In June, shortly after the Queen delivered her son Ernest-Augustus, a woman name Sarah Wilson became a maidservant to Caroline Vernon. Vernon was lady-in-waiting to Queen Charlotte, and because of that, Wilson was allowed access to the Queen's apartments.

With access to the Queen's apartments, Wilson snuck in and pilfered clothing and other items belonging to the Queen. Wilson also broke open a locked cabinet, rifled through it, and stole several valuables. Of course, it did not take long for the thefts to be discovered and for Wilson to be charged as a thief.

After Wilson was apprehended, she was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to death. The Queen’s goodness showed when she intervened on Wilson's behalf and had Wilson's sentence reduced: Wilson would not be executed but rather sent to the colony of Maryland. Thus, Wilson arrived in Baltimore, Maryland, in the fall of 1771 and subsequently became an indentured servant to a William Devall of Bush Creek, of Frederick County.

Henrietta Maria, the French Princess
 and Queen Consort of Charles I
 after whom "Maryland," was named.
Courtesy of Wikipedia

Wilson did not remain with Devall for long. A few days after Wilson began working for Devall, she escaped to Charlestown, South Carolina, and there began to pass herself off as a sister to the Queen. Wilson called herself Princess Susannah Caroline Matilda. Apparently, Wilson had also retained some clothes of the Queen, some jewels, and a few other possessions, "among which was a miniature of Her Majesty." These possessions allowed Wilson to appear regal and royal.

To ensure the ruse worked, Wilson told everyone she left England to avoid an unpleasant marriage that was about to be thrust upon by her "august relations." Her ruse was so perfect that the Charlestown town crier announced her as "her Serene Highness," and she met some of the most respectable and important people of the area. In addition, under this pretense as the Queen’s sister, Wilson travelled from house to house making "astonishing impressions in many places, affecting the mode of royalty so inimitably, that many had the honour to kiss her hand."

Advertisement by William Devall
to Retrieve Sarah Wilson,
Public Domain

Despite Wilson’s skill at impersonating royalty, not everyone she met was gullible. Some people questioned why Wilson only spoke English, when, similar to Queen Charlotte, she was supposedly born in Germany. Another thing that raised people's suspicions was that most people were unaware Queen Charlotte had a sister, let alone a younger one.

Eventually, Wilson’s impersonation ruse came to an end when Devall received word that someone looking much like Wilson was claiming to be the Queen's sister. He published a notice in the newspaper that stated: "SARAH WILSON ... has changed her name to Lady Susanna Caroline Matilda, which made the public believe that she was his Majesty's sister; she has a blemish in her right eye, black rolled hair, stoops in the shoulders, makes a common practice of writing and marking her clothes with a crown and a B. Whoever secures the said servant woman, or takes her home, shall receive Five Pistoles, besides all costs and charges.”

The five pistoles went to a Michael Dalton who found Wilson near Charlestown in Virginia and dragged her back to Bush Creek. There Wilson remained for two years, until Devall became a rebel in America's War of Independence. At that time, Wilson once again fled. The last report of Wilson was when she married a Dragoon officer named William Talbot. They later opened a business in the Bowery area of New York and had a large family.

References:

“Advertisement,” in Caledonian Mercury, 26 June 1773

"America," in Caledonian Mercury, 26 June 1773

"America," in Reading Mercury, 28 June 1773

Appleby, Joyce and et al, Encyclopedia of Women in American History, 2015

Watkins, John, Memoirs of Her Most Excellent Majesty Sophia-Charlotte, 1819

You can find out more about Geri and her book using the following links:

Website - http://.geriwalton.com/

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/geri.walton

Twitter - @18thCand19thC

Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1473853338/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1473853338&linkCode=as2&tag=geriw-21

Pen and Sword - http://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Marie-Antoinettes-Confidante-Hardback/p/12260/aid/1154

Love Letters - The Paper

This month’s theme is Love Letters, but before you can write a letter, you need paper.

As England moved into the 18^th Century most of the paper being used was French, German or Dutch. There were a few paper mills dotted around the kingdom and one in Edinburgh by the mid century and of course, all the paper had to be made by hand.

In 1709 Britain invited Europeans to settle in its American colonies but German arrivals at London were far greater than shipping could take so some returned to Germany but others were relocated, mainly in Ireland but others stayed in England. One such was a man called Isaac Tipps who decided to settle on the Isle of Wight in Hampshire. He is recorded as a paper maker when he married Christian Rutter in 1711. It turned out that the Isle of Wight was not a particularly good location and the mill enjoyed only a brief life but local historians think that it provided coarse wrapping paper for local trades.

Whatever its quality paper is a fibrous mat made by mixing fibres with water, colour or bleach to make a suspension, when the water is drained away the fibres are pressed and dried to make a flexible bonded sheet. Any fibres will do, plant fibres were first used by the Ancient Egyptians to make papyrus but by the middle ages the European paper industry was based on the shredding of rags or other waste textile material. The rags were sorted and cut by women then boiled in open tanks using wood ash as a source of alkali to break the fibres down. The resulting grey slush was sorted and washed to shallow tanks or stone troughs to clean it then hammered with iron shod stamping hammers, similar to the type used for fulling cloth. The longer the fibres were hammered the finer the resulting paper.

Sorting the rags

Hammering the fibres

Making the sheets

Hanging the sheets to dry

As the 18^th century progressed the production and use of paper in Britain gradually increased as higher rates of duty reduced imports. The British paper industry was able to rise to the challenge with the help of the introduction of a rag- machine known as a ‘Hollander’, invented in Netherlands sometime before 1670; it replaced the stamping mills that had previously been used for the breaking down of the rags and beating of the pulp. 

John Baskerville, Printer

The second was the creation of a woven mould John Baskerville, a Birmingham printer, who is more widely known for his Bakerville typeface these days than his printing. He wanted to improve the quality of his printing so he collaborated with James Whatman the Elder and developed a woven wire fabric to strain the fibres on, thus producing the first woven paper in 1757.

John Dickinson, Papermaker

The transition from hanging each separate sheet out to dry to creating a continuous roll began in 1809 when John Dickinson patented a machine where a wire-cloth covered cylinder revolved in the pulp suspension. The water drained away through the centre of the cylinder and a continuous layer of pulp was laid onto a felt covered roller (later replaced by a continuous felt passing round a roller) so that the sheets could be made to any length and cut to any size. Backed by George Longman, whose family controlled the Longman publishing firm, he established a number of paper mills in the south of England taking advantage of water for power and canals for transportation of his wears. Dickinson brands are still available today - Basildon Bond and Black and Red accounts books.

Production was further enhanced in 1821 when T B Crompton patented a method of drying the paper continuously; using a woven fabric to hold the sheet against steam heated drying cylinders.

In 1850, Dickenson’s  company started mechanical envelope manufacturing, with gummed envelopes for the first time and they pioneered the production of window envelopes in 1929.

In America, Thomas Gilpin opened a mill in Brandywine, Maryland using the cylinder paper machine in 1817. This was the first machine paper mill in the US. This mill operated from 1809 to 1828.

Today paper is still made by hand for specialist purposes and as lovely gift wrapping.

For further information see:

http://paper.lib.uiowa.edu/european.php

http://www.peacepaperproject.org/dardhunter.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Baskerville

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dickinson_Stationery

http://www.iwhistory.org.uk/papermill/