Afterword

This story has been an attempt to disentangle the contents of a single boxfile of old and fading family documents, elucidate on them using the vast array of digital resources now available and thereby record the family history of Hetty Jane Owen. Of course, many parts of the narrative, just like Henry Bradley’s handwriting could not be deciphered. The most intriguing of these missing stories is perhaps the story of when and why, Hetty’s great-great grandmother, Maria West left Downpatrick, made her way to London, and then what impelled her into a relationship with Richard Wombwell. The saga of the Irish lands of the Wests and Wombwells meanwhile takes the mystery further back to her cousin, Elizabeth Carson, and why Elizabeth too left the country that she was so clearly attached to, and crossed the sea to Bristol.

The Hanging of Thomas Russell in Downpatrick.

Unlike Maria however, Elizabeth’s heart and mind seemed to remain in Downpatrick. She passed on lands nearby for the building of a new Presbyterian Church and left an annual bequest for the poor of Downpatrick, irrespective of their religion. This last condition carried with it a real sense not just of charity, but the spirit of the failed United Irishmen movement and 1798 rebellion. Both Elizabeth and Maria were of this generation, and it is not inconceivable that they had connections with some of the players that participated in the drama as it unfolded. Even minor contacts of this type could at the time have proved to be very dangerous indeed.
The tragedy of the failure of the United Irishmen was that it was to prove too much for future generations to permanently accommodate each other in a united Ireland free of sectarian politics. This is one reason why France and the French revolution held such an appeal to the United Irishmen, and the allure of government from Westminster did not. It was the promise of a secular state in which religion was left to individual conscience and had no further influence. The hold of religion and the strength of its grip on the identity of the actors had not dissipated when the Owens made their way from Wales to London, carrying with them their Welsh Calvinist-Methodist traditions and language, and when George Wombwell junior’s daughter departed to spread the word on the banks of the Yangtze river.

The Owen and Eldridge family effectively evolved through a series of independent migrations down to London, not all of which we were able to identify in the research conducted. So, what eventually, they all had in common beyond being Welsh, Irish or English, was that they were all Londoners, part of a great cosmopolitan, multicultural trading centre, even in their day. To what extent they were able to hold on to their wider identities in this environment varied according to more mundane social factors. The Irish side lasted barely a generation, unsurprisingly, since Maria West was its sole representative. The Owens kept their own Welsh culture alive much longer, but then again they migrated as something of an extended clan, still not enough however for their traditions and outlook to be perpetuated in the lives of future generations.

Part of the compelling urge to record this family history, has been based on the belief that it is worth passing on the tales of these families, since the shaping of identity is just as much an individual and community matter, as it is a social or political issue. It is also a profoundly personal and even sometimes emotional way of exploring history, and a healthy counterbalancing activity to the way history is used ideologically and politically to try and selectively create a synthetic identity, as so hilariously exemplified by the current British Citizenship Test.

It is at the end of the day, not that important whether the future generations can recite the correct dates in Pavlovian fashion for the Battles of Agincourt, Trafalgar and Waterloo. But I would like them to know a little about their origins, and roots back - in our case in Downpatrick and Bala, and the lives their ancestors led as menagerists, missionaries, mariners and more, as well as appreciate the very different but equally fascinating tales of those they came into contact with from all around the British Isles, Europe and the world beyond.

The Start-Up

So the story goes that George Wombwell arrived in London around the turn of the nineteenth century and set up business as a cordwainer in Soho. He did have an older first cousin already in London who had somehow succeeded in attaching himself to an Irishwoman, one Maria West, who, if her stories were to be believed, had something of a pedigree in County Down. There was every chance that it was this cousin, Richard Wombwell, who helped George adapt to London life. Richard had already set up as a grocer and chandler near the docks, and George, ever curious, purchased for himself at no small expense, apparently, a pair of boa constrictors from one of the incoming ships. 

How he acquired such funds however is another mystery. It has been speculated that Maria West may have been the source. However, we know that Maria’s father, Godfrey West left Ireland and went to Liverpool as a result of his own business failure. For sure, three decades later, Maria was to inherit a portfolio of rental lands in County Down from her cousin, Elizabeth Carson. But there is no evidence that at this point that she had any disposable capital or income in hand. Had this been the case, her relationship with Richard Wombwell becomes even more unlikely. And even if accepted, the idea that she would then invest her savings in a pair of boa constrictors at the behest of the younger cousin of her husband looks simply preposterous. 

An alternative explanation of course is that the purchase price of the boas was retrospectively vastly inflated, to conform with the brand of the menagerie in bringing to the British public exotic and valuable species from the distant reaches of the known world. George may just have picked up the snakes from an incoming ship for next to nothing from sailors who were only to pleased to be provided with a few pennies in return for getting shot of them.  

Whatever the truth of the matter, Maria West remained close enough to George over the years to make him the executor of her will, and George, reportedly, maintained a particular affection for snakes throughout his career. 

The sad case of Tom Soaper, reported in the second volume of Shaun Everett's biography of George Wombwell does not seem to have altered this. With the nascent menagerie now based in Picadilly, Tom Soaper took the unwise decision one day in 1809 whilst in a state of intoxication to try and make a closer acquaintance with a Wombwell rattlesnake. He died shortly after in St. George's hospital, the first but by no means the last human victim of the Wombwell operation. 

Born to be a Wild Beast

To return to the Daily Mail of the 4th January, 1897, and going back to earlier days, the investigating journalist paused to note that:

George Wombwell’s uncle was the original menagerie proprietor of that name. Singularly enough, George himself was born in what at one time had done duty as an elephant house, but which had been converted by his father into a living room.

“It made a capital room”, said the old man, “and stood for years by the side of our cottage. People used to say I was born to be a wild beast then and sure enough, when I was ten years old, it was agreed that my uncle should adopt me.” 

Reading between the lines, it rather seems that George's parents, Zachariah Wombwell and Mary Webb, were not displeased to be rid of their 'problem child'. It seems also that Zachariah may well have been working for the menagerie and at one point at least, looking after Wombwell elephants before embarking on one of the more unusual home conversion projects of his or anyone else's time and transforming the elephant house into his living room.

George junior was born in Stoke Newington in around 1822. His mother was still there in 1841, and duly recorded in the census of that year, the very first national census of our times. The Wombwell home, and hence the original elephant house were almost certainly in Lordship Road, just off Church Street. 

From a website devoted to the villas that were built along Lordship Road, beginning around 1835. As a rural area just north of the city, the location would have been ideal as a transit and storage point for the Wombwell menagerie in its early days.

And on that very same census day, the recording officials also duly noted the details for the family living next door. It is just possible that they may have detected in the elderly lady they encountered there a hint or more of an Irish accent. Either way, she was giving no more away than she needed to, and the census record that survives suggests that she was originally from Middlesex. 

All this was very far from being the case however. The lady in question, also carrying the Wombwell surname, was in fact the daughter of an Irish freemason, Godfrey West and grand-daughter of a distinguished Downpatrick doctor and army lieutenant, Seneca Hadzor. Her line stretched back to Norman Irish barons, and to eminent Anglo-Irish families in County Down, from whom roughly a decade earlier she had inherited substantial holdings through her cousin, Elizabeth Carson.

In short, Maria West of Downpatrick would have been very well acquainted with that 'wild beast', who in 1897 was relaying his own memories to the Daily Mail.       

The Final Years of Maria West

As Maria West entered the final years of her life, she seems to have been considerably exercised by the future of the portfolio of Downpatrick lands that she had inherited from her first cousin, Elizabeth Carson. 

St. Mary, Stoke Newington from
Ancestry Images

Her last will is an extraordinarily long, detailed, and closely-written document much of which is devoted to trustee arrangements for the lands. In the first version, she leaves the lands in trusteeship to George Wombwell of Commercial Road London, with the said George being assigned the responsibility to distribute the rents between her daughters. She revoked this arrangement in a codicil however and reassigned the trusteeship. Given that the year was now 1839, and the children fully adult, the arrangements seem somewhat curious. 

Maria died in 1846 in Stoke Newington. In her will, which is is over six pages long, not a hint is delivered as to her origins and family back in Downpatrick, nor to the exact nature of her relationship with the Elizabeth Carson of Bristol from whom she inherited the lands.

Whatever had brought Maria to London, and whatever circumstances she found herself in, she must at least have enjoyed a life of comfort once the lawyers back in Downpatrick had arranged for the rentals to be transferred to her.

Maria West and Richard Wombwell

The first record of Maria West in England is from 1798, the year of the United Irishmen rebellion. Whilst Ireland descended into turmoil once more, Maria, now aged thirty-three, had somehow managed to take up with a man of apparently simple farming origins from Essex named Richard Wombwell. 

Without troubling themselves with marital formalities, they had a child in 1798, Elizabeth, who did not survive. 

Old Church in St Pancras in 1815, where Maria West married Richard Wombwell.
Picture from Wikipedia.

Undeterred, they continued their relationship, and another child resulted in 1801, Sophia Wombwell. Only after this did they take the final plunge, and walk down the aisle of Old Church, St. Pancras, London, there to become man and wife. 

The couple had a third daughter in 1804, to be known as Harriett Wombwell, who was the great-grandmother of Hetty Jane Owen. A fourth daughter, Eliza, followed in 1808. She must also have died young.

In these early days, the couple moved around London. Their first two daughters seem to have born somewhere in St. Marylebone Road. Harriett was born in St. George of the East, and Eliza in Mile End Old Town. Their father, Richard Wombwell is variously recorded as having been a chandler, a grocer, and a livery stable keeper. They eventually settled in St. Mary, Stoke Newington, where Richard died in 1833.

Maria lived on and took over from her late husband as livery stable keeper, inheriting, as we know, in around 1834, a large portfolio of Irish fee farm rentals from her first cousin, Elizabeth Carson.

Maria West Crosses The Irish Sea

Rolling back through time to Downpatrick to the family of Godfrey West and Elizabeth Hadzor, it is time to relocate Maria West, the younger sister of Susanna West, and the x2 great-grandmother of Hetty Jane Owen.

Looking up the Quoile River towards Downpatrick, just near Captain Richard West's Tower House, 2016

To recap: Godfrey West ran into financial problems and left Ireland for good, leaving his wife, Elizabeth Hadzor behind. Elizabeth lived on until 1816, long enough to see her daughter Susanna West married off to William Casement, and the birth of her grand-daughter, Rose Casement, who was later to marry James Rentoul. From this marriage, we have been able to put together quite a comprehensive picture of Susanna's descendants.

With Maria West however mysteries abound. She was born in Downpatrick, or at least was baptized there, on the 13th February, 1765. We know nothing more about her early life.

However, at some point, certainly before 1798, she crossed the Irish Sea and most likely never ever returned to her home country. 

Could she have gone with her father, Godfrey West to Liverpool following his bankruptcy? 

Or might she have departed to Bristol to stay with her cousin, Elizabeth Carson, daughter of John Potter, the then owner of the Irish lands? 

Or did Elizabeth Hadzor have contacts still from the connections of the Hadzors in the British military and decide to take advantage of these contacts to move Maria away from rebellion prone Downpatrick? In which case why did other members of the family not follow or accompany her? 

Family scandal would be another possibility. So too, in fact, would be involvement directly or indirectly in the political activities of The United Irishman, to whom Elizabeth Carson hinted sympathy in her will.

All interesting questions, but there are simply no clues in the available documentation to support any of these theories, and no sight of Maria at all until she suddenly appears in London in 1798.  

Open Borders

Quoile Castle informational board, mentioning Captain Richard West as its likely builder. 

Travelling north from Dublin, it does not take too long to reach the extraordinary neolithic monument of Newgrange, testament to the skills and knowledge of the ancient Irish. From Newgrange, it is only short drive to the site of the Battle of the Boyne, the memory of which seems to be indelibly printed in the memory of all the Irish. Heading further north, crossing the border into the north is currently a seamless process, visible immediately only through the fact that roadsigns become English only, and that kilometres have been replaced by miles. 

But then you start to notice the flags, fluttering above the housetops, the Union Jack included, and you are reminded that still to this day the Orangemen cross annually to the south to celebrate their victory at the Boyne, on that seminal day when Hadzors and Wests briefly faced each other across the lines.

History runs deep in this part of the world. The Northern Irish, at a guess, are probably the fiercest of British patriots, determined to maintain their historical rights, and roots, and not be absorbed into any kind of Gaelic speaking, Catholic and Celtic counter-culture. 

What both sides of the island shared however until recently at least was membership of the European Union and an open border arrangement that  brought the communities of the island together. For the Irish, common membership of an impersonal and supranational, secular body with no historical stake or prejudice on the island seems to have provided a secure umbrella under which to develop the country as a whole. 

The prospect of a new hard border between North and South following a Brexit vote in which the Northern Irish asserted conclusively that they would like to stay in the European Union now occupies a central place in the discussion agenda

Being Ireland, the outcomes are unpredictable – but perhaps it is not beyond the realms of possibility that the day is not so very far off when the island will be fully reunited once more, and make its own way in the world. This is an outcome that has been made more likely – not less likely - by the Brexit referendum, which as far it proved anything, demonstrated only how English weight of numbers and power have always been the determinant of British policy and official identity. 

Should this day come, it would mark a triumph from beyond the grave for Thomas Russell and the short-lived United Irishman movement whose ideas briefly lit up the Downpatrick discussion circles within which the Wests, Hadzors, Potters, Nevins, Carsons and other Irish cousins of Hetty Jane Owen briefly weighed up their political options, and like so many others moved on and quietly vanished from the scene, leaving behind their lands, their mills, and their tower houses as faint whispers only of their extraordinary lives and times.

Jean Victor Bates

Of the sisters of Sir Richard Dawson Bates, and also a fourth cousin of Hetty Jane Owen, mention should also be made of Jane Bates. Jane shared her brothers’ passion for unionist politics, and became an author, writing under the nom de plume of Jean Victor Bates. Her books included:



Our Allies and Enemies in the Near East (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., ca. 1918), contributions by Edward Carson

Sir Edward Carson, Ulster Leader (London: J. Murray, 1921), contributions by Arthur James Balfour and James Craig Craigavon

Jean also drove an ambulance in Serbia in the First World War, as well as consorting with these notables of the day. 

(Thanks are due to Ms. Helen Johnston for alerting me to Jean Victor Bates, and the daughters of Richard Dawson Bates and Mary Dill).

Sir Richard Dawson Bates

From the History of Ireland website 

With Sir Richard Dawson Bates, all the old internecine Irish conflicts, resentments and fears resurface, wrapped up in a complex and committed personality that could never remotely be described as tolerant. A committed Ulster Unionist, Dawson had roles to play in the organization of Ulster Day and the signing of the Ulster covenant in 1912, as well as in the Larne gun-running operation of 1914, when the Unionists smuggled in arms to be used if necessary in fighting against the imposition of home rule.

In 1918, Dawson, along with Sir Edward Carson, helped establish the Ulster Unionist Labour Association, a Protestant, and specifically anti-socialist and anti-republican trade union movement. This sounds contradictory and almost certainly was. 

What the Association did help breed however was sectarianism. 
As the Belfast economy went into a downturn, the Protestants singled out the Catholics for moving into Protestant areas, and taking away jobs. Sectarian tension and retaliation followed, and local protection militia were formed. And of course as if this was not enough, the 1917 Russian revolution had now struck enough fear into establishment figures like Dawson Bates, that those with vaguely socialist notions were also to be excoriated as purveyors of division and disunity. The Wikipedia entry for Dawson Bates (albeit hardly neutral in discourse) portrays him touring the country intent on portraying all Roman Catholics as traitors. In office, he was accused of gerrymandering and intervening to ensure that Protestants who attacked Catholics were not punished. He was a keen proponent and supporter of the Civil Authorities Act of 1922, which restricted civil liberties and passed all kinds of arbitrary powers into the hands of the authorities, which he was then only too happy to use.

The Disappearance of the Potters

John Potter of 'The Hill' died finally on the 15th April, 1802, aged eighty-five, passing on his estates to his daughters, including Rose Nevin and Elizabeth Carson, later to pass at least some of her lands to her first cousin, Maria West.

Blackwood also notes that in his will, John also left legacies to John Johnston Potter, and David Johnston Potter. Blackwood clearly could not uncover exactly how John Johnston or David Johnston were related to John, and opened a new page for this branch. 

Copied from a Liverpool Irish website. The unique Liverpool identity,
and accent derive from Ireland, rather than England.
The slogan in the photo was coined at the time of the
1916 Easter Rebellion.

It is interesting to observe that like Godfrey West, these two Potters also left County Down for good, and made their way to Liverpool, there to make fresh starts in life. For whatever reason, all was not well for them in Downpatrick. 

Blackwood records six children for John Johnston Potter. Two of these children were apparently tinsmiths in Liverpool and Tranmere respectively. Of David Johnston Potter's four children, two became mariners.

It is said that probably three-quarters of Liverpool's population has Irish descent, with two major periods of influx taking place during the period of the great famine of the 1840s, and, earlier, at the time of the 1798 United Irish rebellion. And certainly it was around this time that both these two Potters along with Godfrey West arrived in the city.

There are a number of other Potters listed on the County Down website of Ros Davies, some no doubt relatives of John Potter, but again there are no clear-cut connections.

As we have learned though, the John Potter who married Maria Hadzor was a highly successful entrepreneur, and the man who was responsible for Harriett Wombwell inheriting her portfolio of County Down lands. The majority of his holdings and wealth passed to his daughters after his death. Whatever legacies he passed on to John Johnston and David Johnston Potter seem to have gone little way to securing for them the life of luxury that John and Maria must have enjoyed in Downpatrick.

Farewell to the Hadzors

Downpatrick Prison on Downpatrick Hill. Members of both the
Potter and West families had addresses on the Hill. The blue plaque to the left
marks the spot where Thomas Russell was hanged.

In a way, the Hadzor family represent the bridge between Hetty Jane Owen and her descendants back to the Normans, or Norsemen, who themselves were descendants of the Vikings and other Scandinavian raiders who settled in North France. 

Making their way through England after the Norman conquest, a branch of these Hadzors settled in Ireland as members of the new ruling class. Almost certainly originally speaking Norman French, over time they began to evolve a distinct Irish identity, which eventually led to the demise of and disappearance of many of the family as they came into conflict with the English establishment. 

Those that remained quietly adopted the Protestant faith, joined The Church of Ireland, and sought to maintain a high standard of life through education, career service, and marriage into well-off families, coming into close contact in the process with both later English Protestant and Scottish Presbyterian families.

Out of these connections, a portfolio of lands in County Down was created and passed down the family line, not to be finally dispensed with until 1881. These lands were the product of a highly successful smuggling enterprise conducted by the son in law of Dr. Seneca Hadzor, John Potter. 

John, in turn, left lands in his portfolio to his children, including Elizabeth Carson. When Elizabeth died in Bristol in 1833, she then bequeathed at least some of her lands to her first cousin, Maria West.

Maria West was the daughter of Elizabeth Hadzor (the daughter of Seneca Hadzor and Ruth Bankes), and her husband, Godfrey West.
She was the x2 great-grandmother of Hetty Jane Owen. 

As the Hadzor name now fades from the line, it is to the West family that this tale will now turn.

The Hanging of Thomas Russell

The Execution of Thomas Russell. From:
http://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/thomas-russell-united-irishman/

To say that the United Irishmen rebellion of 1798 was a failure is something of an understatement. One of its leading lights however, and an extraordinary figure and idealist in his own right was Thomas Russell, oddly enough a predecessor of Reginald Blackwood as Linen Hall Librarian in Belfast. Russell's dream of a United Ireland, free of English interference and sectarian division, and founded on principles that owed their origin to The French Revolution and Thomas Paine was not one however that was shared by the English establishment and Protestant Ascendancy.

In 1803 he was tried for his part in the rebellion, found guilty, and sentenced to death. He was moved to Downpatrick prison, and on the 21st October, brought outside the gates and publicly hanged and beheaded. 

Surveying his jury in 1803, Russell is said to have remarked that at least six of them had in the past lent their support to the very cause that he was about to die for. 

Sitting in that very jury listening - not necessarily altogether comfortably - was one Thomas Potter. Another jury member was Arthur Crawford, very possibly a relative of the James Crawford who was a partner in the Ballydugan Mill project. 

Who knows whether any of these Potters, Nevins, Carsons or Crawfords were on Downpatrick Hill that day to see Russell's gruesome end? They certainly had the opportunity should they have wished to witness the spectacle however.

Whatever their inner feelings though, they must have all recognised that the days of Whig Club debates were over. In 1801 the English had passed the Act of Union and abolished the Dublin Parliament, thus creating The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The Anglican Church was to be the official church of Ireland, and Catholics were not be allowed to hold public office. The Prime-Minister, William Pitt apparently intended to follow up the Act of Union with some form of Catholic emancipation, but had to resign when George III refused utterly to countenance any such concessions.

Russell spent his last days studying the Book of Revelations, and indeed asked for a stay of execution so that he could complete his commentary. With a macabre touch of gallows humour, the judge turned the request down. The time required to reach a complete understanding of the Book of Revelations, he remarked, would mean that Russell would most certainly end up living longer than most of those present in the courtroom. 

So when Elizabeth Carson wrote her final will in 1833 and made her bequest to the poor of Downpatrick to be distributed without regard to religious distinction, she may just have been thinking back to the days of the United Irishmen and their vision of a united Ireland undivided by sectarianism. 

A New Presbyterian Church for Kilmore

Kilmore Presbyterian Church from the Church website  
built on lands donated by Elizabeth Carson and Rose Nevin.

For the Hadzors of Downpatrick, members of a distinguished Anglo-Norman family that managed on a serial basis over the centuries to fall foul of the English establishment, the eighteenth century represented an attempt to regroup and prosper by conforming to English imperatives. 

Ironically, as their name faded away, the prosperity they sought came not through the English, but via a Scots-Irish entrepreneur with a taste for transatlantic smuggling, namely, John Potter, the son-in-law of Seneca Hadzor.

The Potters it would appear believed in rendering unto God what was God's but not necessarily rendering unto Caesar what was Caesar's. This would have been understandable. Religious taxation and tithes tended to be collected from all, but used only to fund the established church, in other words the Church of Ireland. Furthermore, Presbyterians as well as Catholics still as the eighteenth century drew to a close were deprived of rights, including the right to vote. To suggest therefore to a wealth-creator like John Potter that he might willingly submit his business accounts for the scrutiny of the official customs and excise officers of the day might just have provoked a fairly sharp response. 

The excerpt below is from a chronicle published in the 1830s by the non-subscribing Presbyterian community. It gives something of a flavour of the highly-charged theological disputes of the day, but beyond this tells of the building of a new Presbyterian church in the Parish of Kilmore.

Where did the land for this new church come from? 

From none other, it would appear than Elizabeth Carson, and Rose Nevin, the daughters of the smuggler, John Potter.

Elizabeth Carson Makes a Bequest

How and why Elizabeth Carson ended up living out her last days in Bristol is not known. She certainly did not emigrate because of poverty however. She was able to afford grand gestures in her final will, notable enough that the following record made its way into English parliamentary records:

http://www.dippam.ac.uk/eppi/documents/11900/page/279406

It would have been in this will that Elizabeth passed along the lands that ended up in the 1881 Belfast auction to her first cousin, Maria West, who by this time was also in England, had married, and was known as Maria Wombwell. 

There is a little political sting in this bequest however that should not pass by unnoticed. Elizabeth felt it necessary to state that her bequest should operate without any religious distinction, a condition that might just help provide some insight into the political outlook and activities of her wider family. 

The Lands of Elizabeth Carson

When John Potter died in 1802, aged 85, he must have left quite an empire of real estate. Sorting out these lands, and deciding who owned or who would own what seems to have taken quite some time if the 1881 Auction Lot details are interpreted correctly. 

And here in the auction documentation, a full cast of characters emerges. Elizabeth Carson, her sister Rose Nevin, her first cousin Maria West (Wombwell) to whom Elizabeth Carson was to leave the lands described in the 1881 auction, and Maria's daughter, Harriett Wombwell (Robinson), who was to inherit the lands in her turn in around 1846.

John and Joseph Richardson were also involved. This would have been the John Richardson who is recorded with his brother Joseph as operating the Down and Saul Office and Corn Merchants in Irish Street, as well as acting for agents for emigrants to Canada (1832) and operating the Saul Distillery (1846 and 1850). A John Richardson was also Director of the County Down and Liverpool Steamboat Company in 1836. (See: Ros Davies County Down website).

Catherine West meanwhile, was Maria West's sister, and hence another first cousin of Elizabeth Carson. The auction descriptions seem to suggest that she too was alive and involved in 1834.

Problems and disputes over these lands were to continue all the way to the Robinson v Neale case referred to, which was to be conducted in the High Court of London in 1863. For now however, what can be definitely concluded is that the Irish lands that were sold off in 1881 were inherited by Maria West from her first cousin, Elizabeth Carson, the daughter of John Potter and Maria Hadzor.

George Gordon Carson and Elizabeth Potter

George Gordon Carson was a lawyer, and probably the son of Robert Carson, himself a Downpatrick lawyer, resident in the Downpatrick suburb of Vianstown. 

George married Elizabeth Potter, daughter of John Potter, and granddaughter of Seneca Hadzor in 1785. According to Blackwood, the couple separated around 1794, and George died on the 14th June, 1802, aged 55. 

Elizabeth  lived on, and at some point moved across the Irish Sea to Bristol, England, where she died in 1833. 

Obituary for Elizabeth Carson from the 1833 Gentleman's Magazine, 

and Historical Chronicle, Vol. 103. Available on Google books.

Elizabeth Carson is the next key figure in the saga of the 1881 land auction, and is clearly identified in the auction documentation.

Griffith's Valuation

Between 1848 and 1864 an exhaustive survey of Irish land occupation was conducted by Sir Richard Griffith, an Irish geologist. The survey took in some one million individuals for the purpose of establishing rental and tax rates. The results survive to this day, and are now available in digital format as a searchable database.

The lands were concentrated in Ballee, Ballyedock was across the water.
Map from Ros Davies' County Down Site

There are a number of references in Griffiths valuation to the representatives of one Mrs Wombwell and providing information about the immediate tenants or occupiers, the land in question, and the rental paid to the `immediate leaser’. To take just one instance, a John Lowey was leasing land of just over 7 acres in Ballyhossett, Milltown, from the representatives of Mrs Wombwell for a rental of just over 7 pounds per annum.

The late Mrs Wombwell in question is Harriett’s late mother, Maria West, and from the Conditions of Sale that came with the auction lots, it transpires that Maria had in turn inherited the lands from one Elizabeth Carson. Potential bidders are warned that in no case are they entitled to dispute the wills either of Maria Wombwell, nor Elizabeth Carson, and nor for that matter the decision of Vice-Chancellor Malins in the Robinson vs. Neale case (1865), that Harriett Robinson was the only living daughter of Maria Wombwell at the time of death of Elizabeth Carson. It was not for a very long time in the researching of this history that the import of this judgement and all that it entailed was to become apparent. For the family involved, as we shall see later, it was to be something of a mid-Victorian bombshell.

It also emerges from the auction documentation and Harriet Wombwell’s will that the representatives of Mrs Wombwell referred to included initially Hugh Wallace, Seneschal of Downpatrick, and thereafter his son, William Nevin Wallace. Somehow the Wombwell family had also acquired for themselves representation by one of Ireland’s most famous and prestigious legal families with offices in Dublin, Belfast, and Downpatrick.