The Symonds Sisters

The sisters of two local admirals, Thomas Edward and Sir William Symonds, lived at Milford in the early years of the nineteenth century.

(Mary Anne) Theresa …

… married Captain John Whitby and lived at Newlands in the care of Admiral Cornwallis after her husband’s early death in 1806. Cornwallis left Newlands to Mrs Whitby in his will.

Juliana …

… was the one sister not to marry, devoting her life to the welfare of her family. She was a chaperone for Theresa when the latter lived with Cornwallis, a role which also involved looking after the Touzi twins brought home from San Domingo by Thomas Edward in 1809. She left Newlands to look after William’s children, but was needed even more to adopt a similar function for Merelina’s offspring. She returned to Ivy Bank Cottage in Milford in the 1850s, and lived there until her death in 1873.

Sophia…

… married William Reynolds of Milford House, but financial embarrassment led them to leave for his estates in Jamaica. She bore her husband nine children before dying at the age of 40. Many of her children returned to England, and one daughter, also Sophia, became Mrs Whitby’s companion in the latter’s later years.

Merelina…

… married an up-and coming-lawyer, Nicholas Tindal, later Solicitor-General and then Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. She died in her thirtieth year soon after the birth of her sixth child.

References

Diana K Caldicott, Milford House, 1979, Lentune Press

J. A. Hamilton revised by Hugh Mooney, Tindal, Sir Nicholas Conyngham (1776–1846), 2004, Oxford DNB.

Barry Jolly, Mrs Whitby’s Locket, 2011, Milford-on-Sea Historical Record Society.

Barry Jolly, The Family of Captain Thomas Symonds at Milford in Milford-on-Sea Historical Record Society Occasional Magazine 2016.

Records

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