| Notes |
-- Signed "Tulleken Jemima Jones" on her marriage record.
Marriage Licence was given to Earl Cornwallis and Tulleken Jemima Jones.
Listed as Tulleken Jemima on the Baptism record for her daughter, Mary.
Transcription of the Baptism record for her son, Charles, gives it as Jemima Tullikens.
--- Great-grandfather had been a Dutch General William Tullekens.
--- Father was Colonel James Jones, Esq.
--- Buried at aged 31 years.
--- "Kentish Gazette" 20 Feb 1779, page 3:
Died. Sunday night, at Culford in Essex, the Right Hon. the Countess of Cornwallis, Lady of the present Earl.
--- "Lives of Indian Officers" Vol. 1 by Sir John Kaye, 1867, page 13:
. . . But the official answer of the King's Government had scarcely been received, when tidings reached Cornwallis that his wife was dying. The year was then far spent, and the army was going into winter-quarters; so he determined to RESIgn his command, and to set his face again towards England. The necessary permission was obtained from Clinton; and, in a state of extreme anxiety and depression, Cornwallis put himself on board ship. In the middle of the month of December he reached Culford. His wife was still alive; but all hope of her recovery had gone. It was now too late even for his presence to save. She survived her husband's return for two months, and then passed away to her rest.*
*Lady Cornwallis died on the 16th of February, 1779. The morbid fancy which she had expressed to be buried with a thorn-tree planted over her heart was complied with, and no name wass engraved on the slab which marked the place in teh vault at Culford where her remains were interred. Mr. Ross adds, that "the thorn-tree was necessarily removed in March, 1855, in consequence of alterations in the church: it was carefully replanted in the churchyard, but did not live more than three years afterwards." -- Cornwallis Correspondence. Ross.
--- "Somerset County Historical Quarterly"' Vol 5, 1916, page 16:
He [General Cornwallis] returned to England in January, 1778, but sailed again from St. Helens in the 'Trident' on the 21st of April, following. Lady Cornwallis and her children accompanied him to Portsmouth, and after his departure she returned to Culford, where she resumed the solitary life she had led since his first departure, but grief so preyed upon her health as to bring on a kind of jaundice, of which she eventually died, February,k 14, 1779. When Lord Cornwallis heard of her dangerous state, he threw up his command and again came to England, where he arrived a few weeks before her death.
Lady Cornwallis always declared to her confidential attendant that she was dying of a broken heart, and she requested that a thorn-tree should be planted above the vault when she was buried, as nearly as possible over her heart -- significant of the sorrow which destroyed her life. She also directed that no stone should be engraved to her memory. Both wishes were complied with.
--- "The Olden TIme" Vol. 2, 1848, page 366:
Concerning his career in America, Mr. Jesse does not know whether Lord Cornwallis "is most to be blamed or pitied for his memorable and inglorious surrender." Subsequently, both in India and Ireland, Marquis Cornwallis redeemed his reputation; or at all events showed that he was not wanting in the personal attributes of courage, energy, benevolence and military talents. In private life he seems to have been a most estimable character. Under date of April, 1771, Lord Carlisle sympathizes in his parting from his family. To this the editor has appended an interesting comment. "Lady Cornwallis, on the first tidings of her husband's appointment to serve in America, flew to hus uncle, Dr. Cornwallis, Archbishop of Canterbury, and so deeply affected him by the anquish which she displayed at the thoughts of their separation, that by his means the king was induced to make an arrangement which superceded the appointment of Lord Cornwallis. The later, however, sacrificing his private feelings to the calls of duty and honor, immediately waited on the king, and expostulated so warmly on the injury which might accrue to his reputation, that the appointment was allowed to go forward. He departed on his expedition, and the following year Lady Cornwallis died, as there is every reason to believe, a martyr to the effects of this melancholy separation."
--- "The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire" by H.W. Crocker, 2011, page 62:
In 1768, he married Jemima Tullekin Jones, the daughter of a regimental colonel. The couple was ardently devoted; it was alleged she died (in 1779) because hi long absences fighting the American colonists broke her heart. Her death, Cornwallis wrote, "effectually destroyed all my hopes of happiness in this world. I will not dwell on this wretched subject, the thoughts of which harrow up my soul."
--- "Washington and Cornwallis: The Battle for America" by Benton Rain Patterson, 2004, page 193:
On November 27, 1778, Cornwallis, along with the members of the failed Carlisle Peace Commission, who had been his fellow passengers on the voyage to America months earlier, sailed from Sandy Hook, bound for Plymouth, England
His ship reached Plymouth on December 19, and Cornwallis arrived in London on December 23. Apparently without discussing the matter with the secretary of state for American colonies, Goerge Germain, or the king, Cornwallis turned in his RESIgnation from the army. King George, probably sympathizing with him during the grave illness of Jemima, accepted the RESIgnation. Cornwallis then left London and hurried to his Suffolk estate and the bedside of his wife, whom he found, as he siad, in "a very weak state indeed," suffering apparently from a liver disease.
Through a cheerless Christmas and bleak January he remained with her, refusing to leave the manor to socialize with friends or to take care of business matters. Jemima's illness preoccupied him. "The very ill state of health in which I found Lady Cornwallis," he told Clinton in a letter, "has render'd me incapable of any attention but to her, and the thoughts of her danger is forever present in my mind."
On February 14, 1779, St. Valentine's Day, Cornwallis's beloved Jemima died.
Deeply grieving and inconsolable, he shut himself off from friends, refusing to see or talk to anyone except his closest family members. His emotions, normally held in check by aristocratic reserve, poured onto the pages of letters he wrote to those closest to him. He told his brother William that Jemima's death had "effectually destroyed all my hopes of happiness in this world." Merely the thought of her, he wrote, would "harrow up" his soul.
|
Abt 1747 - 1779 (32 years)
[1]