Adelaide Hellen

biography

From Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Apr 1 2017, 1:58:39 UTC

Adelaide (Johnson) Hellen was the second wife of Walter Hellen Jr., his first, her older sister Anne "Nancy" Johnson. Per some undocumented sources she was a young widow with a child at the time of her marriage to Walter. Walter and Adelaide had one confirmed son, Walter IV, born in 1814. His death appears to have been about 1850, but no records or place of burial can be found so no memorial has been added. Adelaide later had a second child, not Walter's it appears, per the link below. See the bio attached to Walter's memorial, link to her daughter, Georgiana, and note below on the marker in Rock Creek Cemetery below for additional information.

"Three years after Nancy died in 1810, he married Adelaide Johnson, Nancy's younger sister, on Oct 14, 1813, and of course, also his first cousin and former sister-in-law. The Johnson family did not approve, thinking this “inappropriate”, plus Adelaide being twenty-two years his junior. Some sources note her as a young widow with a child at the time of the marriage, but are to date unconfirmed. They would have one child, Walter IV, 1814, before Walter's death at only age forty-nine in 1815. The cause of death was noted as a result of “a lifelong battle with consumption” (tuberculosis), possibly acerbated by conditions experienced when forced to flee his home during the British occupation of Washington in 1814.
"Although noted as an exceptionally generous man all his life, oddly, upon his death, Adelaide and her infant son (sons?), were left only the Georgetown home and furnishings plus per annum income from rentals...barely enough to life on and only as long as she did not remarry. She was then forced to sue to get the legal inheritance then due a wife by law. Walter’s heirs were astonished to learn the full extent of his wealth upon his death; over sixty thousand (1815) dollars (equivalent)...equal to many millions today.
"Adelaide won her suit against her husband’s estate, but never remarried. She did however have another child, illegitimate, daughter Georgiana Adalide, born between 1817 and 1822, and fathered, it appears, by her mother’s brother-in-law, Col. George Boyd. Georgiana assumed the surname Hellen, the circumstances of her birth quietly glossed over.

She came to inherit the plot in Rock Creek Cemetery where Walter was buried in 1815 with his first wife, Nancy Johnson, Adelaide's older sister, plus two of their sons, and Nancy and Adelaide's mother, Catherine Nuth Johnson. She then had several more of her family interred there afterwards, up until her death, a listing of all twleve names inscribed on the single marker as follows:

Inscriptions on the “obelisk” marking the plot, in known order of interment:

• Washington Hellen, 1805 – no memorial to date
• Walter Hellen III, 1806 – no memorial to date
• Anne “Nancy Johnson Hellen, 1810 – see link
• Catherine Nuth Johnson, 1811 – see link – not buried with her husband Joshua for some reason.
• Walter Hellen Jr., 1815 - see link

After Walter’s death and Adelaide’s lawsuit, the plot appears to have become her property, the following interments made there by her, and limited to her family.

• Eugene Joseph Moody, 1840 – Adelaide’s grandson by Georgiana - link pending
• Thomas Baker Johnson, 1845 – her lifelong bachelor brother –
• William Stevens Smith – no date inscribed – see note below*
• Adelaide Maria Moody - 1862 - link pending
• Georgiana Adelaide Hellen Moody, 1863 – see link
• Adelaide Johnson Hellen, 1877 – link pending

And finally, her son-in-law, who inherited the plot upon her death:

• Theodore Lyman Moody, 1878 - link pending
• William Stevens Smith cannot be identified and no date of birth or death is inscribed. As his name is below that of Thomas Baker Johnson on one face of the marker, about all that can be surmised is that he died after 1845, but with names carved on all the available space on the maker, it could have been later, after Georgiana in 1863, but assumed before Adelaide herself, she likely having him interred her, not her son-in-law. He just may have been the son of her first marriage, so her first husband a Smith, but that remains speculation.

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• "District of Columbia Marriages, 1811-1950", database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VNTM-C6G : 1 June 2015), Walter Hellen and Adelade Johnson, 1813.