Margaret Tryon

In 1757, William Tryon married Margaret Wake, a London heiress with a dowry of 30,000 pounds. Her father, William Wake, had been the Honourable East India Company's Governor in Bombay from 1742-50, and had died on a ship off the Cape of Good Hope on the voyage home.

Wake County, North Carolina is named in her honor.

Family

Margaret was the daughter of William Wake and Elizabeth Elwin.

She married William Tryon on 26 December 1757 at Saint George’s Church, London, England.

Their daughter Margaret died in England, unmarried, at age thirty, and their son died in infancy in North Carolina.

Biography

From a biography of William Tryon

Mrs. Tryon was an extraordinary person. She was described as a “finely accomplish’d Lady,” with a talent for playing the organ and spinet. One of her acquaintances wrote that she was “a very sensible Woman, & indeed what you called a learned one.” But she was also thought to be a little odd. Whenever she could, she ignored women’s company, to the mortification of ladies in high society, and involved herself in the conversation of the menfolk. By such practices she created little “incidents” from time to time when she was acting as hostess during her husband’s official entertaining. In addition she insisted on being addressed as “Her Excellency” and much preferred to devote her time to reading and writing about military fortifications than to idle social chit-chat. It is no wonder that many people “called her mad,” as Janet Livingston Montgomery noted in her memoirs; “she was certainly eccentric.” For all her oddities of personality, however, Mrs. Tryon was devoted to her husband and always supported him in his dual careers. To be sure, there were things that Tryon had to overlook in Margaret Wake Tryon, but just as surely there were things that she had to overlook in her husband—not least his support of an illegitimate daughter from a former liaison.[5]

5. Paul David Nelson (1990), William Tryon and the Course of Empire: A Life in British Imperial Service, University of North Carolina Press Books, p. 8

References

• https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Wake-364
• Tryon Family Bible Records.link "Febry ye 16 / 1819 Mrs Margaret Tryon Widdow of General Tryon, died in Yarmouth, & was buried in a Vault in Twickenham Church Yard, Aged 86 years"
• https://ncpedia.org/biography/governors/tryon
• The Royal Descents of 600 Immigrants [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2006.Original data: Roberts, Gary Boyd. The Royal Descents of 600 Immigrants. Baltimore, MD, USA: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2004. AncestryImage
• ”The Royal Lineage of Our Noble and Gentle Families: Together with Their Paternal Ancestry,” Volume 1. Hazell, Watson, and Viney, 1883 - Families of royal descent - 88 pages. Page 83. “Elwin, of Booton, formerly of Thirning, Norfolk.” GoogleBooks
• The Church Heraldry of Norfolk: pt. V. Hundreds of South Erpingham ... By Edmund Farrer: p 91 - 92 GoogleBooks
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wake_(governor)_
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tryon