Rebecca Williams

Rebecca Krudener was born in England ca. 1758 and died aft. 1782.

Parents: TBD

Married:

1. approx 1778, liason with Robert Bertie, 4th Duke of Ancaster and Kesteven (1756-1779)
2. November 1782 in Saint James, Westminster, London to William Walker.

Children of Rebecca Krudener and Robert Bertie:

1. Susan Priscilla Bertie (1778-1864) married Banastre Tartleton.

Notes

One of Ban Tarleton's many friends during the occupation of Philadelphia was Robert Bertie, a wealthy young aristocrat who was a couple of years his junior.

Early in 1778, Bertie made a trip to England to attend his severely ill father, the Duke of Ancaster. He found time while he was home to become involved with a woman named Rebecca Krudener, and when he returned to America after his father's death, she was expecting his child. Robert seems to have been genuinely attached to Rebecca, so perhaps he mentioned his impending fatherhood to Banastre. If he did, neither of them could have had the least suspicion that some twenty years later Robert's love child, Susan Priscilla, would become Mrs. Banastre Tarleton.[1]

After only a short stay in America, Robert returned to England. He died soon afterwards, possibly of a combination of heat stroke and excessive drinking. He was twenty-two. In his will he left Susan a comfortable inheritance and the legal right to his name. His mother, the dowager Duchess of Ancaster, persuaded Rebecca to allow her to adopt Susan Priscilla. I haven't been able to track down when or under what circumstances Susan entered the custody of her paternal grandmother, but in November 1782, when she was four years old, her mother married a man named William Walker in Saint James, Westminster, London. Possibly Mr. Walker did not welcome the presence of a child to remind him of his wife's past as a nobleman's mistress. [2]

Links

• http://home.golden.net/~marg/bansite/friends/bertie.html

Citations

1. Robert D. Bass, The Green Dragoon; The Lives of Banastre Tarleton and Mary Robinson (New York: Henry Holt and Company; 1957), pp42-43. Some sources give Susan's name as "Priscilla Susan" rather than "Susan Priscilla." The parish registrations for her birth and her marriage to Banastre Tarleton (IGI versions) list her as "Susan Priscilla." Bass used that form throughout The Green Dragoon, and printed a letter from Banastre to one of his brothers in which he referred to her as "Susan." Her death certificate, however, lists her as "Priscilla Susan Tarleton", and in her will she signs herself "Priscilla Susanna Tarleton." A childhood friend, mentioning Susan Priscilla in her memoirs, calls her "Priscilla." (See Frances, Lady Shelley, The Diary Of Frances Lady Shelley, 1787-1817, ed. Richard Edgcumbe, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, W., 1912-13), 1:44.) So, it's rather confusing, but I'm continuing to use the form which seems most common.
2. Bass, p42-43. Information on Rebecca's marriage comes from the IGI.