Matching family tree profiles for Walter Hellen, Jr.
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About Walter Hellen, Jr.
Walter Hellen Jr, the son of Walter Hellen 1724-1783, and Mary Johnson, 1729-1801, was born in Calvert County, Maryland, in 1766. By the time of his first marriage in about 1798, he had become a very successful tobacco speculator, also owning plantations in Maryland, and real estate in the District of Columbia. His first wife Anne "Nancy" Johnson was his first cousin. They first lived in his home on G Street “the third west from the President’s House” and would move by 1803 to a “sizable residence” near the waterfront in Georgetown where he owned a warehouse and ships still docked with his tobacco shipments. Walter and Nancy had four confirmed offspring, Johnson, 1800, Washington, 1804, Walter III, 1804, and Mary Catherine, 1806. Another son, Thomas, 1810, is suggested by some sources, but unconfirmed. Washington and Walter III both died as infants.
Walter’s sister-in-law Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams and her husband, future president John Quincy Adams, then a senator, lived with Walter and Nancy, and John Quincy walked the tree miles to the capitol building. Biographies note Walter and John as “faithful friends” as well as brothers-in-law. Walter had already also taken in his widowed mother-in-law, Catherine Nuth Johnson, 1773-1810, and had been first agent, then executor of her husband, Joshua Johnson’s, will, Joshua being both his uncle and father-in-law. Aside from these relationships, the Johnson and Hellen families shared many ancestors in Calvert County, Maryland, so actually had multiple others, not noted here.
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. Walter and Nancy’s first son, Johnson, inherited the bulk of his father’s estate and remained prominent, rich, and successful, dying in Washington in 1867. Their surviving daughter, Mary Catherine Hellen, then nine was taken in by the Adams family after Walter’s death, after which she later had various “flirtations” with their three sons, her cousins, and finally married the middle son, John Adams II, on Feb 25, 1828. It was the first marriage in the White House. The groom’s mother and bride’s aunt, first lady, Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams, did not approve of this marriage either, but felt the young lovers needed “the benefit of marriage”. Their first daughter, Mary Louisa Adams, was born almost exactly nine months later.
The Hellen “obelisk” marker erected by Walter in Rock Creek Cemetery, in likely 1805 for his first son, Washington, who died in infancy, today is inscribed with a total of eleven known individuals of the Hellen family, including Walter himself, his two wives’ and their family or descendants. There is also an twelfth, unidentified, noted below. The year of death and burial location for Walter IV has never been determined.
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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 links below
- Catherine Nuth Johnson, 1811 – see links below – not buried with her husband for some reason.
- Walter Hellen Jr., 1815
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 -
- Thomas Baker Johnson, 1845 – her lifelong bachelor brother –
- William Stevens Smith – no date inscribed – see note below*
- Adelaide Maria Moody - 1862 - Adelaide's granddaughter
- Georgiana Adelaide Hellen Moody, 1863 – Adeliade's daughter -
- Adelaide Johnson Hellen, 1877 –
And finally, her son-in-law, who inherited the plot upon her death:
Theodore Lyman Moody, 1878
- 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.
SmartCopy: Apr 1 2017, 1:56:37 UTC
- "District of Columbia Marriages, 1811-1950", database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VNTM-7DF : 1 June 2015), Walter Hellen and Adelade Johnson, 1813.
- Reference: FamilySearch Genealogy - SmartCopy: Apr 1 2017, 2:25:06 UTC
- https://www.colonial-settlers-md-va.us/getperson.php?personID=I6480...
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Walter Hellen, Jr.'s Timeline
| 1766 |
1766
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Calvert County, Maryland, United States
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| 1800 |
February 5, 1800
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Washington, District of Columbia, District of Columbia, United States
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| 1802 |
April 1802
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Washington, District of Columbia, District of Columbia, United States
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| 1804 |
1804
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Washington, District of Columbia, District of Columbia, United States
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| 1807 |
September 10, 1807
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Washington, District of Columbia, District of Columbia, United States
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| 1809 |
1809
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Washington, District of Columbia, District of Columbia, United States
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| 1814 |
1814
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1814
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