Colonial dames and good wives

by Alice Morse Earle

But D’Aubant’s health failed, and he sought physicians in Paris. One day when Christine was walking in the garden of the Tuileries, with her two daughters, the children of D’Aubant, the German conversation of the mother attracted the attention of Marshal Saxe, who was the son of the very Countess Königsmark who had aided Christine’s escape. The marshal recognized the princess at once, in spite of the lapse of years, and through his influence with Louis XV. obtained for D’Aubant a commission as major of troops, and the office of governor of the Isle of Bourbon. The King also informed the Empress of Austria, who was a niece of Christine, that her aunt was alive; and an invitation was sent from the Empress for the D’Aubant family to become residents of the Austrian Court. They remained, however, at the Isle of Bourbon until the death of D’Aubant and the two daughters, when Christine came to Brunswick and was granted a pension for life by the Empress. Her death in a convent, and her burial, took place over half a century after her pretended legal demise.

This is the Christine of romance, of court gossip, of court credulity, but there is another aspect of her story. Judge Martin has written a standard history of Louisiana. In it he says:—

Two hundred German settlers of Law’s grant were landed in the month of March 1721 at Biloxi out of the twelve hundred who had been recruited. There came among the German new-comers a female adventurer. She had been attached to the wardrobe of the wife of the Czarowitz Alexis Petrovitz, the only son of Peter the Great. She imposed on the credulity of many persons, particularly on that of an officer of the garrison of Mobile (called by Bossu, the Chevalier D’Aubant, and by the King of Prussia, Waldeck), who, having seen the princess at St. Petersburg imagined he recognized her features in those of her former servant, and gave credit to the report that she was the Duke of Wolfenbuttel’s daughter, and the officer married her.

Grimm and Voltaire in their letters, Levesque in his History, all unite in pronouncing her an impostor. But you can choose your own estimate of this creature of high romance; if you elect to deem her a princess, you find yourself in the goodly company of the King of France, the Empress of Austria, Marshal Saxe, and a vast number of other folk of rank and intelligence.

In the year 1771 there was sent to this country from England a woman convict, who had in her enforced home a most extraordinary and romantic career of successful fraud.

The first account which I have seen of her was printed in the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1771, and told simply of her startling intrusion into the Queen’s apartments in London; but Dr. Doran’s Lives of the Queens of England of the House of Hanover gives this account of this interesting bit of Anglo-American romance.

Sarah Wilson, yielding to a strong temptation in the year 1771, filched one or two of the Queen’s jewels, and was condemned to be executed. It was considered almost a violation of justice that the thief should be saved from the halter and be transported instead of hanged. She was sent to America, where she was allotted as slave, or servant, to a Mr. Dwale, Bud Creek, Frederick County. Queen Charlotte would have thought nothing more of her, had her majesty not heard with some surprise, that her sister Susannah Caroline Matilda was keeping her court in the plantations. Never was surprise more genuine than the Queen’s; it was exceeded only by her hilarity when it was discovered that the Princess Susannah was simply Sarah Wilson, at large. That somewhat clever girl having stolen a Queen’s jewels, thought nothing, after escaping from the penal service to which she was condemned, of passing herself off as a Queen’s sister. The Americans were not so acute as their descendants; so in love were some of them with the greatness they affected to despise, that they paid royal honors to the clever impostor. She passed the most joyous of seasons before she was consigned again to increase of penalty for daring to pretend relationship with the consort of King George. The story of the presuming girl, whose escapades, however, were not fully known in England at that time, served, as far as knowledge of them had reached the court, to amuse the gossips who had assembled about the cradle of the young Elizabeth.

In this account of Dr. Doran’s there are some errors. The real story of the crime of Sarah Wilson and her subsequent career was this. In August, 1770, a strange woman found her way by means of a private staircase to the apartments of Queen Charlotte. She entered a room where the Queen and the Duchess of Ancaster were sitting, to their alarm. While she was taking a leisurely survey of the contents of the room, a page was summoned, who expelled the intruder, but did not succeed in arresting her. Shortly after, the Queen’s apartments were broken into by a thief, who stole valuable jewels and a miniature of the Queen. The thief proved to be a woman named Sarah Wilson, who had been maid of the Honorable Miss Vernon, and this thief was asserted to be the inquisitive intruder whose visit had so alarmed the Queen.

Sarah Wilson was arrested, tried as a felon, and sentenced to death; but by the exertions and influence of her former mistress the sentence was commuted to transportation to the American colonies for a seven years’ term of servitude. This leniency caused considerable stir in London and some dissatisfaction.

In 1771, after passage in a convict ship, Sarah Wilson was sold to a Mr. William Duvall, of Bush Creek, Frederick County, Maryland, for seven years’ servitude. After a short time, in which she apparently developed her plans of fraud, she escaped from her master, and went to Virginia and the Carolinas, where she assumed the title of Princess Susannah Caroline Matilda, and asserted she was the sister of the Queen of England. She still owned the miniature of the Queen, and some rich jewels, which gave apparent proof of her assertion, and it is said some rich clothing. It is indeed mysterious that a transported convict could retain in her possession, through all her reverses, the very jewels for whose theft she was punished; yet the story can scarcely be doubted.