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Tag Archives: Katherine Wilmot


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Death of Katherine Wilmot, Irish Traveler & Diarist

Katherine Wilmot, Irish traveler and diarist, dies in Paris, France, on March 28, 1824. She makes a Grand Tour from 1801 to 1803 and documents her experiences through letters, including encounters with notable figures like Napoleon Bonaparte. She later travels to Russia to join her sister Martha Wilmot and lives there from 1805 to 1807. She later moves to France and dies in Paris in 1824. Her writings, letters, and diaries provide insight into the Napoleonic era, on Russian society and on travel in the 19th century. Her works also include her sister’s transcript of the memoirs of Princess Yekaterina Vorontsova-Dashkova.

Wilmot is born around 1773 in Drogheda, County Louth, to Edward and Martha Wilmot (née Moore). She is the eldest daughter of six daughters and three sons. Her father is the port surveyor in Drogheda, having previously served as captain in the 40th Regiment of Foot. He is transferred to a similar post in County Cork in 1775, where Wilmot is raised. The family settles in Glanmire, near the seat of the Earl Mount Cashell in Moore Park. The earl’s family uses the surname Moore.

Wilmot is friendly with Lady Mountcashell, formerly Margaret King, an early and eager pupil of Mary Wollstonecraft. She is invited to accompany the party of Stephen Moore, 2nd Earl Mount Cashell, and his wife on a grand tour of the continent. Her letters from the time survive, in France from November 1801 to October 1802, and in Italy until July 1803. The Mount Cashells entertain lavishly, especially during the first nine months in Paris, and through them she meets Napoleon Bonaparte, and becomes friends with the Austrian painter Angelica Kauffman. She also meets the French diplomat and politician Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, and the Irish republican Robert Emmet fleetingly. She recounts her meeting in Rome with the English aristocrat Frederick Augustus Hervey, and her audience with Pope Pius VII. She returns to London from Italy in October 1803, via Germany and Denmark, after England and France resume hostilities.

Wilmot then goes to Russia to bring home her sister Martha, and ends up spending two years there. Martha is in the country as a favourite of Princess Dashkova, one of the key figures of the Russian Enlightenment and a close friend of Catherine the Great. Martha is living at the Princess’s estate in Troitskoe on the Oka River, about 100 km from Moscow. Wilmot arrives on August 4, 1805, having set out from Cork on June 5. Her writings from this time record the Russian aristocracy‘s opulence and attitudes to the servile classes (the serfs). The sisters come to know the customs of the Russian elite, as well as the festivals and religious rites of the country people. She leaves Moscow on July 4, 1807, a combination of passport problems, wars and storms at sea, resulting in delays and in her reaching Yarmouth on September 7, 1807, and returning to Ireland in October 1807.

Wilmot moves to France to live in a warmer, drier climate than Ireland. Her health declines when she moves to Paris, and she dies there on March 28, 1824. Her nephew by Martha, Wilmot Henry Bradford, lives to be “Father of the Army.”

Wilmot had taken Martha’s transcript of the memoirs of the Princess Dashkova when she left Russia. These are published by Martha in 1840, as she had burned the original manuscript before her departure from Russia in 1808.

Wilmot’s letters are published a century later, and have been described as a unique portrayal of the Napoleonic period. They describe the social scene, as well as the experience of traveling by coach and ship at that time. The family makes transcriptions of the letters. The collection belonging to Martha is donated to the library of the Royal Irish Academy by Elisabeth van Dedem Lecky, the historian and writer. Among these Russian letters are a number written by Eleanor Cavanagh, who describes the lives of servants. Wilmot’s diaries are published in 1920 by Thomas Sadleir, and later by H. Montgomery Hyde and Edith Vane-Tempest-Stewart, Marchioness of Londonderry.

  • The Grand Tours of Katherine Wilmot, France 1801-1803, and Russia 1805-07(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1992)
  • An Irish Peer on the Continent, 1801-03 (1920)
  • The Russian Journals of Martha and Catherine Wilmot (1934)
  • More letters from Martha Wilmot; Vienna 1819-29 (1935)


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Death of Matilda Tone, Wife of Theobald Wolfe Tone

Matilda Tone, wife of Theobald Wolfe Tone, dies in Georgetown, District of Columbia, on March 18, 1849. She is instrumental in the preservation and publication of Wolfe Tone’s papers.

Tone is born Martha Witherington in Dublin on June 17, 1769. She is the eldest daughter of merchant William Witherington and his wife Catherine (née Fanning). Her father is listed as a woolen draper on Grafton Street, Dublin, from 1768 to 1784, as a wine merchant from 1784 to 1788, and finally as a merchant from 1788 to 1793. It is claimed that he is a lieutenant in the Royal Navy and sits on the merchants’ guild on Dublin’s common council from 1777 to 1783. Her mother is a housekeeper to her father after he is widowed.

Tone receives a good education and maintains an interest in drama and literature throughout her life. Katherine Wilmot visits her in Paris in 1802 and comments on the books she has by French, Italian and English authors. When she is fifteen years old, she gets to know Wolfe Tone through her older brother. He is still a student in Trinity College Dublin, and it is he that renames her Matilda. They marry when she is just sixteen, on July 21, 1785, in St. Ann’s Church, Dublin, honeymooning in Maynooth. Upon their return they live with the Witheringtons, though they are not on good terms, and then with Wolfe Tone’s parents in Bodenstown, County Kildare.

The Tone’s first child, Maria, is born before October 1786. She is followed by a son, Richard, who is named for their neighbour Richard Griffith, who dies in infancy. Tone stays with her husband’s family while he is studying for the bar in London from 1787 to 1788. When he returns, the couple has two more sons: William Theobald Wolfe Tone, born on April 29, 1791, and Francis Rawdon Tone, born on June 23, 1793. Francis is known as Frank and is named after Francis Rawdon-Hastings. William is born in Dublin and Frank is probably born in Bodenstown. By this time, the family has a cottage in Bodenstown which Wolfe Tone had inherited from his uncle Jonathan Tone, which the family jokingly refers to as Château Boue. They live there until May 1795, when they leave for Princeton, New Jersey, due to political reasons.

Tone and her children come back to Europe to join Wolfe Tone in France eighteen months later. The family settles in Paris, at first living with Colonel Henry Shee at Nanterre, later moving to the suburb, Chaillot. She educates her children at home. Very few of her letters survive, but many of her husband’s letters and diaries are addressed or intended for her. From these and her letter to her friend Eliza Fletcher, it is clear she shares her husband’s interest in politics. Following her husband’s death in November 1798, she moves to a small apartment at 51 Rue Saint-Jacques in the Latin Quarter of Paris. This is to be close to her son William, who is attending Lycée Louis-le-Grand. She is awarded a pension of 1,200 francs for herself and 400 for each of her children after the expiration of the Treaty of Amiens on May 1, 1803.

Tone’s daughter Maria dies in April 1803, and then her son Frank dies in 1807, both of tuberculosis. William is displaying symptoms of the disease as well, which prompts her to move to the United States in 1807. From there, they attempt to sort out her husband’s affairs, which had been entrusted to James Reynolds. They retrieve only a few of Wolfe Tone’s pre-1795 diaries, and all of the post-1795 letters and diaries, which they add to the autobiography she already has in her possession. When William enters the Cavalry School at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in November 1810 as a cadet, she moves to be close to him, living at the Hôtel de la Surintendance. By approaching Napoleon in 1811, who knew Wolfe Tone, she ensures that her son receives French citizenship and the privileged status of “élève du gouvernement.” In January 1813, when William begins his service, she returns to Paris to live on the Rue de Lille and later moves to the Latin Quarter.

Following the defeat of Napoleon in June 1815, William is refused entry to Ireland or to visit Britain. This leads to both mother and son returning to the United States. Before she leaves Paris, she marries her old friend Thomas Wilson on August 19, 1816. Wilson is a Scottish businessman and advocate who has taken care of her financial affairs after the death of her husband. The couple visit Scotland, and then move to New York City in 1817, and finally to Georgetown, District of Columbia, around 1820. She lives there until her death and calls herself Matilda Tone-Wilson.

Starting in 1824, The New Monthly Magazine begins the unauthorised publication of extracts from Wolfe Tone’s autobiography. In response, Tone decides to publish all of Wolfe Tone’s papers and writing, including the autobiography, pamphlets and diaries, edited by their son William. What results is two large volumes entitled the Life of Theobald Wolfe Tone, published in May 1826. She adds a memoir of her own life in Paris following his death in 1798. The book is a best-seller, and ensures the legacy of Wolfe Tone, as well as being an important contemporary document of both Irish and French revolutionary politics.

William Tone dies in 1828, after which Tone lives more privately. She dies in Georgetown on March 18, 1849. Thomas Wilson predeceases her in 1824. Just two weeks prior to her death she is interviewed by a Young Irelander, Charles Hart. She is initially buried near William Tone at Marbury burying-ground, Georgetown. After that cemetery is sold, she is reinterred in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York, on October 31, 1891, by her great-grandchildren. A new monument is dedicated to her, which is later restored in 1996.