19th century

Maria Rosetti

From St Peter Port to revolution. A request from Angela Jianu* of Warwick University for some research into the birth data of Marie Grant of St Peter Port has revealed the extraordinary history of a Romantic heroine, born here in Guernsey in 1819, daughter of Marie Le Lacheur, descendant of the Le Lacheurs of the Forest, and known today to all Romanians through her depiction as Revolutionary Romania, and because one of the main streets in Bucharest bears her name: Strada Maria Rosetti.

Hirzel Frederick de Lisle and Mary Carey, Pre-nuptial agreement, 1832

From the De Lisle family file in the Library (No. 9). 'Articles of agreement made in the Island of Guernsey, on the Sixth day of October, In the year of our Lord 1832, by and between Hirzel Frederick de Lisle Esquire, son of the late Hirzel De Lisle Esquire, of the said Island, of the one part, Mary Carey, Spinster, daughter of John Carey Esquire, son of John, of the said Island, of the second part, and the said John Carey Esquire, of the third part. Bear witness.' The illustration is of Hirzel de Lisle's house, Hirzelbourne, now Swissville. The woodcut is by Dr Thomas Bellamy and was published in 1843 in his Pictorial Directory and Stranger's Guide to Guernsey.

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