Lady Edward FitzGerald

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The Lady Edward FitzGerald (1773? – November 9, 1831), was married to Lord Edward FitzGerald, and was an enthusiastic supporter of Irish independence, scarcely less celebrated at the time than Lord Edward himself.

[edit] Background

She was born Stephanie Caroline Anne Syms, and was known as Pamela, but her origins are uncertain. She was described as an adopted daughter of Stéphanie Félicité Ducrest, comtesse de Genlis, and it is usually assumed that she was an unacknowledged daughter of the comtesse and Louis Philip II, Duke of Orléans. However, there is a tradition in Fogo, Newfoundland, that she was the illegitimate daughter of an English naval officer, was taken to England, and ended up in the Genlis household.

[edit] Revolution

During the French Revolution, the Genlis family fled to England. Pamela, by then an attractive young woman, became engaged to Sheridan, but the engagement was quickly ended and she married Lord Edward FitzGerald, the radical revolutionary and leading United Irishman, settling at his home in Kildare and having three children by Lord Edward.

As the country seethed with rebellion, Fitzgerald was hunted by the government and forced into hiding. He was betrayed a few days before the date set for the planned rising he was to lead and was wounded resisting arrest on 19th May 1798. Although his wound was to the shoulder and relatively minor it was left untreated and he died of his wounds on June 5th. As a "traitor" to the British crown, his estates were confiscated, and Pamela was compelled to leave the country to avoid possible charges of treason.

Pamela fled to Hamburg, where in 1800 she married Joseph Pitcairn, the American consul to Germany. Although she had been greatly beloved and esteemed by the whole FitzGerald family after her second marriage her intimacy with them ceased. She however, remained to the last passionately devoted to the memory of her first husband and died in Paris in November 1831 where a portrait of her hangs in the Louvre. She had three children by Lord Edward FitzGerald: Edward Fox (1794-1863); Pamela, afterwards wife of General Sir Guy Campbell; and Lucy Louisa, who married Captain Lyon, RN.