Ann Sill

Profile & Legacies Summary

4^th Mar 1766 - 1835

Claimant or beneficiary

Biography

West Yorkshire landowner who claimed compensation as owner of Providence estate in St James Jamaica, but then died: the compensation was awarded to her trustees, Adam Sedgwick and James Davis (both of whom q.v.)

Daughter of Edmund Sill (1721-1806) and Elizabeth Clough (1764-1807) of Westhouse. Inherited after the deaths of her three brothers by 1805 and her father in 1806 both land in West Yorkshire and Providence estate in St James', previously owned by her uncle John of Jamaica (1724-1774), who was also the part-owner of two ships engaged in the West Indies trade, the Pickering and the Dent. Her brother John (who died 1803) used 'revenues from Jamaica to buy up various estates at or near Westhouses'.
Will of Ann Sill spinster of Sedbergh Yorkshire proved 06/10/1835.
The Sill family have been proposed as the model for the Earnshaw family in Wuthering Heights.

Sources

T71/863 St James No. 546.

Francis Stacey, Westhouses: the Sills, Sedbergh Historian, the annual journal of Sedbergh and District History Society, IV (6) (Summer, 2003), pp. 9-13 and Diana Elphick, Westhouses: The Suttons, Sedbergh Historian, the annual journal of Sedbergh and District History Society, IV (6) (Summer, 2003), pp. 14-18.
PROB 11/1853.
Christopher Heywood Yorkshire Slavery in Wuthering Heights http://res.oxfordjournals.org/content/XXXVIII/150/184.full.pdf [accessed 10/02/2012].

Further Information

Absentee?

British/Irish

Children

dsp

Will

Transcript of Will (WFQ 009 1808) and two codicils (1809 and 8/11/1831) of Ann Sill of Westhouses in Kirthwaite, transcribed by Diana Elphick and Audrey Dewjee, sent by Audrey Dewjee to the LBS project 17/10/12010. Executors = James Davis and Adam Sedgwick, the two also featuring among the residuary devisees. Providence Estate (property of Ann's deceased uncle John Sill) to be sold. 2nd codicil refers also to a tract of land ('parcel of land and premises') and buildings 'now or lately forming part of and occupied with the Plantation or estate called Potosi and which was recently purchased of and conveyed to me by Mr Francis Watt and others', explicitly made subject to the same terms of the will as Providence.

Associated Claims (1)

Associated Estates (1)

The dates listed below have different categories as denoted by the letters in the brackets following each date. Here is a key to explain those letter codes:

SD - Association Start Date
SY - Association Start Year
EA - Earliest Known Association
ED - Association End Date
EY - Association End Year
LA - Latest Known Association

1815 [EA] - 1835 [EY] → Owner

Providence [ Jamaica | St James ]

Legacies Summary

Physical (2)

Plaque

Plaque erected in St Andrew, Dent by Ann Sill for her family members [Built]

Details

description →

Plaque in St Andrew Dent, Cumbria installed by Ann Sill, memorialsing her three brothers, her father and mother. Her own name was later added to the plaque....

Country house

Whernside Manor, formerly West House [Built]

Details

description →

Grade II listed house, built by the Sill family, possibly by Ann Sill's father Edmund. It is not clear to what extent the wealth of the family depended on their well-established connections to...