Frances Cockburn Sims

Awarded the compensation under two separate claims for enslaved people on Farm Pen in St Andrew Jamaica.

1. Frances Cockburn Sims, only daughter of the late Charles James Sims and Frances Cockburn of Jamaica, married George Arthur Annesley, Viscount Valentia, only son of Earl of Mountnorris at Brighton in December 1837; Valentia died in 1841 without issue (his father the 2nd Earl of Mountnorris survived him).

2. In 1851 Frances C. Annesley w[idow] Viscountess annuitant aged 47 born Jamaica was living at Upper Arley Staffordshire with 6 servants. Genealogical sources put her death as 1856, and her death notice at High Beeh Essex appears in e.g. Illustrated London News for that year. The death of a Frances Cockburn Annesley, presumably a niece or great-niece was registered at Edmonton Herts. Q1 1914.

3. Frances Cockburn Sims' aunt Mary Cockburn married Sir George Cockburn, who 'burnt the White House' in 1812, and was also an MP for Portsmouth [Hampshire] 1818-20, Wembley 1820-8, Plymouth [Devon] 1828-32; Ripon [Yorkshire] 1841-7.

T71/865 St Andrew no. 364. T71/1607 letter from Freshfield & sons: Miss Frances Cockburn Sims is at present with Admiral Sir George Cockburn in Bermuda, we want to send power of attorney to her.

1. Gentleman's Magazine Vol. 162 1837 p. 648.

2. 1851 census online; e.g. http://www.cracroftspeerage.co.uk/online/content/Mountnorris1793.htm [accessed 15/05/2012]; FreeUKGen, England and Wales Free BMD Database, Deaths, 1837-1983 [database online].

3. Thomas H. Cockburn-Hood, The House of Cockburn of that Ilk and the cadets thereof (Edinburgh, 1888: Scott and Ferguson) p. 96.