Miss Adelaide Grylls

[The sitter is identified as ‘Miss Grylls’ in the Silvy daybooks but was identified as ‘Mrs Majendie’ on the album page.]

Born Adelaide Frances Grylls on 22 February 1841, the youngest daughter of Reverend Henry Grylls (1794-1862), she was christened at St Neot in Cornwall on 26 February 1841.

At the time of the 1861 census Miss Grylls was as yet unmarried, living at the vicarage in St Neots with her father, a widower, and her brother, a Major in the Royal Artillery temporarily on half-pay. She gave her place of birth as Plymouth, Devon.

In 1863 she married Captain Vivian Dering Majendie (1836-1898) of the Royal Artillery at St Mary Abbotts, Kensington. A daughter was born in 1864 and a son in 1865.

Mrs Majendie died, aged 27, at Woolwich in Kent on 29 September 1868.

Her husband was later HM Inspector of Explosives.

Her daughter died, aged only 10, in 1874. Her son, Henry Grylls Majendie, joined the Rifle Brigade. He served in Burma and the Sudan and was killed during the Boer War (died 13 February 1900).

Photographed by Camille Silvy of London on 9 April 1861.

[From an album compiled by Mrs Marianne Charlotte Isabelle Gilbert, wife of Colonel Walter Raleigh Gilbert of Priory House, Bodmin, Cornwall.]