Cecilia Blake

Daughter of Bryan Blake, an Irish merchant and planter who died in Antigua in 1800, and Lydia Brodie of Antigua. Cecilia Blake, then aged 4, was brought back to Dublin and maintained by Valentine O'Connor senior, her father's cousin for whom Bryan Blake had acted as agent. Cecilia Blake's brother Martin (who died c. 1826) litigated successfully to recover the Mount William estate in St Vincent from Valentine O'Connor's heirs. Lydia Blake returned to Dublin too and remarried in 1803, to Malachy O'Connor, Valentine's brother (both were sons of Hugh O'Connor of Bachelors Walk Dublin).

1. Cecilia Blake of Gloucester Place aged 40 buried St Pancras 29/08/1838. Will of Cecilia Blake spinster 'of Brighton' proved 06/09/1838. Under the will, made in July 1834, Cecilia Blake left her property 'in this Kingdom and the West indies' to her mother Lydia O'Connor, then residing with her.

2. Some of the complex background to the O'Connor and Blake families is set out in the John Sweetman Papers of the National Library of Ireland.

T71/ 892 St Vincent claim no. 470; http://www.archive.org/stream/blakefamilyrecor00blakuoft/blakefamilyrecor00blakuoft_djvu.txt [accessed 15/05/2011]; Vere Langford Oliver, Caribbeana being miscellaneous papers relating to the history, genealogy, topography, and antiquities of the British West Indies (6 vols., London, Mitchell, Hughes and Clarke, 1910-1919), Vol. IV pp. 252-5.

1. Ancestry.com, London, England, Deaths and Burials, 1813-1980 [database online]; PROB 11/1900/206.

2. National Library of Ireland Collection List No. 156 Sweetman Family Papers.