Rosa Frederica FitzGeorge (néeBaring, formerlyArkwright; 9 March 1854 – 10 March 1927) was an English socialite.
Origin
Rosa was born on 9 March 1854 at Norman Court in West Tytherley, Hampshire, England. She was the second daughter of William Henry Baring, JP and Elizabeth Hammersley. Her elder brother, Francis Charles Baring, married Isabella Augusta Schuster (a granddaughter of the 5th Earl of Orkney), and her younger brother, William Bingham Baring, married Georgina Margaret Campbell (daughter of Charles Hallyburton Campbell).[1]
Her paternal grandparents were William Baring (a younger son of the famous Sir Francis Baring of the Barings Bank) and Frances (née Poulett-Thomson) Baring. Her maternal grandparents were Charles Hammersley and Emily (née Poulett-Thomson) Hammersley, and her uncle was Thomas Weguelin, partner of Thomson, Bonar, and Company of London, Director and Governor of the Bank of England.[2] Her grandmothers were sisters, both being daughters of London merchant John Buncombe Poulett-Thomson of Waverley Abbey House, and sisters to Charles Poulett Thomson, 1st Baron Sydenham.[3]
Personal life
Rosa married twice and, reportedly, was not friendly with the families of either of her two husbands.
First marriage
On 29 August 1878, she was married to Capt. Frank Wigsell Arkwright at Sanderstead, Surrey Court, England. He was a son of Robert Wigram Arkwright (great-grandson of Sir Richard Arkwright, of Willersley Castle) and Sophia Julia (née Greig) Arkwright. They had two children:[1]
Esmé Francis Wigsell Arkwright (1882–1934), who married Audrey Violet Hatfeild Harter, daughter of James Francis Hatfield Harter, in 1909. They divorced. He married Violet Eveleen (née Sutton), former wife of Maj.-Gen. Albemarle Cator and daughter of Capt. Francis Richard Hugh Seymour Sutton and Lady Susan Elizabeth Lascelles (a daughter of the 4th Earl of Harewood), in 1920.[1]
Mabel Iris FitzGeorge (1886–1976), who married Robert Shekelton Balfour in 1912.[8] After his death in 1943, she married Prince Vladimir Galitzine, in 1945.[1]
George Daphne FitzGeorge (1889–1954), who married to Sir George Foster Earle, in 1915. They divorced in 1926.[1]
George William Frederick FitzGeorge (1892–1960), who married Esther Melina Vignon in 1915. They divorced in 1927 and he married France Bellanger, daughter of Robert Bellenger, in 1934. They divorced in 1957.[1]
She made "plenty of capital of the royal blood in the veins of her husband" and as the daughter-in-law of the Duke of Cambridge,[9] Rosa flourished in New York and Chicago as "Lady FitzGeorge" using the title in pursuit of wealthy American families to find a husband for her daughter Vera.[10]
George died on 2 September 1907.
Death
Rosa FitzGeorge died on 10 March 1927 in Cannes, France.
Descendants
Through her daughter Vera,[11] she was a grandmother to Bridget Bate Tichenor, a Magic Realist painter who lived in Mexico from 1956 to 1990.[10]
^ abcdefgG.E. Cokayne; with Vicary Gibbs, H.A. Doubleday, Geoffrey H. White, Duncan Warrand and Lord Howard de Walden, editors, The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, Extant, Extinct or Dormant, new ed., 13 volumes in 14 (1910-1959; reprint in 6 volumes, Gloucester, U.K.: Alan Sutton Publishing, 2000), volume XII/1, page 589.
^Drummond, Helga. The Dynamics of Organizational Collapse; The Case of Barings Bank, New York (2008) Routledge ISBN978-0-415-39961-6
^Sir Bernard Burke, C.B. LL.D., A Genealogical History of the Dormant, Abeyant, Forfeited, and Extinct Peerages of the British Empire, new edition (1883; reprint, Baltimore, Maryland: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1978), page 531.
