| Notes |
- The only record of an Arabella Dougherty amongst currently available online records is intriguing. The International Genealogical Index lists an Arabella Eliza Dougherty whose date of birth was 13 November 1812 but whose baptism did not take place until 23 June 1826 at the church of St Mary Magdalene in Woolwich. The birth date fits, and so does the connection with Woolwich. The late baptism date may have something to do with the fact that Arabella was born on an island in the Caribbean. The first three of Arabella's four children were born in Woolwich. Her sons John and Francis maintained links with Woolwich in later life. Her daughter Lizzie, though born in Suffolk, her father's home county, would later marry a carpenter from the Woolwich Arsenal and would raise a family in the town.
The archive ‘London, England, Church of England Births & Baptisms, 1813-1906’ for the parish of St Mary Magdalene, Woolwich (1826) has these records, which confirm Arabella’s date and place of birth, and those of her sister Sarah:
Born May 1811, Sarah Ann Dillon, daughter of (late) John & Amy Dougherty, Artillery Place, (late) Clerk in the Ordnance Department.
Born Nov 1812, Arabella Eliza, daughter of (late) John & Amy Dougherty, Artillery Place, (late) Clerk in the Ordnance Department.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, Arabella's birthplace, the volcanic island of St. Eustatia (St Eustatius or Statia), was known in almost every European and American household due to the massive international trade that thrived there. After 1750, over 3,500 ships a year from Europe, Africa and the Americas landed here earning the island's nickname The Golden Rock. Almost 20,000 merchants, slaves and plantation owners were crowded on this little speck measuring only 8 kilometres by 4 kilometres. Merchants from the Netherlands, France, Britain, the American Colonies, Spain and Denmark all mixed in a peaceful international emporium for free trade not to be found anywhere else in the Caribbean. To facilitate this trade, over 600 warehouses were built along the shore below Oranjestad, its main city. The island was so important that it changed hands among the Dutch, English and French 22 times over two centuries, until the Dutch permanently wrested control in the early 19th century. However, one wonders what sort sort of state Arabella's birthplace was in by 1813 and why her family were still there. The Hebrew History Federation's website records that "The British occupation of Statia was terminated on November 20th 1781 by a French invasion. They found the place in ashes, and virtually depopulated".
The sovereignty of the United States was first recognised here when on November 16, 1776 a salute was fired from Fort Oranje in reply to a salute by the brigantine Andrew Doria. The merchants on St. Eustatia provided much of the arms, gunpowder and ammunition used by the rebels in the American Revolution and as a result experienced the full wrath of the English Navy and Marines under Admiral Sir George Brydges Rodney in 1781. The largest booty captured anywhere during the Colonial Period was the result: a fleet loaded with over £5,000,000 was sent back to England. Some even believe that Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island was based on stories he heard about St. Eustatia.
Arabella must have met and married her much older husband, a Sergeant in the Royal Artillery, long after he returned from the Peninsula Wars in Spain but while he was still in the army. Anecdotal evidence suggests that he was a widower and had had a family in the Caribbean while on military service who had been killed by typhoid or cholera. It is probably a coincidence that both had lived in the West Indies. The dates we have do not suggest that John and Arabella met there. When Arabella married John at St Margaret’s, Lee, between Blackheath and Lewisham, she was 19 years old and 6 months pregnant. He was in his early 50s.
We can surmise that, from the 1830s to the 1860s, Arabella was busy raising a family in Woolwich and, later, in Pettistree. She would also have had to look after an increasingly infirm husband who had been invalided out of the army. She cannot be found on the 1871 Census. Her probate record confirms that she died a widow in October 1872 possessed of “effects under £300”.
Perplexity AI added this in September 2025:
A woman claiming British nationality born in St Eustatius in 1812 could have been born there because the island was under British control from 1810 to 1816 during the Napoleonic Wars. The British reoccupied St Eustatius, a strategically important Caribbean island, to prevent French or Dutch (allied with Napoleon’s France) control. This was part of Britain’s broader military efforts to control key colonial territories and disrupt Napoleonic power in the West Indies.
St Eustatius had a complex colonial history primarily as a Dutch colony, known as a crucial trading entrepot in the Caribbean. The British had temporarily captured it earlier in 1781 during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War due to its role supplying Britain’s enemies, but this occupation lasted only months before it was retaken by the French and then returned to the Dutch.
From 1810, Britain took control again amid the Napoleonic conflicts until the island was returned to Dutch administration in 1816 after the end of the wars. During British occupation, British personnel, merchants, and their families would have been present on the island.
Thus, a British woman born on the island in 1812 was likely the child of British military, administrative officials, or merchants living there during the British occupation of this strategically important trading island in the Caribbean.
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1812 - 1872 (59 years)
