Who was Nancy Tilly?

[bob_summers]

In an interview Mrs. Mudd gave a couple of years before she died, she said:

"There was no one in our home that night except the Doctor, myself, the children and the children’s nurse, a white girl named Nancy Tilly." See https://www.muddresearch.com/mrs-samuel-...rview.html

I've never been able to find anything in census, etc. on a girl or young woman by that name living in Maryland around 1865. Or Tally, Tully, Twilly, etc. Nobody by that name was interviewed by the military after the assassination.

Has anyone ever heard of this Nancy Tilly?

[L Verge]

(09-13-2019 10:51 AM)bob_summers Wrote:  In an interview Mrs. Mudd gave a couple of years before she died, she said:

"There was no one in our home that night except the Doctor, myself, the children and the children’s nurse, a white girl named Nancy Tilly." See https://www.muddresearch.com/mrs-samuel-...rview.html

I've never been able to find anything in census, etc. on a girl or young woman by that name living in Maryland around 1865. Or Tally, Tully, Twilly, etc. Nobody by that name was interviewed by the military after the assassination.

Has anyone ever heard of this Nancy Tilly?

I'm pretty sure you have tried derivations, but what about Talley. That name has been around Charles County most of my days. Also, didn't the Mudds later take in an orphan and raise him? Could this Nancy have been someone temporarily placed in their care by the church? I can't remember the years and the locations, but there were things known as Orphans' Trains that assisted in placing children - and for some reason, I want to say that many were Irish. Whether they operated in Southern Maryland, I knoweth not.

[bob_summers]

(09-13-2019 11:42 AM)L Verge Wrote:  I'm pretty sure you have tried derivations, but what about Talley. That name has been around Charles County most of my days. Also, didn't the Mudds later take in an orphan and raise him? Could this Nancy have been someone temporarily placed in their care by the church? I can't remember the years and the locations, but there were things known as Orphans' Trains that assisted in placing children - and for some reason, I want to say that many were Irish. Whether they operated in Southern Maryland, I knoweth not.

Laurie: I checked Talley too, but couldn't find a young girl around that time in Maryland. Ancestry.com does a good job of serving up similar names for census and other records, so I looked at all the derivations.

Yes, Dr. Sam and Sarah Mudd took in an orphan named John Burke. Dr. D ick Mudd's papers contain letters about orphans being brought to Maryland in 1872 from the Foundling Asylum of New York. One says "... he was brought to the county from New York in the latter half of '78 at a time when a number of other children were brought here. Your grandmother (Dr. Sam Mudd's wife Sarah) had John Burke. The Hardys, the Boones and a number of other families took boys or girls at that time."

Sam and Sarah Mudd apparently took in other orphans. At the trial, former slave Mary Simms was asked who lived at the Mudd farm. She said "There were some more little children in the house,—two little orphan children."

According to Wikipedia, the orphan trains operated between 1854 and 1929, so if Nancy Tilly was on one of them, it is certainly possible that the Mudds could have taken her in too.

- Bob