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General => Armed Forces => Topic started by: HughC on Sunday 10 May 20 09:02 BST (UK)
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The India Office ecclesiastical returns show the marriage, in Calcutta cathedral on 26 June 1826, of Elizabeth Montgomery Casement to Lt Richard Rollo Gillespie of the 4th Light Dragoons, AdC to the Governor General.
I can find no other reference to that man. He doesn't seem to occur in the National Archives catalogue, which implies that no such person served in the British army. I downloaded WO 25/782/14 -- appalling image quality but I found a brief service record of Robert Rollo Gillespie, presumed illegitimate son of the late Sir Robert Rollo Gillespie. Also his marriage in 1829 to Sally Blaxland.
He is known to have been a widower when that marriage took place, but I can't find the death of his first wife Wilhelmina Massey. I think she must have died by about 1825; he then married Elizabeth, and she must be the "lady of Capt. Gillespie" who died at Kurnal on 21 June 1827. The risk of dying in childbed must have been even greater in India than in Britain or Ireland.
Can anyone confirm or refute my theory? Or perhaps find the elusive Richard (if he existed)?
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An East India Company regiment maybe?
Skoosh.