The Honourable Mrs Alexander Fraser

A carte-de-visite portrait of the Honourable Mrs Alexander Fraser (1836-1928), wife of Colonel the Honourable Alexander Fraser of Eilean Aigas near Beauly.

Born on 3 December 1836, Georgina Mary Heneage was the only daughter of George Fieschi Heneage of Hainton Hall in Lincolnshire and his wife Frances née Tasburgh.

On 13 January 1858 at the Roman Catholic chapel in Warwick Street [London], she married Major the Honourable Alexander Edward Fraser of the Scots Fusileer Guards, second son of Thomas Alexander Fraser, 12th Lord Lovat. Their marriage produced no children.

Her husband ‘served in the Crimean War in 1854, and was at the battles of Inkerman, Alma, Balaclava, and the Siege of Sebastopol and the sortie of the 26th of October, for which he received a medal and clasps. In May 1855, he was presented with the Crimean medal from the hands of Her Majesty the Queen, after which he returned to the scene of operations and remained there until the conclusion of the war. He died on the 20th of September, 1885’ (The History of the Frasers, Alexander Mackenzie, 1896).

The Honourable Mrs Georgina Mary Fraser died, aged 91, on 28 March 1928, at 91 Elm Park Gardens, Chelsea. She was buried in the churchyard of St Thomas of Canterbury, Fulham. Her estate was valued at £48,506.

[A pencilled inscription verso in a period hand identifies the sitter as ‘Honble. Mrs Alastair Fraser of Lovat.’ I have found several contemporary newspaper reports which give Alastair rather than Alexander as her husband’s forename, and he is thusly named in the above quoted history of his family. Most other sources call him Alexander.]

Photographed by the Southwell Brothers of London.