Captain Francis Carey and
Mrs Ellen Carey
(1820-1887 and 1824-1915)
26 April and 22 May 1861

Volume 3, page 152, sitting number 3297 (her portrait) and Volume 3, page 282, sitting number 3809 (his portrait). 

Major Francis Carey was an officer of the 26th (The Cameronian) Regiment of Foot.

Born in Ireland in or about 1820, he was the youngest son of Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Carey, who reached the rank of Lieutenant-General in the British Army. He joined the Army by purchase as an Ensign on 22 May 1835. He attained the rank of Major on 26 July 1854.

During the Great Famine he was appointed a relief inspector (Westmeath Independent, 20 March 1847).

On 12 January 1850 he married Ellen Hardy, only daughter of the late Robert Hardy of Cork and Ellen née Harris. Her father was ‘for many years the assistant treasurer and secretary of the Cork Small Loans Fund' (Cork Examiner, 24 October 1849), properly the Cork Charitable Loan Society. 

Their marriage produced at least four daughters and three sons. The entire family appear on the 1871 census living at 12 Eaton Place in London, the home of Colonel Carey’s widowed mother, Julia. The household also comprised nine servants, including a butler and a footman.

In 1881 Major-General Francis Carey, his wife Ellen and their four unmarried daughters were living at Ashbourne Lodge in Winchester.

Lieutenant-General Francis Carey died on 17 September 1887 at Gatehouse-of-Fleet in Kirkcudbrightshire [Scotland]. He left an estate valued at £31,244.

Mrs Carey appears on the 1911 census, an 86-year-old widow living with two of her unmarried daughters and three servants at Ashbourne Lodge, Andover Road in Winchester. She died on 13 May 1915 at her residence, Ashbourne Lodge in Winchester, leaving an estate valued at £6025.