Mrs Fraser Grove
(1830-1879)
21 June 1861

Volume 4, page 111, sitting number 4514.

Born in Ireland in 1830, Katherine Grace O'Grady was the second daughter of the Honourable Waller O'Grady, QC, of Castleguard, co. Limerick.

On 16 January 1847 at Monkstown, Dublin, she married Thomas Fraser Grove of the 6th (Inniskilling) Dragoons, ‘eldest son of John Grove, M.D., of the Close, Salisbury’ (Evening Mail, 27 January 1847).

The couple appear on the 1861 census living at Ferne House in Wiltshire with their son Walter, four daughters, a governess, a dancing mistress and eleven servants, including a butler and a footman. Thomas gave ‘Landowner, JP and DL’ as his profession. [Walter and his sister Grace sat for Silvy on 11 July 1861.]

In 1865 Thomas Fraser Grove entered politics and was elected the Member of Parliament for South Wiltshire. He was re-elected in 1868. After losing his seat in the general election of 1874, he was created a baronet. He did not stand again until the general election of 1885, when he was elected the MP for Wilton. When the Liberal party split the following year over the issue of Home Rule for Ireland, he joined the Liberal Unionist Party which opposed Home Rule. In 1892 he lost his seat to the Conservative candidate, Viscount Folkestone.

Lady Katherine Grove died, aged 51, on 8 June 1879 at Ferne House, Donhead St Andrew, Wiltshire. She was buried in the village of Berwick St John on 12 June 1879.

Her widower married secondly Frances Hinton Barnewall, daughter of Henry Northcote and widow of the Honourable Frederick Barnewall.