Mrs James Cookson
(1819-1864)
7 June 1862

Volume 7, page 78, sitting number 8558.

Born in Bristol in or about 1819, Maria Elizabeth Gertrude Tyndall was the daughter of the banker Thomas Tyndall (1787-1841).

On 11 June 1859 at the church of Serrières, Neuchâtel, she married James Cookson of Neasham Hall, Darlington, widower of her younger sister Sybella Frances née Tyndall, who had died in 1853. The marriage took place abroad because at that time the law in their own country did not permit a man to marry his deceased wife's sister. The couple's two children were therefore illegitimage in the eyes of English law. 

The family appear on the 1861 census living at Neasham Hall. Also present on the night of the census were the three children of James Cookson’s first marriage and five servants, with a butler and his family living nearby.

Mrs Maria Elizabeth Gertrude Cookson died, aged 45, at Neasham Hall on 4 March 1864. According to her death certificate, the cause of death was 'pleuro-pneumonia, 8 days.'