Mrs Lewis Gordon
(1815-1868)
29 July 1862

Born in Hanover in or about 1815, Dorothee Wilhelmine Marianne Heise was the daughter of David and Marianne Heise.

On 23 November 1850 in Hanover she married the Scottish civil engineer Lewis Dunbar Brodie Gordon. At the time of the marriage she was the widow of a Herr Glünder.

Lewis and ‘Maria' Gordon appear on the 1851 census living at 24 Abingdon Street, Westminster. Lewis gave as his profession ‘Regius Professor of Civil Eng. and Mechanics in the University of Glasgow [and] Civil Engineer.’

In 1861 the family were living at 6 Porchester Terrace, Bayswater, a few doors from Silvy’s studio. Also present on the night of the census were their nine-year-old son Joseph, three servants and a German governess, who was a visitor rather than a permanent member of the household.

Maria Gordon died at the Château de Bossey in Geneva on 28 September 1868.

When her husband died in 1876 his estate was valued at £80,000.