Sarah Wilson

Sarah Wilson (1745? – 1780) was an English impostor who traveled to America as a convict servant and pretended to be the sister of Queen Charlotte. Early life Sarah Wilson was probably born in London. She was a menial servant in the kitchen of George-Lewis Scott. In around 1762 or 1763, while still in her teens, she began her career of wandering around England “imposing on the compassion and credulity of different persons in town and country”. A newspaper report from Devizes in Wiltshire in 1767 said, “It seems this woman has, for some time past, been travelling through almost all parts of the Kingdom, assuming various titles and characters, at different times and places: she has presented herself to be of high birth and distinction, as well foreign and English, and accordingly stiling herself a Princess of Mecklenburgh, Countess of Normandy, Lady Countess Wilbrahammon, &c. &c. and under some or other of such names making promises of providing, by means of her weight and interest, for the families of … the lower class of people; unto those of higher rank in life she has represented herself to be in the greatest distress, abandoned and deserted by her parents and friends of considerable family, either upon account of an unfortunate love affair, or of religion, pretending to be a Protestant against the will of her relations, who were Roman Catholicks, and always varying the account of herself as she chanced to pick up intelligence of characters and connections of those she intended to deceive and impose upon … She is a short woman, slender made, of a pale complexion, something deformed, has a speck or knell over one eye.” In November 1767 Sir John Fielding sent Wilson to Tothill Fields Bridewell to await trial for obtaining a set of expensive clothes by false pretenses. At the Westminster Quarter Sessions in January 1768 Wilson was sentenced to penal transportation to the American colonies. In America According to an advertisement dated October 11, 1771, reprinted in Rivington’s New York Gazetteer for May 13, 1773, Wilson was sold to William Devall, or Duvall, of Bush-Creek, Frederick County, Maryland as a convict servant maid, and had escaped from him.