Dennis, Elinor “Nelly” Jackson, 1770-1827

Elinor Jackson was born to Henry Jackson and Elizabeth Wilson Jackson around 1770. One year later, Elinor’s father, Henry, acquired a tract of land called “Beckford” at the head of the Manokin River west of the town of Princess Anne in Somerset County. The property supplemented the Jackson family’s primary residence, “Workington,” situated on Back Creek, along the Manokin River near the Chesapeake Bay.^[1]

Twenty-three years later, on August 8, 1793, Elinor Jackson married John Dennis in Somerset County, Maryland. The couple had seven children: Elizabeth “Betsy” Wilson Dennis Upshur (1795-1817); Littleton James (1797-1829); Susan Upshur Dennis Snead (1799-1864); Henrietta Dennis (1800-1829); Henry Jackson Dennis (1802-1828); Robert Jackson Dennis (1804-1857); John Dennis, Jr. (1807-1859).^[2]

The Teackle and Dennis families did not always have smooth relations. Between 1800 and 1803, George Wilson Jackson, Elinor’s brother, loosely courted Sarah Teackle for three consecutive years. In a letter from Eliza Teackle, Jr. to her sister, Anne Eyre, Teackle recounts how Jackson apparently led Sarah Teackle to believe that he wanted an engagement despite going away for long periods of time without keeping in touch with her. Elizabeth Teackle called Jackson’s conduct “improper…mysterious and reprehensible.” Elizabeth ends the letter by noting that “the connexion [sic] which subsists between Mr. J’s sister [Elinor Jackson Dennis] and Mr. John Dennis places our family in a delicate situation.”^[3] It is unclear how this inter-family saga concluded. However, Elinor Jackson Dennis remained a frequent visitor to the Teackle Mansion and often hosted her neighboring Teackles at Beckford before and after the episode.

On May 19, 1802, Elinor’s brother, the romantically non-committal George Wilson Jackson, conveyed to John Dennis property “contiguous to the town of Princess Anne…westernmost side of the said town…being part of a tract of land called Beckford.” Two years later, on December 11, 1804, Elinor’s husband sold a parcel of Beckford to his nephew, Littleton Dennis Teackle. The latter would soon build the Teackle Mansion upon the former Beckford land. Around the same time, John Dennis constructed Beckford Manor. The two structures were near neighbors and the two families respectively housed there – the Teackles and the Dennises – socialized frequently.

Elizabeth Upshur Teackle, the wife of Littleton Dennis Teackle and resident at the Teackle Mansion, was responsible for voluminous correspondence in which Elinor Jackson Dennis was often mentioned. Although technically her aunt, Elizabeth Upshur Teackle regularly referred to Elinor Dennis as “Cousin Nelly.” In one letter between Elizabeth Upshur Teackle and her sister Ann Eyre, Teackle declared “who wou’d give up you, cousin Nelly, and my chosen, my known few friends, for the innumerable herd of the gay world.”^[4]

Indeed, according to surviving correspondence, Elinor Jackson Dennis was beloved by many members of her extended family. Juliet Upshur wrote to her cousin, Elizabeth Upshur Teackle at the Teackle Mansion, “Tell my dear cousin Nelly[,]^[5] I frequently think of her and never without an earnest desire to see her…Mama sends her love and blessing to you and cousin Nelly.” The same correspondence often details the state of Elinor’s health and that of her children.^[6]

Elinor Jackson Dennis was pregnant with her youngest child, John Dennis, Jr. when her husband, John Dennis, Sr. died in 1806. “Whereas I have some reason to suppose that my wife is now pregnant,” John Dennis surmised in his last will and testament, “[and] thinking proper to provide for such an event if she be so pregnant and should be delivered of a live born child I give and bequeath to such a child the sum of one thousand pounds current money.” “It is also my will and desire,” Dennis continued, “that said child shall be entitled to an equal share of my Negroes and Personal Estate with my two sons Henry and Robert and my three Daughters.”^[7]

After the death of her husband in 1806, Elinor Jackson Dennis did not remarry. She died in the summer of 1827.^[8]