Henry Louis Goertz
Published in Windlesora 32 (2016)
© WLHG 2016
As you walk from the church in Old Windsor to the Kissing Gate, you pass on your left a large box tomb of an elegant rhomboid shape. This is the memorial to the two wives of Henry Louis Goertz. We would probably know nothing of him if it were not for the fact that some of his descendents from New Zealand, searching for their ancestors, located the tomb at the same time Murray Hadden was working on the church’s electrical wiring. He showed then round and gave them my name, saying I would be interested to hear their story. Subsequently, two ladies wrote to me from New Zealand, Mrs Andrewartha and Mrs Cotton.
Their great-great-grandfather was Heinrich Ludwig Goertz and he arrived in Windsor in 1803. He had worked for the court of Hanover and was quickly appointed to Queen Charlotte’s household when he anglicise his Christian names to Henry Louis. He was an upholsterer and cabinet-maker, and in time held warrants from George IV and William .
In 1806, he married Sophia Devenport and they lived in the castle in what was called the Devil’s Tower, now known as King Edward III tower, although much of his working life was spent at Frogmore. Their first child Mary Adolphina Caroline Goertz dies in October 1814, three weeks before her seventh birthday. She has a small headstone in the Old Windsor churchyard. There were four more children from this marriage, but Sophia died on October 16th 1818.
In 1820, Henry married for the second time, to Lucretia who had been a friend of his first wife. This couple also had four children, and it is from one of these that the New Zealand ladies were descended. At the time of their marriage, Windsor Castle was undergoing extensive renovations and so the Goertz family moved to 26 High Street, in what ts now the Token House. In the basement there still remains the deep well which was used by the Goertz family.
Lucretia died in 1830 and both wives are commemorated on the grave in Old Windsor, as is Mrs Anne Devenport who died in 1828, the mother of Sophie. In 1806 Anne had been a Necessary Woman to the Princesses and in 1812 became Housekeeper at Lower Lodge. She served the Crown for almost 50 years.
The verse on the Goertz monument appears to commemorate both wives:
Mother of orphans whom mine anxious care
Would model after thine example fair
Wife of a widowed heart whose joys are fled
Since then, Sophia sleepst among the dead
Christian whose virtues in remembrance rise
Rise and teach me how to join thee in the skies
Mother, wife, Christian, all in thee farewell
No power of words my bitter loss can tell.
Henry died on February 17th 1857 and was buried in Jersey. His descendents now live in England, Australia, Canada, South Africa, and New Zealand.
Windsor Local History Group 