Margaret Wake Tryon

Margaret Wake Tryon (c.1732 – 1819) was an English heiress and the wife of William Tryon, who served as the Colonial Governor of North Carolina and the Colonial Governor of New York. The eponym of Wake County in North Carolina, she is one of three women, along with Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and Virginia Dare, to have a North Carolinian county named after her. She was known for her interest in military strategy, which was controversial for upper-class women of her time.

Biography Margaret Wake was born in London to a genteel family. Her father, William Wake, served as the East India Company's Governor of Bombay from 1742 to 1750. Her mother, Elizabeth Elwin Wake of Thurning Hall, was from a prominent Norfolk family. She lived with her family at a house in Hanover Square, Westminster prior to her marriage. An heiress, she married with a dowry of £30,000. She lived with Tryon in a house on Upper Grosvenor Street. They lived at Russelborough House on the Cape Fear River near Wilmington. During this time they went on a tour of the colony and were received as guests of honor at a ball for the gentry in New Bern.

In 1770 colonial planter and general assemblyman Joel Lane named Wake County in honor of Margaret Wake.

Wake was described as an "accomplished" and "learned" woman who had a talent for playing the organ and spinet. Wake reportedly insisted on being addressed as Your Excellency, her husband's form of address.

Wake died on 16 February 1819 in Yarmouth. In her last will and testament, she bequeathed fifty pounds to Penelope Pennington, and left her property on Sloan Street in Chelsea to Penelope and William Pennington, which at that time was being rented by Lady Skipwith.

In popular culture Wake appears in Julia Quinn's 2017 romance novel The Girl With the Make-Believe Husband.

Wake is portrayed by Melanie Gray in the fourth and fifth seasons of the British television series Outlander.