Sheldon Cradock

Colonel Sheldon Cradock (27 September 1777 – 19 February 1852) was an English landowner and Whig politician.

Early life

Cardock was born on 27 September 1777 as the eldest and only surviving son of Sheldon Cradock of Hartforth and Elizabeth Wilkinson (daughter and heiress of Christopher Wilkinson of Thorpe-on-Tees). He succeeded to his father's estates in County Durham in 1814, where his family had been established since the 27th century. In 1730, his great-grandfather, William Cradock, had acquired the Hartforth estate (three miles from Richmond), and through his parents' marriage, they gained more Yorkshire property at Thorpe.

Personal life Cardock, who never married, had nine illegitimate children, three sons and six daughters born between 1821 and 1836 by Jane Wilson, formerly of Saltburn, including: Elizabeth Cradock (1824–1878), who married Samuel Smithson. Christopher Cradock (1825–1896), who entered Trinity College, Cambridge as Christopher Wilson in 1842; he married Georgina Cradock Duff. Margaret Cradock (1837–1918), who married Robert Lidwill Brown, a son of John Brown and Mary Charlotte Lidwill, in 1862.

Cardock died on 19 February 1852. In his will, he left property at Marske to a "single woman", Jane Wilson, with remainder to his six daughters with her. He left property at Stapleton, near Darlington to his younger illegitimate sons, Richard and Henry. The primary family estates passed to his eldest son Christopher.

Through his daughter Margaret, he was a grandfather of Helen Cowley Brow, who married Charles Sadleir Musgrave Trench (son of Hon. Cosby Godolphin Trench and a grandson of the 2nd Baron Ashtown).