Family: Samuel Downing / Mary Genn/DOWNING

Mary Genn married Samuel Downing in 1818.  James Genn, Mary's brother, attended and signed as a witness.  Samuel was a mercer (dealer in cloth), later to become a wine and spirit merchant. Samuel Downing was one of the eleven children of William Downing (1748-1804) and his wife Elizabeth.  
 
Samuel Downing and his wife Mary (Genn) Downing had two children, Samuel Theophilis Downing and Mary Genn Downing.  Mary Genn Downing married her cousin Edward Coenty Downing.  Samuel Theophilis Downing became a noted lawyer in Helston, Cornwall. His children were Nora Downing who married Richard Robyns Malone, and Caroline Winfield Downing who married Harold Roxworthy.  C. Vincent Downing and Company, solicitors, Falmouth, Cornwall, continues the family legal tradition.  
 
The colorful part of this diversion is in regard to Samuel Downing's sister Harriet, who married a doctor by the name of Robert Sawle Donnell.  Robert Donnell was tried in Launceston for administering arsenic (in a sandwich) to his wife Hariet's (also Samuel's) mother Elizabeth Downing. Donnell was in financial difficulty, his mother-in-law Elizabeth was wealthy, and his wife would stand to inherit.  Despite all the evidence against him, Robert Sawle Donnell was acquitted on the murder charge. The logic, as it was explained, was that she was old and he had his whole life ahead of him.  This case still gets a mention in law school curriculums.