Meghan Markle’s great-great-great-grandmother, Mary Bird, reportedly worked as a member of the Royal Household staff at Windsor Castle.
According to the Daily Mail, records of palace employees show that Meghan’s distant ancestor, Mary Bird (nee Smith), worked as a “royal maid” at Windsor Castle in the mid-19th century.
Windsor Castle Weekly Disbursement Book listed Mary as a member of the domestic staff in 1856.
Meghan’s relatives researched their family tree before she married Harry
Colonel Ken Barbi, a former U.S. Air Force officer, whose wife, Susan, is the second cousin of Markle’s father, Thomas, researched the family tree.
Barbi revealed that Mary Bird, who was listed in Palace records as a member of the domestic staff at Windsor Castle, is Meghan’s distant ancestor.
Who was Meghan’s great-great-great-grandmother, Mary Bird?
Mary was born in Ireland and later relocated to England.
She was a teenager when she became employed as a member of the domestic staff at Windsor Castle. She worked as a maid in the kitchens of Windsor Castle 160 years before Meghan married Harry.
She married an Irish shoemaker and English soldier known as Thomas Bird. Thomas Bird was a decorated officer who served in India with the 2nd Cheshire foot regiment. He later served in Malta as an officer of the British Army. He lived in Malta with his wife, Mary.
Mary’s great-great-grandmother was also named Mary
Mary and Thomas started a family in Malta. The couple had two daughters. One of the two, born in Malta in 1862, was Meghan’s great-great-grandmother, also named Mary.
Mary Bird moved to Canada with her daughters in 1881 after Thomas died. The family later relocated to Meredith, New Hampshire, in the U.S.
Mary Bird’s daughter, Mary, married George Merrill. They had nine children, including Meghan’s great-grandmother Gertrude.
Gertrude married Frederick Sanders in 2017, and they had four children together. One of the four children, Doris, born in July 1920, married Gordon Markle in March 1941. They welcomed their son Thomas Markle in 1944.
Thomas Markle and his wife, Doria Ragland, welcomed their daughter, Meghan Markle, in August 1981.
Meghan visited Malta in 2015
Meghan traveled to the island of Malta in 2015 to do a photoshoot for the ELLE UK.
She said the trip was also about trying to understand her roots and “fitting in a piece of the puzzle.”
“Coming to Malta has been really important to me because my great-great-grandmother lived here, so we’ve been trying to trace the ancestry,” she said. “This trip was mostly about trying to understand where I come from, my identity. There is something so lovely about fitting in a piece of the puzzle.”
In other royal news, Monsters & Critics reported that the Duchess of Sussex uses tapping therapy on herself, Archie, Harry, and her dogs to make them “feel more balanced and relaxed.”