Frederica of Mecklenburg-Strelitz - Early Life

Early Life

Frederica's mother died on 22 May 1782 after giving birth to her tenth child. Two years later (28 September 1784), her father remarried the younger sister of his deceased wife, Landgravine Charlotte of Hesse-Darmstadt, but this union ended just one year later, when Charlotte died of complications resulting from childbirth on 12 December 1785. The twice-widowed Duke Charles considered himself unable to give his daughters proper rearing and education, so he sent Frederica and her elder sisters Charlotte, Therese and Louise to their maternal grandmother, Maria Louise Albertine of Leiningen-Falkenburg-Dagsburg, Dowager Princess of Hesse-Darmstadt, called Princess George (in allusion to her late husband, the second son of Louis VIII, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt). She was a warm and cheerful person and especially fond of Louise and Frederica, the younger sisters, who considered her to be the only mother they really ever knew. Princess George's choice of a Swiss teacher for the girls, Salomé de Gélieu, proved to be a good one. Some time later, Duke Charles also sent his two surviving sons, the Hereditary Prince George and Charles, to be raised by their grandmother.