Walter Hellen Jr, one son, likely the youngest, of Walter Hellen Sr., abt 1726(?)-1775, and Mary Baker Johnson, 1729-1801, sister of Gov. Thomas Johnson, was born in Calvert County, Maryland, in 1766, almost certainly in Eltonhead Hundred on his parents' farm, Hooper's Neck. The first confirmed record for Walter is an entry in his first cousin's diary from the summer of 1792, Walter then visiting the summer home of his uncle Joshua Johnson, in Highbury, North London, Joshua then the US Consul in London and a merchant, and Walter appearing to have remained for perhaps four years and "clerked" for Joshua's continued business interests. Louisa Catherine Johnson, his first cousin and future sister-in-law, noted him as "very handsome, but very sickly", and perhaps humorously given later events, also noted she was not impressed with him. This trip would be the first time he met his Johnson first cousins, all having been born in England or France, and included his later two wives, Ann"Nancy", who does appear to have been impressed, and Adelaide, then only four.

By the time of his marriage to Nancy in Washington, DC in Oct of 1798, he had become a very successful tobacco speculator and owner of real estate in the District of Columbia. They first lived in his home on G Street "the third west from the President's House" and would move by 1803 to a "sizable residence" near the waterfront on K Street in Georgetown where he owned a warehouse and ships still docked with his tobacco shipments. Walter and Nancy had seven confirmed offspring, Johnson, 1800, Wallis, about 1802, Washington, 1804, Walter III, 1805, Mary Catherine, 1806, Thomas Johnson, 1809, and an unnamed infant, 1810. Wallis, Washington and Walter III, all died as infants under two years of age, and the unnamed infant appears to have died at birth with her mother, Nancy in 1810. No definitive burial record has been found for Thomas Johnson Hellen, who died in 1833, but with one highly probable Rock Creek Cemetery record found, he now has a linked memorial, although qualified. A similar record was found for Wallis Hellen, who died in 1803, but whose name was not inscribed on the marker.

Walter's now cousin and sister-in-law Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams and her husband, future president John Quincy Adams, then a senator, lived with Walter and Nancy when congress was in session between 1803 and 1808, and John Quincy walked the three miles to the capitol building. Biographies note Walter and John as "faithful friends" as well as brothers-in-law. Walter had already also taken in his widowed mother-in-law, Catherine Newth Johnson, 1749-1811, and all her unmarried daughters, and had been first agent, then executor of her husband, Joshua Johnson's will, Joshua both his uncle and later father-in-law.

Three years after Nancy died in 1810, he married Adelaide Johnson, Nancy's younger sister, on Oct 14, 1813, and of course, also his first cousin and former sister-in-law. The Johnson family did not approve, thinking this "inappropriate", plus Adelaide being twenty-two years his junior. Some sources note her as a young widow with an infant son at the time of the marriage, but were unsupported and now thought only partly correct They would have one child, Walter IV in 1814, before Walter's death at age only forty-nine in 1815. The cause of death was noted as a result of "a lifelong battle with consumption" (tuberculosis), possibly acerbated by conditions experienced when likely forced to flee his home during the British occupation of Washington in 1814.

Although noted as an exceptionally generous man all his life, oddly perhaps, upon his death, Adelaide and her infant son (sons?), were left only the Georgetown home and furnishings plus $400 per annum income from rentals...only enough to life on and only as long as she did not remarry. She sued the estate to get the legal inheritance then due a wife by law. Walter's heirs were astonished to learn the full extent of his wealth upon his death; over sixty thousand (1815) dollars...equal to many millions today.

Adelaide won her suit against her husband's estate, but never remarried. She did however have another child, illegitimate, daughter Georgiana Adalide, born in 1818, and fathered, from recent professional research (2014) and Adams family records, by her brother-in-law, Col George Boyd. Georgiana was given the surname Hellen, the circumstances of her birth quietly glossed over. Walter and Nancy's daughter Mary, and sons, Johnson, Thomas, and Walter IV inherited the remaining of their father's estate, Johnson becoming prominent, rich, and successful, dying in Washington in 1867. Daughter, Mary Catherine Hellen, then nine, and two of her siblings, were later taken in by the Adams family two years after Walter's death, after which she later had various "flirtations" with their three sons, her first cousins, and finally married the middle son, John Adams II, on Feb 25, 1828. The groom's mother and bride's aunt, first lady, Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams, did not approve of this marriage either, but felt the young lovers needed "the benefit of marriage". Their first daughter, Mary Louisa Adams, was born almost exactly nine months later.

The Hellen marker erected by Walter in Rock Creek Cemetery, in likely about 1805 for his first son, Washington, who died in infancy, today is inscribed with a total of twelve known individuals of the extended family, including Walter himself, his two wives' and their family or descendants. Per the attached detail photo, Walter's date of death appears October 5, but the inscription has eroded or was damaged at some point. The correct date was Monday, October 30, 1815, and noted in the "night". There is also a thirteenth, unidentified name inscribed, noted below. The year of death and burial for Walter IV has never been determined from records and is based on Johnson family research sources.

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The inscriptions on the shared marker on the plot, in apparent order of interment:

Washington Hellen, 1805

Walter Hellen III, 1806

Anne "Nancy" Johnson Hellen, 1810 (also daughter Wallis, but without an inscription).

Catherine (Newth) Johnson, 1811 – see assoc links – not buried with her husband.

Walter Hellen Jr., 1815 - shares a subplot with Nancy.

After Walter's death and Adelaide's lawsuit, the plot appears to have become her property, the following interments made there by her, and limited to her family.

Eugene Joseph Moody, 1840 – Adelaide's grandson

Thomas Baker Johnson, 1843 – her lifelong bachelor brother

Walter Thomas Hellen IV, 1850 - her son - no date inscribed

William Stevens Smith – no date inscribed – see note below*

Adelaide Maria Moody - 1862 - Adelaide's granddaughter

Georgiana Adelaide Hellen Moody, 1863 – Adelaide's daughter

Adelaide Johnson Hellen, 1877

And finally, her son-in-law, who inherited the plot upon her death, Walter Hellen IV's name immediately above his:

Theodore Lyman Moody, 1878

* William Stevens Smith cannot be positively identified and no date of birth or death is inscribed. As his name is below that of Thomas Baker Johnson on one face of the marker, about all that can be surmised is that he died after 1843, but with names carved on all the available space on the maker, it could have been later, after Georgiana in 1863, but assumed before Adelaide herself, she likely having him interred here, not her son-in-law. With the latest research (2018) it is now thought that he was in fact Adelaide's son, born about 1811, but not in a first marriage. Please see the remarks attached to her memorial for additional details.

A note on sources: Walter, his parentage, two Johnson wives, offspring, and many other details are referenced in a number of sources on the prominent Johnson family and in similar sources on the Adams family, including several biographies of Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams which include entries from her personal diaries and references to correspondence. This abridged bio has been drawn in part from those sources plus other records. SAR/DAR applications, as summarized in Colonial Families of the USA and available on ancestry.com, often, though not consistently, confuse Walter Jr. with his father, note three Johnson wives incorrectly and/or record another "Mary Johnson" as a spouse of an unspecified Walter Hellen. Those transcribed lineages from the applications were not vetted and many contain numerous errors.

Note on links below: With the August 2018 inclusion of son, Thomas Johnson Hellen, daughter, Wallis Hellen, and in November of 2018, an "infant" Hellen (those two memorials now updated and corrected), all immediate family and descendants known to be interred here are now linked.

Allan Garner - Rev: 3 Aug 2021.