Background
Helena Wells was born in South Carolina between 1758 and 1765, the daughter of the printer and bookseller Robert (1727/8-1824) and Mary Wells, who had emigrated from Scotland in 1753.
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Helena Wells
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Career
The title page of The Stepmother describes her as living in Charleston, South Carolina. She "seems to have been a Loyalist who later served as a governess in London". Robert became a successful bookbinder, bookseller, and then a printer for The South-Carolina and American General Gazette in 1758.
Robert was considered an outspoken and inflexible Loyalist, he and his family moved to London in 1777.
Robert was very successful in wartime London, and he got a house in Salisbury Square. After the war, the fortunes were not so great for the family.
South Carolina would seize his colonial property and didn"t give him a fair compensation. He would die in 1794, insolvent.
On the other hand, Helena"s sister Louisa (born in 1755) recalled in The Journal of a Voyage from Charlestown, South Carolina (U.S.), to London (written in 1779) that at age ten she helped take care of two sick infant sisters.
If one of these infants was Helena, she might have been born around 1764. (One or both of the babies mentioned must not have survived infancy)
In Thoughts and Remarks on Establishing an Institution, for the Support and Education of Unportioned Respectable Females (1809) Helena Wells wrote, "lieutenant was in the prime of my life (past thirty), that I attempted to place myself at the head of an establishment to board and educate Young Ladies." (If this passage refers to the project she undertook in 1789, her birth year might be 1758).
