Jane Wormley Blackburn (
nickname, "Jeannie") was born on the Blackburn estate of "Spring Grove", Her parents were Dr. Richard Scott Blackburn (d. 1867), physician, farmer, and part owner of a canal-boat freight business in
Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, and Sarah Anne Eleanor McGill (Thomas) Blackburn. The earliest representative of her family in the U.S. was Col. Richard Blackburn (1705–1757) of Colonial stock, who was Moran's great-great-grandfather. He came from Yorkshire, England, in 1730, and established his home in Prince William County, Virginia, naming it "
Rippon Lodge" after the estate of his grandfather, Lord Blackburn, of England. Richard was an architect and the designer of
Mount Vernon, as well as many other examples of Colonial architecture in Virginia, notably the Pohick Church Estate. His son, Col.
Thomas Blackburn, a patriot of the
Revolutionary War, served as aid-de-camp to General
George Washington. Thomas married Christian, daughter of the Rev. James and Sarah (Brown) Scott of Dettingen Parish,Prince William County, Virginia; and their daughter, Annie, married in 1785 the favorite nephew of General Washington, Judge
Bushrod Washington, associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the U.S., who inherited Mount Vernon from President Washington. Their eldest son, Capt.
Richard Scott Blackburn, married Judith Ball, a relative of May Ball, who was George Washington's mother. their son, Major Thomas Blackburn, married Elizabeth, daughter of John and Margaret (Zenill) Sinclair, first cousin of Lord Sinclair of Cathesnest Castle, Scotland; and descended on the maternal side from the Zenill family who built the
Mayflower and came to the u.S. on that vessel. Mrs. Moran father married, in 1833, Sarah, daughter of Col. John Thomas and Sarah Eleanor McGill, a descendant of the Episcopal clergyman, Rev. James McGill, who cooperated with Lords Calvert and Baltimore in securing church rights in Maryland and whose tomb bears the record that he was the last
Earl of Orford, England. Moran's mother was a sister of
Francis Thomas,
Governor of Maryland, who served as Minister to Peru from 1872 to 1875, and was a descendant of Betty Edwards, Maid of Honor to Queen Anne of England. A sister, Jane Charlotte, married John Augustine Washington, 2d, a nephew of Justice Bushrod Washington, from whom he inherited Mount Vernon, and whose son, John Augustine Washington, 3d, turned it over to Richard Blackburn Washington in 1860. Another sister, Eleanor, also married a great-grandnephew of George Washington, and her brother, Lieut. John Sinclair Blackburn, was Aid on Gen. Payne's staff in the
Civil War. Moran's siblings were: Thomas (b. 1834), Eliza Sinclair (b. 1836), John Sinclair (b. 1838), Catherine Thomas (b. 1840), Ellen Thomas (b. 1844), Sarah Elizabeth (b. 1846), Mary Grace (b. 1849), Mary Watts (b. 1850), and Richard Scott (b. 1854). Moran was educated in the classics by private tutors, supplemented by several years of travel abroad, investigating religious, racial and social conditions of various European countries and in the
Far East. She was regarded as an authority on
sociology. ==Career==