Vivien Leigh

Birth Name: Vivian Mary Hartley

Date of Birth: 5 November, 1913

Place of Birth: Darjeeling, Bengal Presidency, British India

Date of Death: 8 July, 1967

Date of Place: London, England, U.K.

Ethnicity: English, likely Armenian and Irish

Vivien Leigh was a British actress. She twice won the Academy Award for Best Actress, for Gone with the Wind (1939) and A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). She also starred in Caesar and Cleopatra, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, and Ship of Fools.

She was born in India. Her father, Ernest Richard Hartley, was English, and may have been born on the Isle of Islay, Argyll, Scotland or in Bingley, West Yorkshire, England. Her mother, Gertrude M. F. (Yackjee/Yackje), was born in Darjeeling, India.

Vivien had a daughter, actress Suzanne Farrington, with her first husband, barrister Herbert Leigh Holman.

There are at least three different couples referred to by genealogists as Vivien’s paternal grandparents. One couple are Seth Hartley and Sarah Jane Mawson. Seth was born in Calverley, West Yorkshire, England. Sarah was born in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, England.

Vivien’s maternal grandfather was named Michael John Yackjee/Yackje (the son of Johannes/John Gabriel Yackjee and Elizabeth). It appears that Michael was of Armenian origin.

Vivien’s maternal grandmother was named Mary Therisa/Teresa/Theresa/I. Robinson (the daughter of James Wilson/Wilston Robinson). Vivien’s maternal grandmother was usually said to be the daughter of Irish parents.

Sources: Genealogies of Vivien Leigh – https://www.geni.com
https://genealogy.links.org
http://www.hartleyfamily.org.uk
http://townsley.info

Information about Vivien’s Armenian ancestry – http://chater-genealogy.blogspot.ca

A discussion of Vivien’s ancestry – http://www.gnxp.com

Marriage record of Vivien’s maternal grandparents, Michael John Yackjee/Yackje and Mary Therisa/Teresa/Theresa/I. Robinson – https://familysearch.org

ethnic

Curious about ethnicity

103 Responses

  1. ashash says:

    Here Vivien is with her mother:

    http://timerime.com/user_files/131/131854/media/vivian_calcutta1915.jpg?t=1350230520

    Strange that no one knows her ancestry. What did Vivien say about it?

  2. fbwfeiwb says:

    I read that she was a quarter Parsi Indian. And Parsi people seem to be lighter than Indians.

    • andrew says:

      because Parsi people are not Indians, they’re Persian Zoroastrians who emigrated to India to avoid religious persecution by the Muslims.

  3. Amanda says:

    Vivian Leigh was a bona fide Anglo-Indian… no two ways about it. To fabricate the notion that her mother had Armenian ancestry is just delusions of grandeur. There have never been any ethnic Armenians in either Bengal or Assam.

    The name “Yackjee” isn’t even a real surname… whoever concocted it didn’t know anything about Armenian / Parthian names.
    @ Pasqal – in no sane context can Khachaturian be pronounced Yackjee. I suggest you first go to India and learn something about its linguistics & ethnicities.

    Numerous credible sources have pointed out that Vivian’s mother was a thoroughbred Indian woman from Bengal. Gertrude was the second child of a Sindhi father (Vikram Sadhwani) & a Bengali, Catholic mother (Mary Chatterjee). She had an elder brother Patrick, whose granddaughters still reside in present day Kolkata.

  4. follers says:

    This explores Vivien’s mother’s lineage. It appears that her maternal grandmother was the daughter of a mixed-religion (Protestant, Catholic) couple from Ireland.
    http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2006/09/vivien-leigh-again.php

    • Alice says:

      I’ve read a couple of biographies on Vivien including the Hugo Vickers one. I find her so fascinating as well as incredibly beautiful. She was a very complex person. I don’t know if the mystery of her mother’s ancestry will ever be solved. Her mother looked stereotypically Irish with her blue eyes and auburn hair. Her maternal grandmother was Irish but the man who took her grandmother out of the orphanage and married her Michael John Yackjee is the key. Yackjee is definitely not Irish.

  5. Pasqal says:

    Well, Vivien has Armenian ancestry as well. Text from Wkipedia below is taken from the reliable source ‘General Register Office of England and Wales, Marriages, June quarter 1912, Kensington vol. 1a, p. 426’
    Leigh was born Vivian Mary Hartley in the campus of St. Paul’s School, Darjeeling, Bengal, India (British India), to Ernest Hartley, an English officer in the Indian Cavalry, and Gertrude Mary Robinson Yackjee (1888-1972), a devout Roman Catholic of Irish and Armenian descent, the daughter of Mary I. Robinson and John G. Yackjee, who wed in 1872. Ernest and Gertrude married in Kensington, London in 1912.[3]

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