Ernest Augustus, Crown Prince of Hanover 21/22 December 1878, he and Princess Thyra married at Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen. Queen Victoria appointed the Duke of Cumberland a colonel in the British Army in 1876 and promoted him to major general in 1886, lieutenant general in 1892 and general in 1898. Although he was a British peer and a prince of Great Britain and Ireland, he continued to consider himself an exiled monarch of a German realm and refused to disclaim his succession rights to Hanover, making his home in Gmunden, Upper Austria. The Duke of Cumberland was also first in the line of succession to the
House of Hanover Act 1705. According to the decision taken by a court of the House of Lords, all family members bear the last name "Guelph" in the UK and are styled Royal Highnesses in their documents. Many towns and provinces across the British Empire were named after the ruling House of Hanover and its members, among them the U.S. state of Georgia, U.S. towns Hanover, Massachusetts, Hanover, New Hampshire, Hanover, Pennsylvania, Hanover Township, Jo Daviess County, Illinois, counties Hanover County, Virginia, Caroline County, Virginia, Brunswick County, Virginia, Brunswick County, North Carolina, places named Georgia in New Jersey, Vermont, Arkansas and South Dakota,