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m. Abt 1787 - Julia Maria Murray1791 - Abt 1820
Facts and Events
References
- About Julia Maria Bingaman
In 1791, at forty years old, Judith Sargent Murray gave birth to Julia Maria Murray. "Well, my Mamma," she wrote her mother, "how good is the God with whom we have to do—hardly for a single moment did I dare to indulge a hope of the blessing which is now in my possession." Although both mother and daughter survived, their health would always be fragile. (1)
Judith Sargent Murray's daughter, Julia Maria Murray, became romantically involved with Adam Lewis Bingaman while he was a student at Harvard. In her revealing letters to Winthrop Sargent and other family members, Judith Sargent Murray disclosed the circumstances surrounding the secret marriage of Adam Lewis Bingaman and Julia Maria Murray that occurred in Boston on August 26, 1812, because of the couple's fears of impending separation and the anticipated opposition to their marriage by both of their families. Murray's letters also reveal that Winthrop Sargent was very displeased when he learned of the secret marriage ceremony.
Adam Lewis Bingaman and his wife eventually returned to Natchez, Mississippi Territory, where they lived at Fatherland Plantation. The Bingamans had two children, Charlotte Bingaman and Adam Lewis Bingaman, Jr. Judith Sargent Murray's letters written from Franklin Place, Boston, end in August 1818 and, therefore, do not indicate exactly when she moved to Natchez to live with her daughter and her family and to be near Winthrop Sargent and his family. However, Judith Sargent Murray's obituary in the July 8, 1820, issue of the Mississippi State Gazette does state that she died at Oak Point, a plantation near Natchez, on July 6, 1820, at the age of sixty-nine. She was buried in the Bingaman family cemetery on Fatherland Plantation.
Universalist theology had changed over the years since John Murray had first arrived in America in 1770, but Judith's had not altered in the slightest. She was increasingly unsympathetic with the current generation of Universalists, and found no minister of her choosing in Boston. In 1818, when Adam Bingaman sent for Julia Maria and Charlotte to move to Natchez, Judith went with them to live at the Bingaman family plantation, Fatherland. Nearby was her brother Winthrop's large family, including children she had helped raise years earlier in Boston. She died in 1820 and was buried at Fatherland. Her daughter inscribed on her gravestone, "Dear spirit, the monumental stone can never speak thy worth." (1)
Julia Maria and her daughter died within a few years. Her son's family line ended within a generation, leaving no direct descendants of Judith Sargent and John Murray.
Sources
http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/judithsargentmurray.html
http://mdah.state.ms.us/manuscripts/z1827.html
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