Person:Mary Tow (1)

Mary Tow's origins have yet to be established. It is possible that she was the Mary Tow baptised at Foston in Lincolnshire in 1757, but this has yet to be proven.

Mary's first confirmed sighting is on 21st July 1785 at Grantham when she married a miller called John Ingram, who was a widower. The marriage also records that they lived at Spittlegate, a hamlet in the parish of Grantham but to the south of the town itself.

Mary and John went on to have a daughter named Elizabeth in 1787, whose baptism still records the family as living at Spittlegate. She was followed by a daughter Mary in 1788, then Ann in 1792, and Richard in 1793. None of the younger children's baptisms record a specific place of abode. In 1794 the family had to face the loss of two of the children: Richard died as a baby and was buried in the March, then Mary died aged five and was buried in July.

John rented land at Spittlegate on which he built a post windmill, which he operated himself for a time, then let out to others before finally selling it. The purchaser removed the mill from the land - it was not fixed to the ground, a point which would later prove significant.

The family clearly faced hard times in the mid 1790s, and had to claim poor relief from the parish authorities. The Grantham authorities decided that the family was not their responsibility, and managed to secure a removal order from the local magistrates to have the family removed to the neighbouring parish of Londonthorpe. It is not clear what their connection to Londonthorpe was, although it would seem likely that John had lived or worked there as a young man. In 1795 the parish authorities in Londonthorpe went to court to appeal the removal order, claiming that John's short-lived windmill in Grantham had added sufficient value to the land he rented to transfer his legal place of settlement to Grantham. The court disagreed. Had the windmill been fixed to the ground, it would indeed have affected the value of the land, but because it had not been fixed to the ground it was irrelevant to the assessment of the value of the land. One of the judges commented that the windmill was "no more a tenement than a large coffee-mill put up by the tenant in his house". Therefore John's legal place of settlement had not transferred to Grantham and so it was indeed Londonthorpe's duty to pay the family's poor relief.

Also in 1795, the family had a son called George baptised at Grantham. Although the family was removed from Grantham to Londonthorpe, they seem to have continued having their children baptised at Grantham, having another daughter called Mary baptised there in 1797. In 1798, their son George died aged three years old and was buried at Grantham. Mary and John's final child was a boy called Charles, baptised at Grantham in 1800. In all, Mary and John appear to have had seven children together, only four of whom survived to adulthood.

In 1811, Mary's eldest daughter Elizabeth had a son, who is Mary's first known grandchild.

In 1814, Mary's daughter Mary was married at Londonthorpe, suggesting the family did end up living there.

Mary died in 1815, when she was said to be sixty years old. She was buried at Londonthorpe on 22nd December 1815. She had lived to see three grandchildren born in her lifetime, although one of them had died as a baby. John survived Mary by about eighteen months.

1. ↑ ^1.0 1.1 Londonthorpe Burials, in United Kingdom. FreeREG Parish Register Transcripts and Indexes. (Free UK Genealogy).

   bur. 22 Dec 1815: Mary Ingram, aged 60 [1754/5] of Londonthorpe

   Needs to be confirmed at Lincolnshire Archives. Likely that this entry comes from Bishop's Transcripts as the burial register for Londonthorpe in this period is not listed in Lincolnshire Archive's holdings.