Person:Mary Chapman (94)

Mary Chapman was baptised on 18th June 1721 at Benington in Hertfordshire, daughter of Dorcas Chapman formerly Meagre and her husband John Chapman, a yeoman. Mary was the youngest of their three daughters.

In 1726, when Mary was five years old her mother died. Mary's father remarried shortly afterwards to a woman named Ann, who became Mary's stepmother. However, in 1727 Mary's father died too, leaving her and her two sisters Lydia and Dorcas orphans.

The month after Mary's father's death, Mary's stepmother Ann renounced her right to administer the estate, apparently including the guardianship of the three young girls. Instead the girls were looked after by a butcher named Thomas Smith from the neighbouring parish of Aston. He apparently looked after the children "beyond what their fortunes will allow" in the view of one of their neighbours at Aston. The arrangement was formalised with a bond of guardianship in 1733.^[2]

On 21st February 1743, aged 21, Mary was married to a butcher named Thomas Howard. At the time of their marriage he was living in St Albans, but they married in the City of London, at the church of St Matthew Friday Street. After their marriage they moved to St Albans, where they were living in August 1744 when Mary was named in a deed relating to a property at a place called Cudden End which she apparently owned with her two sisters.^[3]

In 1745 Mary and Thomas had a son, also called Thomas, baptised at the Abbey Church in St Albans. None of them have been traced after 1745.

1. ↑ Church of England. Parish Registers of Benington. (Hertford: Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies).

   1721: Mary the Daughter of John & Dorcas Chapman Bap[ti]z[e]d June 18th

2. ↑ See administration documents transcribed on Mary's father John's page.
3. ↑ See note on the family page of Mary and Thomas Howard.