#9 Mary Mitchell - The Reverend's Wife

Writing about women in the context of family history can be somewhat challenging. Their doings rarely feature in the sorts of sources that can often give us so much detail of the business of the menfolk and beyond the bare facts of family life, such as having their children baptised, it can be difficult to flesh them out. Even when we do discover something about them it is often in the context of their fathers, husbands or male children.

I have for some time known that My 6x great grandmother, wife of the Reverend George Stokes, was called Mary. It is only in the last week that I have learnt a little more about her, with my acquisition of another volume of Ralph Bigland Esquire's Historical Monuments of Gloucestershire. (Bless him!) As I skimmed through the records for Cheltenham an entry caught my eye - "Mary Stokes, wife of the Rev Mr George Stokes". Excitingly, the inscription continued "Daughter of the above Edward Mitchell died Jan 7, 1778 aged 75 years." At last I had a family name to work with.

Mary was born in about 1702 and baptised in Cheltenham on the 28th October of that year. Her father was Edward Mitchell and her mother Martha Bridges, the third of his four (yes four!) wives. At the time of her birth, three of her six previously born siblings were still alive. Mary's mother died in March of 1703/04.

Sometime in about 1730, Mary married George Stokes. George had studied at Jesus College, Oxford University; been ordained a priest in 1728 and had been appointed as curate for Cheltenham in about 1729. Looking through the parish register images I have been able to find his name signed many times, although I have been able to discover little else about him. At about this time she also received a bequest from her half-brother John Mitchell who died unmarried and childless at the age of 36.

Between 1730 and abt 1740 Mary gave birth to nine children, six of whom survived infancy. Her daughter Jane our ancestor, baptised in 1734, is the earliest baptism record I can find for any of her children. Michael, baptised in 1739 is the latest.

I have not yet been able to find any details of the death of her husband George but I do know from the will of Thomas Kemble of Tewkesbury that he had died before 1770. For I long time I have been wondering what the Kemble connection to our family is and, in fact, devoted an earlier post to it. I now believe that Thomas Kemble of Tewkesbury's  mother Elizabeth was a much older half sister of Mary's. Elizabeth was born in about 1680 and I think she is the daughter of Edward Mitchell and his first wife Ann Carter, who is incidentally also a 2nd cousin to me! Thomas Kemble would therefore be a half-nephew of Mary's and it would be likely that he would feel some family obligation to remember her in his will.

In 1777, Mary wrote her own will. She bequeaths to her widowed daughter Jane Holland £448 as well as the bond for a debt of £140 that she had previously lent to Jane's husband David Hughes Holland. She also leaves £180 to be shared between the five children of her deceased daughter Martha Jordan. She notes that in the past she had advanced about £400 to Martha and her husband Thomas and so her bequest to the children makes this amount up to be roughly equal to her bequests to her other children.All her household goods go to her daughters Mary Stokes, a spinster, and Dorothy Wynne, wife of Robert Wynne. Lastly the rest of her estate is to be divided equally between Mary, Dorothy and her only surviving son George.

Mary died in Cheltenham on the 7th of Jan 1778 and was buried on the 16th Jan at the church of St Mary in Cheltenham. Her memorial inscription is recorded as having been on a flat stone in the south aisle and transept of the church near those of her father, her half-brothers John and Edward, three of her father's wives and her own daughter Martha Jordan.

St Mary's Minster, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.