Holyland-one-name-study blog

  This lovely young woman was Mary Carmichael Smyth, the wife of James Carmichael Smyth, physician extraordinary to King George 111. Mary married James, who was several years her senior, in Gretna Green in 1775; the couple had 10 children and Mary apparently died in 1803 or 1806. This portrait was painted around 1788 by George Romney and is the possession of the National Gallery of Scotland . Multiple internet sources state that Mary's father was Thomas Holyland of Bromley, and her mother Mary Elton (eg, here: http://www.thepeerage.com/p20538.htm#i205375 ). However I am certain that these internet sources (many of which have probably been copied from each other) are wrong, and that Mary’s father was actually Christopher Holyland, a vintner of Cheapside in London, who died in 1769. Here’s my evidence. Firstly, I can find no baptism for a Mary Holyland (or variant on the name) to a father named Thomas in the south east of England in the mid 1700s. There was a baptism of Mary