When the Internet has it wrong! The real father of Mary.

 

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 Holyland, father William, in Finsbury in 1756; and one to Thomas and Elizabeth Holeyland in Blaby, Leicestershire, in 1748. But of the first, William’s subsequent will (written in 1776) makes no mention of any surviving daughters. Of the second, that Mary is little old to have been Mrs  Carmichael Smyth, even allowing for the occasional vagueness of dates in those days - given the date of the above portrait, I wouldn't mind looking that young aged 40! More seriously, there is no evidence that the family went to London.

Nor can I find any mention of any Holylands in Bromley, nor of a Mary Elton marrying Thomas Holyland.

But whilst I can’t find any proof to back up the “Thomas Holyland of Bromley” suggestion, this doesn’t mean it’s incorrect. So instead, I offer some positive evidence of Mary Carmichael Smyth’s family background.

In Sept 1749, Christopher Holyland married Mary Elton in Hemel Hempstead. Christopher was originally from Leicestershire, but was a freeman of London, having served his apprenticeship in the Company of Musicians there. He subsequently transferred to the Company of Vintners and ran an inn in the area close to St Pauls’ Cathedral.

Christopher and Mary baptised 5 children at St Margaret Moses, Cheapside, one of them being Mary, on 28 June 1760. Christopher's will (dated 1760) specifically mentioned his sister in law Margaret Elton.

Christopher died in 1769. In 1774, Mary Holyland, a widow of St Andrew Holborn, married Thomas Wilkinson at St Alphege Greenwich. Also in 1774, Margaret Elton, a spinster of Ledbury, made bequests in her will to her sister Mary, the wife of Thomas Wilkinson, a merchant in London, and to her niece Mary Holyland.

I was lucky enough to find another will written in 1783 by Mary Wilkinson of Westrop, Buckinghamshire, the wife of Thomas Wilkinson. In this will, Mary makes bequests to her daughter Mary, the wife of Dr James Carmichael Smyth; she also mentions her sister Elizabeth Elton.

So it seems clear that Mary Elton married, firstly, Christopher Holyland and then Thomas Wilkinson; and her daughter (and hence Christopher’s daughter too) was Mary Carmichael Smyth nee Holyland. I believe that the “Thomas Holyland” named in internet resources as Mary Carmichael Smyth’s father was actually an incorrect blending of her birth father and stepfather; and it has been suggested to me that “Bromley” may not have meant Bromley, Kent, but instead, Bromley by Bow – which is only 5 miles from Cheapside, where Mary Holyland had lived with her birth family, and 3 miles from Greenwich, where Mary’s mother and Thomas Wilkinson married.

This means that Mary could have been just 15 when, a year after gaining a new stepfather, she married the considerably older James in Gretna Green. Did she elope? Perhaps, but that may have been glossed over – here’s the only marriage announcement that I can find:

14 December 1775  (Note that this was in the Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, so would have been seen by those members of “High Society” taking the waters in that very fashionable place!)

Even if it was an elopement, it seems not to have damaged the subsequent rise that her husband and children enjoyed in society!