Advice about the Last Name at Birth for Mary Plowright transported to New South Wales

Question

Mary Plowright (wife of William Plowright) was a convict transported to the Colony of New South Wales in 1809. She was said to have been the widow of Mr Goddard when she married William Plowright  in 1798 at Nottingham. Many online trees have her as the daughter of Charles Pares and Sarah Wootton, baptised at Kegworth, Leicestershire in 1770. Currently there are two profiles for her - Mary Unknown and Mary Pears . Before merging these profiles, we need to decide if the most appropriate LNAB is Unknown, Pears, or Pares. 

I have found the marriage of Mary Goddard to William Plowright, but haven't found anything on the marriage records that I've seen to confirm she was a widow at that time. I haven't located a record of a marriage of a Mary Pares/Pares to a Mr Goddard. I'm not sure of the basis for the story of her being the daughter of Charles Pares and Sarah Wootton, but possibly it's contained in this publication - Kirkby & Emery family, Australian settlers / by R.A.N. Kelly , 1992

Any advice appreciated! Thanks. 

Answer 1

My usual plan of attack with situations like this is to record what I know to be fact in the information boxes of a profile...and in the Bio. Everything else belongs in Research Notes.

LNAB should be based on your best/earliest primary record, and your Marriage record would say it is Goddard. You have doubts about that based on other unsourced info you have seen. You don't seem positive that the publication you list supports the LNAB being Pares/Pears, suggesting you need to review it for reliability. 

If you have enough doubt about her maiden name being Goddard or even Pares/Pears... using Unknown while you work it out is appropriate.  

Write a good explanation in your Research Notes about why you are not ready to accept the LNAB without further proof. And why you have connected parents (Charles Pares and Sarah Wootton ) - or you could explain why you disconnected them while you figure things out. 

My two cents worth, I'm sure we will hear from others about this as well. 

Comments

Thanks Lorraine! Great guidelines.

Answer 2

Hello from sunny Nottingham Gillian! My spidey sense is telling me that there may be some conflation here.

Do we know that the woman who was transported was the same woman who married William Plowright at Nottingham St Mary? There is no age or marital status in the criminal register. Perhaps her maiden name was Plowright. She calls herself in her will "MARY ARKELL of Sydney, Dealer, Wife of Mr. Thomas Arkell formerly Mary Plowright, Widow". Was this to make the birth of an illegitimate daughter named Eleanor Plowright respectable?

The pre-1895 registers for Nottingham St Mary aren't on Ancestry yet, but I may be able to get to the archives at the beginning of next week and see if there is any more information about the St Mary Plowrights in the registers.

Is is worth paying for a copy of Mary's death certificate to see what other information is on there? I'm often envious of the amount of background family detail in Australian certificates.

Jo

Edit: grammar!

Comments

Hi Jo! Thanks for your answer. We know that Mary was the wife of William Plowright as that is noted on some of her convict records in Australia and that she was from Nottingham town. I’ll add links to the records, working on Unknown-613963 later today. I don’t know that the marriage in 1798 is the relevant one. 

The daughter Eleanor Plowright was known to be illegitimate. On her baptism her parents were named as James Ball and Mary Plowright. Mary never married James Ball. Unfortunately Mary died in 1825 so no useful information on the burial record except that she was 56 years old. 

That would be amazing if you have a chance to look at the Nottingham St Mary records. This link - https://www.genealogy.com/ftm/d/a/l/Cecily-Daly-Brisbane/WEBSITE-0001/UHP-0002.html summarises the story of Mary’s early life. I don’t know if there is any evidence - for instance, later contact in Sydney with her children in England - to link those early details with the Mary Plowright, wife of William Plowright who was transported. 

---

I need to see if I can find the full transcript of her Will, as at the start of the Will, she seems to allude to other children in England. Glad it’s beautiful weather over there!

Answer 3

Baptism: 12 Mar 1759 Mary Goddard dau of John & Sarah at Nottingham St Mary, Notts. ([https://www.freereg.org.uk/search_records/58187ab1e93790eca32ee59c/mary-goddard-baptism-nottinghamshire-nottingham-1759-03-12?locale=en FreeREG] : 11 Jun 2023)

Comments

That baptsim would have made her 39 or 40 when she married William Plowright, and 54 when she had her daughter in Sydney. The latter is very unlikely.

Answer 4

I found a Goddard-Pares marriage in Kegworth, Leicestershire, on 27 Jan 1789:

• "England Marriages, 1538–1973", database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:NL3G-WJ1 : 12 March 2020), Mary Pares in entry for John Goddard, 1789.

Comments

Thanks Kath! That’s really helpful, and fills a big gap in the evidence. I’m hoping to get to the NSW State Library - I think I will be able to see the original Will there.

---

Gillian, Mary Goddard widow married William Plowright by licence (not banns) on 19 April 1798. The licence claimed that both parties were aged 21, in which case that Pares - Goddard marriage makes Mary 13 years old at that marriage. I've put the marriage details on "your" version of Mary's profile https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Unknown-613963

Edit to year

---

Hi Kathleen and Jo, I've finally got to see the R.A.N. Kelly book which is well researched and sourced. Kelly cites documentation that Mary applied to have her 6 children in England out to New South Wales in 1817. Three had the surname Goddard, and the other three had the surname Plowright. He also states that one of the Goddard children and 3 of the Plowright children are named in her Will dated 1824, and inherited a portion of her estate. The actual baptisms for the children aren't all straightforward, but the evidence from those two documents is compelling in terms of her marriage first to John Goddard and secondly to William Plowright. I'm thinking that the explanation for her age when she married William Plowright is probably that it meant '21 years or over'. Certainly her convict records and age at death suggestion she was born about 1769/1770. I'll go ahead and update https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Unknown-613963 based on the new information, with a view to amending her Last Name at Birth to Pares. Any further comments would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 5

Not sure if this link will help. In the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser they have written that her name was ...Mrs. Mary Plowright. Nothing is mentioned with regards to her maiden name.

https://australianroyalty.net.au/tree/purnellmccord.ged/individual/I22982/Mary-Plowright

Found a Baptism record on FS for Mary Pares, with original document...http://England, Leicestershire Parish Registers, 1533-1991," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QPW1-QM8G : 6 June 2018), Mary Pares, 28 Mar 1770; records extracted by findmypast, images digitized by FamilySearch; citing Baptism, Kegworth, Leicestershire, England, United Kingdom, page 6, Citing the Record Office of Leicestershire, Leicester, and Rutland, Wigston, UK.

Again, not sure if this will help.

Comments

Thanks Megan! I think that baptism record is relevant.