Martha Coultas (Ibbetson) Gray (1734 - 1781)

Born 28 Jan 1734 in Holborn, London, , England

Ancestors

Wife of George Gray IV — married 25 Nov 1752 in Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Descendants

Died 27 Jun 1781 at age 47 in Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

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Biography

Quoted from "The Honorable George Gray, 4th, of Philadelphia, His Ancestors and Descendants"

"Martha Ibbetson must have been an unusually clever and precocious girl, even for a period when girls matured early. Before leaving London, when she was fifteen years old, she had been "trained in surgery and medicine under a skillful tutor," (see Historical Magazine quoted below). This was a wise precaution for one coming into a comparatively new country, and one that later stood her and her neighbors in good stead. Her grand-daughter, Ann Gray (Leiper) Thomas, used to tell many an inherited tale of how she drove about the countryside ministering to the poor and ill. One of Philadelphia's famous early physicians was trained by her in his youth, going about with her on errands of mercy; and during the Revolution her skilled attention to ill and wounded soldiers merited and received unbounded gratitude and admiration.

Considering the relation that both young people stood in to the Coultases, it is not to be wondered at that George and Martha Gray, although themselves Quakers, were married at Whitby Hall, "according the rites and ceremonies of the Episcopal Church," as an old Bible records it. (Martha had afterwards to "make satisfaction" for doing so before the Darby Meeting.) After her marriage she left that Meeting for one at Pine and Orange Streets attended by the Grays, but she was later given, evidently to satisfy some formal requirement, the following certificate from the Darby Meeting:

"From our Monthly meeting held at Darby the 5th day of the 2nd month, 1755. To Friends of Philadelphia Monthly Meeting. Dear Friends:

Martha Gray, the bearer hereof, desired a few lines to you as a certificate. We therefore inform you that she came recommended to us from London with her parents & almost ever since has lived within the verge of your meeting, for which reason we can say little as to her conduct and conversation, but refer to your better knowledge of her. But so far as we may acquaint you that at our last meeting she made satisfaction for her outgoing in marriage as a member of our Meeting we recommend her to your Christian care and oversight and as we are informed that in her very young years she received the Truth in the love of it, our desires are that her fruit may be unto holiness the end thereof is everlasting life."

(Many signatures appended.)

Martha died on 26 June 1781, in Pennsylvania. She was buried the next day in the Friends Burial Ground, in Philadelphia. ^[1]

Sources

1. ↑ Martha Gray, death notice, Pennsylvania Journal, or, Weekly Advertiser, Wednesday, 4 July 1781, p.3, col.2; image copy, GenealogyBank (https://www.genealogybank.com/ : accessed 17 July 2020).

   'On the 26th of last month departed this life, in Kingsess township, near Schuylkill, in the 47th year of her age, Mrs. MARTHA GRAY, the consort of GEORGE GRAY, Esq. The virtues of this amiable woman were not confined to her large and promising family. She was kind to all, and in a peculiar manner charitable to the poor. She lived justly beloved, and died (in the height of her usefulness to her family and society) universally lamented. Her remains were interred the day following in the Friends burying ground in this city, attended by a large and respectable number of the inhabitants of the town and country.'

• Source: "The Honorable George Gray, 4th, of Philadelphia, His Ancestors and Descendants", Mary Stanley Field Liddell, 1940.

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