Mary Inkersole, Woman of Character
Imogen Wedd
Of all my Wedd ancestors I think the one who most interests me is Mary Inkersole, 18th
century matriarch, businesswoman and woman of character. Yet hers was a life full of
tragedy, typical, I imagine of the lives of so many women of her time. Mary was nearly 30
when, on12 February 1744/5, she married Benjamin Wedd of Fowlmere; her new husband
was 37. Benjamin Wedd was the second of seven children of Benjamin Wedd and Hester
Crackanthorp, but the only one to carry on the Wedd name, for all three of his brothers died
childless within a few years of each other, Peter in 1742, Nathaniel in 1747 and John in
1750. There were several outbreaks of fever or sweating sickness (typhoid?) in the area at
the time.i
Forty years after Mary's death the genealogist Berryii recorded 'that she was the daughter of
Thomas Inkersole of Spalding. However she is recorded in Huntingdon marriage allegations
as Mary Inkersole of Great Staughton. I know little of the Inkersoles. There were Inkersalls in
Brant' Broughton in Lincolnshire in the 16th and 17th centuries, and Incarsoales in the
Cambridgeshire area in 1700s. However Mary's family seem to have come from
Huntingdonshire; certainly they were living around St Nests in 1814, as legacies to her
children and nephews in that year record.iii
We tend to think of the life of the 18th century wife as dominated, by childbearing and death,
and Mary’s early married Life was no exception. Within three months of the marriage she
was expecting her first child, and a son, Peter~ was born in February 1746; 14 months later
Hester was born, to be followed by Nathaniel, Mary and Elizabeth, a total of five children in
six years. Then, in May 1753, little Elizabeth died at the age of two. The following year six
year old Mary and the new baby, Dorothy, died within a week of each other. Two more
children were born, Benjamin and William. Then a great blow fell - Mary’s husband
succumbed to the ravages of smallpox at the age of 49. When, three years later, Benjamin
Wedd's mother Hester Crackanthorp died at the age of 80 she had, within 15 years, lost all
four of her sons, three grandchildren and her second husband.
So, by 1760, apart from a sister-in-law married into the Huguenot family of Beldam in
Royston, and another married to Richard Chantry in London, Mary Inkersole was left alone to
run the Wedd wool business and to bring up five small children, the eldest of whom was 14.
She had the comfortable house on the Green, built by her husband's grandfather 50 years
before, and a small amount of property, mostly in the form of copyhold Land.
Like most people, I suppose, my picture of the lot of women at this time was that of a
prescribed existence within the home and under the subjection of either father or husband.
No doubt for some women it was like that, but a married woman appears to have had
considerably more autonomy in the late 18th century when business was carried on in the
home and village than later with the centralisation of manufacturing.iv It seems that the
position of women actually deteriorated in the 19th century. Certainly married women
supplemented the family income, in Fowlmere probably with brewing and spinning, and the
participation of women in business was far from unusual, especially in the case of widows
with their wider rights.
Whether unusual or not, Mary took over her husband's business and clearly ran it most
successfully. By 1774 Mary Wedd and Son took on an apprentice, Joseph Pattison of
Malden in Essex, and in 1777 are recorded in the Quarter Sessions as being fined for
evading duty. Evading the law was not, I think, a comment event, for Mary was a religious
woman, a staunch member of the Independent movement.
In 1758 her house was licensed for meetings, but the family worshippedd mainly in the
chap61 at neighbouring Melbourn. In 1780 her son Benjamin Wedd gave some land and,
with his brothers and the Ellis family of Thriplow, financed the building of an Independent
chapel in Fowlmere. By the end of Mary's life the chapel had a larger congregation than that
of the parish church. Mary's life was not to be smooth sailing, for in 1765 another tragedy
befell the family. In December the eldest son, Peter, then 20, was sent to collect the rent
from a tenant in nearby Litlington, Thomas Hughes, who had set himself up there as
schoolmaster and shopkeeper. Hughes invited Peter into the house for a drink, and then took
from the larder a gun. Whether there was any motive for an attack Dr whether he was merely
drunk, whether he actually intended to shoot or what followed was just a tragic accident, we
do not know, but the 9U/n was fired and Peter was fatally injured, Seeing what he had done
Hughes turned the gun on himself and died. Peter was carried to his mother's house and it is
clear what a terrible shock this was not only for the family .but~ to the whole local community,
for the case was chronicled in the local, newspaper and recorded by the rector of Fowlmere
in the parish register. The young man survived the initial injury, but died three months later.
One can only speculate whether, having survived so long, he would have lived
if he had not been subjected to the rigours of 18th century medicine.
This terrible and pointless tragedy somehow seems very modern. How often do we hear of
such motiveless bloodshed today? It does make one wonder if the stresses of 20th century
life are entirely new. Even then they had opium and gin addiction, recession and poverty, and
of course greed, envy and resentment are nothing new. What a dreadful blow it must have
been to Mary; he was her eldest son and associated with her in business. He would have
been old enough at his father's death to be working and able to give her some practical
support. There is, too, the unmistakable ring of sincerity in 'the marginal entry in the parish
register that Peter was 'much regretted by all who knew him'.
Meanwhile, Mary's surviving children had to be provided for. In 1774, at the age of 27, Hester
married William Nash. The Nash family were cousins and neighbours of the Wedds in
Fowlmere, but William was by this time a practising lawyer in Royston. He became a muchrespected local figure, and a member of the intellectual (and nonconformist) circle in Royston
which centred on the Royston Book Clubv. Hester was clearly her mother's daughter, for her
grave in Fowlmere churchyard carrying the delightful inscription:
Her industry and [energy], patience and fortitude, benevolence and piety were so
exemplary that her death was bewailed by the neighbouring poor, lamented by her
numerous friends, and by her husband and children most sincerely deplored.
Two years later Benjamin married Elizabeth Crackanthorp, his second cousin. In 1780
William married ELizabeth Pattison whose brother had been apprenticed to the family
business, and in 1783 Nathaniel married Dorothy Gutteridge of London. I would like to
picture Mary in later life, living with her second son Benjamin at the Green, surrounded by
her family. Although Nathaniel and Dorothy seem to have been childless, Mary had 27
grandchildren, for Benjamin had eight children, Hester five and my ancestor William a
princely 14. I see the three Wedd brothers, upright, prosperous and self-confident, carrying
on business together and upholding the Fowlmere Chapel. At some stage Nathaniel moved
away from the family wool business and traded mainly in corn; later in life he leased Antsy
Manor at Trumpington. Benjamin and William continued to trade together, and to farm their
holdings in association with the Ellis family of Thriplow.
Mary died in 1802 at the age of 87 and was buried with the Wedd forebears in the south
transept of the parish churchvi. The parish priest wrote in the register to record her death 'her
epitaph can be written in these few words: she was an active and truly virtuous woman'.
Published in The Cambridgeshire Family History Society Journal, Vol.9 No.6, May 1994
© Imogen Wedd 1994
i
A. Kingston, A History of Royston, 1906
ii
Berry, Pedigrees of Hertfordshire Families, 1846
iii
Will of Mary Pewtress 1814: Crisps Wills (HOG Library)
iv
M. Prior, Women in English Society 1500-1800
v
vi
.
Victoria County History: Fowlmere
Denis Hitch ‘A Mere village’