MARY DUCK’S BIBLE
(later MRS Mary Ledger)
(1768-1837)
Read about the mysterious Bible
of Samuel Adams here
The story of Mary Duck’s (later
Ledger’s) bible is one of the most remarkable experiences I have had. In 1993 I
was working on the manuscripts of John Evelyn. Evelyn often referred to the Bible and in his day the
King James text was the one he used. I thought it would be nice to have an
antiquarian text so one day in 1993 I was looking in an old bookshop in Cecil
Court, off the Charing Cross Road in London.
There I found, priced £16, a 1771 King James
bible. But it was filled with family information. At the age of seven in 1775
Mary Duck had proudly written inside it ‘Mary Duck’s book’. I later learned
that Mary had been born on 27 April 1768 at Calne in Wiltshire. More
information had been written inside. I was appalled that such an important
piece of family history had been sold this way and I bought it, hoping one day
to find out more about it. I had no idea what would emerge.
Mary married John Ledger (aka
Lidgard) of West Horsley at St Andrews Holborn on 9 October 1791. She died on
21 January 1837, John on 3 July 1837. They were both buried at St Mary’s,
Woodford (below left). In 1835 Mary had given the bible to her youngest
daughter, Rebecca (later Rebecca Bateman).
Mary Duck's
parents were: Moses Duck (1740-1822), born at Querneford, and Christiana Horton
(1731-1821), both buried at Hackney. Moses's parents were Anthony Duck and Mary
White (m 1733). John Ledger's parents were: John Ledger (1725-1813) and Ann
Ledger (1740-1830).
Left: St Mary’s Woodford
(picture taken 1993). The Ledger graves have all gone now, but there is a
record of the tombstone inscription. The tower was built in 1708, but the rest
of the church went up in 1817. In 1969 it was gutted by fire and rebuilt.
MARY AND JOHN LEDGER’S
CHILDREN
According to the Bible Mary Duck and
her husband John (who was Surveyor for the London-Woodford Turnpike Trust) had
ten children:
1.Mary Ann Ledger (1792-1878), buried Norwood
2. Horton Ledger (1794-1843, buried St Pauls Deptford (named after Mary's
mother’s surname Horton)
3. William Ledger (1795-1826), buried Woodford
4. John Ledger (1794-1821, buried Woodford
5. Christiana Ledger (1799-1844), buried Londonderry
6. Matthew Ledger (1800-51), died California
7. Henry Ledger (1802-32), buried Southwark
8. Jane Ledger (1804-66), buried Norwood
9. Sarah Ledger (1806-53), buried West Horsley
10. Rebecca Ledger (1809-1884), buried Norwood
THE LETTER
The bible also contained a tragic little
letter exchanged by female relatives, passing on the news of the death of 
Matthew Ledger in California in 1851 during the Gold Rush
(pictured left). I knew there had to be a story there. I was right but it would
be 11 years before I found out what had happened, or who the people in the
letter were.
So what did happen next? The answer is
nothing because in 1993 the Internet was not really up and running as an
effective resource. I visited some cemeteries in search of the graves but drew
a blank. It was so frustrating because the bible’s data told me nothing at all
about whether any of Mary’s children had married and had children of their own.
I couldn’t believe they hadn’t.
I finally got around to working on the bible
again in May 2004 and visited some genealogy websites (like http://www.familysearch.org/). I was initially
contacted by Karen Ledger, descended from a relative of John Ledger’s, who
forwarded me some family tree information that clarified some of the problems
in interpreting the names. But thanks to another Ledger, Clive Ledger (not a
relative but an active genealogist), the following day I heard from Joan Fitt,
(née Ledger), Mary Duck’s great-great-great-granddaughter. Joan had no idea of
the bible’s existence (and nor did any of her relatives), but she had spent
years assembling the family genealogy. As she told me herself, if she had had
the bible she would have saved a great deal of time. For some unknown reason
Mary Duck was recorded in her family as Mary Horton (her own mother’s maiden
name). But Joan had correctly guessed Mary Duck’s true identity and the bible
confirmed it. Joan had seen a portrait of Mary Duck, which has survived down a
different family line (picture at top).
Joan herself is descended from two of Mary’s
children: Horton and Matthew. So the emergence of the bible was an astonishing
occasion for her. On 9 May 2004 she came to my house and saw the bible,
bringing with her huge amounts of information about the family, which she has
privately published in an impressive series of volumes. As I had suspected,
Matthew Ledger’s story was the most remarkable.
MATTHEW LEDGER (1800-1851)
Matthew Ledger worked as an accountant in St
Thomas’s Hospital in London. He was married to Martha Thomas (1799-1871) and
they had five sons. Despite having a good job and many perks, for some
inexplicable reason (and it remains unexplained) he started embezzling funds
from the hospital. In 1843 he was sent for trial and the case was covered in
The London Times for 28August1843.
Matthew was sentenced to transportation to
the penal colony in
Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) to set an example to others. He had to leave his family
behind and never saw them again. When his term came up he was given a
conditional pardon that meant he could leave Tasmania but could never return to
England. His family, and numerous others, had submitted petitions for leniency
– not least because his wife was left with five sons to support. But all
attempts failed. Dickens could not have created a more vivid Victorian tragedy.
So Matthew went to California, presumably to try and make his fortune there.
But he failed. He succumbed to illness and after a month he died in Sonora,
California, in the middle of September 1851. He may have died in the
recently-founded hospital
there.
The news seems to have reached Charlotte
Marshall (b.1815, née Ledger), then Mrs Robert Marshall. She was Horton
Ledger’s eldest daughter. She dashed off a note to her sister Fanny Burgess Ledger
(1826-1913) who was still living with her widowed mother Mrs Charlotte Ledger
(née Patte) (1793-1871), their father Horton having died in 1843. This is what
it says:
My dear Fanny
You will all be deeply grieved to
hear that Aunt [Martha Ledger]
has this afternoon received a
letter from California containing the sad intelligence of dear Uncle’s [Matthew Ledger] death after about a month’s illness. I cannot tell any more
particularly at present for poor Aunt
is nearly broken hearted. Love to all believe me.
Your
affectionate sister
Ch[arlotte]
This is the note which has survived, pinned
inside the bible. Fanny gave the note to her mother who added her own note to
it, and forwarded it to her sister-in-law, and the-then owner of the bible,
Rebecca Ledger (1809-82), now Mrs Thomas Bedlow Bateman.
Mrs TB Bateman
Wilton Cottage [in the 1851 census she lived at no. 21=Wilton Cottage?]
Barrington Road
Brixton
Dear Rebecca
I have just received this and in
great haste forward it to you with the girls write love to you and their Uncle [sic]
Yours most affectionately
Charlotte Ledger
Pray excuse this forward
Rebecca added her own note to the envelope:
Heard afterwards from Mrs
Charlotte Ledger that it was the 16th of September 1851 that my
Brother Matthew died. R.B.
Above: Barrington Road,
Brixton, the approximate site of Wilton Cottage (taken on 14 May 2004). Wilton
Cottage has gone forever, but some of the old houses further west have survived,
giving an idea of what the place looked like when the letter arrived there back
in 1851. The picture below shows some of them.
It is extraordinary that the letter has
survived intact. Even so, the tragedy of Matthew’s life was suppressed by the
family. Joan Fitt, and her relatives, knew nothing of his imprisonment.
Matthew’s son John married Horton’s daughter Eliza, and it’s from that marriage
that Joan and her large family are descended. They include men such as Raymond
Kirwood Ledger (1891-1915), killed on the Western Front while serving with the
Royal Welsh Fusiliers.
What about the rest of the family?
Joan added all
this information for me.
1.Mary Ann Ledger (1792-1878), buried Norwood. She married John
Bateman of Cornhill, London.
2. Horton Ledger (1794-1843), buried St Pauls Deptford (named
after Mary's mother’s surname Horton). Horton was a road surveyor who worked
on, for example, the new road at Lee in south-east London. He married Charlotte
Patte and they had 12 children. Their seventh child, Eliza, married Matthew’s
son John.
3. William Ledger (1795-1826), buried Woodford. He became an
apothecary at St Thomas’s.
4. John Ledger (1794-1821), buried Woodford. He also became an
apothecary at St Thomas’s, and served on a ship called the Woodford
1820-1 on a voyage to Madras.
5. Christiana Ledger (1799-1844), buried Londonderry. She married
Captain Burgess Adams and had at least two children.
6. Matthew Ledger (1800-51), died California (SEE ABOVE).
7. Henry Ledger (1802-32), buried Southwark. He trained as a
surgeon at St Thomas’s. He married Charlotte Trend and had six children, two of
whom reached adulthood.
8. Jane Ledger (1804-66), buried Norwood. She married a
master carpenter called Milton Harsant. Two of their five children reached
adulthood.
9. Sarah Ledger (1806-53), buried West Horsley. She married
Daniel Hooker of West Horsley.
10. Rebecca Ledger (1809-1884), buried Norwood. Rebecca married
Thomas Bedlow Bateman, probably a brother of her sister Mary Ann’s husband. She
lived in Brixton but had no children. She left her estate to some of her nieces
and it must have been one of them who inherited the bible I now have. But where
it was from the late 1800s until 1993 is anyone’s guess.
Never in my wildest imagination did I think the bible I bought
in 1993 would lead me into this remarkable story.
Guy de la Bédoyère, 10 May 2004
Left: Joan Fitt (née Ledger)
holds her great-great-great-grandmother’s 1771 bible on 9 May 2004. She carried
on the medical tradition by becoming a doctor in 1946.
POSTSCRIPT
On 14th September
2004 I gave the Bible, once it had been professionally restored, to Joan. I
feel sure that is what Mary Duck would have wanted.
Read about the mysterious Bible
of Samuel Adams here
HANDY LINKS
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/
http://www.familyrecords.gov.uk/