Mary Endacott
Mary was the daughter of Edward Endacott and Jane Guscott. Mary was born in 1800 at Moretonhampstead, Devon, England, and christened on 5 October of that year. Many years later, on the death certificate of her daughter, Mary's middle initial is given as "A" but it not known if this was accurate nor what he initial had stood for.
As Endacott was a common name in Devon, it is not surprising that the man she married was also named Endacott. She married William Endacott in 1821. Their children included:
- a son named James Hooper Endacott and;
- a daughter named Mary Jane.
William died in 1837. Mary married for the second time to a man named John Bartlett. There had been some difficulty in identifying the details of Mary's second marriage but it now appears certain that this was the marriage recorded under the name Endicott at St Thomas the Apostle church in Exeter on 13 December 1841. Mary was described as a widow and "of age" while her second husband was described as a widower and his occupation was gardener and his father was Robert Bartlett, a labourer. The registration gives Mary's father's name as "John" and this had led to discarding this registration as "our" Mary. However Mary was a widow and "John" was the father of her first husband and there may have been some confusion in recording this information. The paternal occupation of "yeoman" was the term used elsewhere to describe Mary's father, Edward. Genealogist, Mr Sydney Smith, researched this marriage and concluded that there was sufficient similarity between the signatures onn the original entry for the 1821 Moretonhampstead marriage and the 1841 Exeter marriage to conclude that it was the same Mary Endacott. When Mary married William in 1821 she had signed Mary Endacott and this is the same way she signed her name when she married John Bartlett. Also, the way she formed the letters "E" and "d" suggest the signatures are sufficiently close to be the same person. Although the clerk at St Thomas transcribed Mary's name as "Endicott" when register entries were copied and sent to London, the original register clearly shows "Endacott" proviiding an example that one cannot completely trust what a clerk might have sent to London.
The residence at the time of marriage for both John Bartlett and Mary Endacott was stated as "Alphington Street". It is therefore possible that they were cohabiting prior to the marriage.
Mary's second husband was apparently known as "colonel" Bartlett but it is not known how he acquired that title. His occupation as gardener suggests he was not a military man. Further, whereas Mary was able to sign her name for the official records, John Bartlett signed his "X" mark. If he had retired from the military, it is unlikely that he had been an officer. Perhaps he was just a bossy or officious person.
Family legend
is that Mary and John Bartlett migrated to New South Wales between 1848 and 1850, and were accompanied by
- Mary's son, James Hooper Endacott,
- Mary's daughter, Mary Jane Endacott,
- Bartlett's son, Henry Bartlett, of whom nothing more is known
- Bartlett's son, John Bartlett
Mary Bartlett died on 28 May 1852 at the age of 52 years. According to the certificate issued by the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages in New South Wales, Mary's funeral was conducted in the Church of England in the parish of Camperdown. The cemetery is located in Church Street, adjacent to St Stephen's Church, Newtown, and a large part of the former cemetery has been converted to parkland. The area around the church remains a cemetery and gravestones from the cleared area are placed around the cemetery's wall. A sign at the cemetery named Tamsyn Taylor (telephone 02 9557 8604) as the contact person for the cemetery. She was able to locate old church burial records and found Mary Bartlett's burial recorded on docket 1720 which shows that Mary died of "natural causes" and her burial was a "common interment" (buried in a pauper's grave). Also buried in the same grave was Frederick Robert Florian a 2-year-old infant from Clarence Street who had died of convulsions. Mary's burial took place at 4:00 pm on 29 May 1852 and the undertaker was James Curtis. Tamsyn Taylor advised that, as the burial was a "common interment", no gravestone would ever have been erected. When visiting the cemetery in 1999, the location and surrounding park were perceived to be an interesting and tranquil setting, and the large trees seem a fitting living memorial to all buried there.
The burial certificate for Mary Bartlett states that her "abode" was "South Head Road" which was presumably the main road from Sydney city to the South Head of the entrance to Sydney Harbour. It is very valuable real estate in modern Sydney, but it is not known what it was like in the early 1850s.
Thanks to Mr Sydney Smith, genealogist, of Orpington, Kent, for his thorough research.
