Mary Kolbe the elder

The record

What the archive holds

THE FIRST OF TWO WIVES CALLED MARY, AND THE REASON A SINGLE MARY NEVER FITTED. She is the mother named at the baptisms of Juliet Rosinia 1792, Mary Ann 1794, Elizabeth 1795, Charles 1798, John Henry 1800, George Augustus 1803, Frederick Charles 1805, Charles Samuel 1807 and Frederica Carolina 1813. TNA RG 4/4631 folio 62: died 2 August 1814, buried 5 August, AGED 46 — born about 1768, so she was twenty-four at the first baptism. SHE WAS BURIED A MONTH AFTER HER ELEVEN-MONTH-OLD DAUGHTER. Her surname before marriage is not known and no marriage has been found. 20 SEPTEMBER 2026 — AND NOW THAT IS A CONTROLLED NEGATIVE RATHER THAN A SHRUG. FindMyPast holds NO KOLBE–LARMAN MARRIAGE IN EITHER DIRECTION, with a nonsense-value control returning zero so the filter is known to restrict — and the index demonstrably reaches this family, because it carries the 1810 KOHLBECK BANNS AT ST ANNE’S SOHO, a year before the eldest daughter’s wedding there. AND THE GERMAN LUTHERAN REGISTER IS RULED OUT BY STATUTE: under HARDWICKE’S MARRIAGE ACT OF 1753 every marriage in England but those of Quakers and Jews had to be Anglican to be legal, so the Savoy congregation could bury her and baptise her children and could not have married her. THREE DOORS LEFT — an unindexed English parish, a wrong surname off the family tree, or A MARRIAGE ABROAD. He was born in Württemberg in 1765 and the first child was baptised in London in 1792, and the twenty-seven years between are empty.

The WomenThe childrenThe burials