Author: Birkett, Mary
Biography:
BIRKETT, Mary later CARD (1774-1817: ancestry.co.uk)
She was born at Liverpool to Quakers William and Sarah Birkett (or Birket). When she was ten, the family moved to Dublin where her father established a chandler and soap business. In 1801 she married a cousin, Nathaniel Card, a merchant; they had eight children but four died in infancy and Mary seems to have stopped writing poetry after the death of one of her daughters. She published just one other poem, Lines to the Memory of our Late Endeared and Justly Valued Friend, Joseph Williams (1807, too short to be included in the database). She worked as a Quaker minister and philanthropist and one of her sons, Nathaniel Card Jr., emigrated to Manchester where he became a prominent philanthropist. She died at Dublin. Her son, Nathaniel, gathered together her unpublished writings and they remain in private hands. (ancestry.co.uk 11 Jan. 2021; J. Teakle, “Mary Birkett Card [1774-1817]: Struggling to Become an Ideal Quaker Woman,” Quaker Studies 14 [2010] 179-94)