Author: Chadwick, Mary
Biography:
CHADWICK, Mary, formerly BUCKLEY (1781-1871: ancestry.co.uk)
Hitherto the volume listed here, Rural and Other Poems (1828), has been attributed in some library catalogues, anthologies, and criticism to Frances Chadwick, but with no further information on her. The work contains a dedication written at Ludlow, Shropshire, to the author’s son, Dr. Chadwick. He was Adam Chadwick, MD (q.v.). A further work by her, Novels of Nature(1837) contains a Preface written at Bath and states that she was working on Rectitude, or Virginia of the Wye. (This was eventually published posthumously in 1875, possibly edited by her daughter.) A poem by her, “Resignation,” was included in Rev. T. A. Buckley’s anthology, The Girl’s First Help to Reading(1854), which identified her as the author of the volume listed here but gave an incorrect age of eighty. It is possible, if her birth name has been correctly identified, that he was a relative but coincidence can’t be ruled out. A manuscript of Rural and Other Poems at the University of Manchester Library is signed Mary Chadwick and her identity is corroborated by the 1834 will of her husband and other genealogical, census, and memorial inscription sources. John Leyland’s Memorials of Abram (1882) gave details of her husband and son from tablets erected by her daughter, Frances Elizabeth Chadwick (1810-83) in St. John’s church, Wigan. She was therefore the Mary Buckley who married Adam Chadwick on 9 Dec. 1802 at Manchester Cathedral. They went on to have the son and daughter previously mentioned. The 1861 Census gave her birthplace as Northwick, Cheshire, and there are several baptisms which might match but need corroboration. Apart from the Shropshire and Bath locations, she lived mostly at Manchester before she and her husband moved to Heavitree, Exeter, where he died on 13 Oct. 1834. She may then have lived with her son but by 1861 she was living with her daughter at 2 Addison Terrace, Notting Hill, Kensington, where she died on 11 Nov. 1871, aged 90. Her son had predeceased her in May 1871. (ancestry.co.uk 28 June 2023; findmypast.co.uk 28 June 2023; University of Manchester Library, GB 133 Eng MS 723, 90+ ii folios; Exeter Flying Post 16 Oct. 1834; Liverpool Mercury 24 May 1871; Morning Advertiser 16 Nov. 1871; Morning Post 4 Dec. 1883; GRO death cert.) AA