Ancestors

Mary Walton

Mary Ann Walton was born on 22 September 1839 in County Durham, the eldest child of William Walton, of Stanhope in Weardale, and Elizabeth Bolton, of Brough in Westmorland. Her parents had married in Westmorland that February. Two Mary Ann Walton births were registered in the last quarter of 1839, one in the Durham district and one in Teesdale, and which is hers is not settled.

In 1853, when she was thirteen, the family crossed to America and settled at Vinegar Hill, in the lead country north of Galena, Illinois. Her mother died there in 1865 and her father in 1876.

She married Jacob Peart, a lead miner from Allendale in Northumberland who had come out in 1849. Her memorial gives the year as 1857; their first child was born in 1856. Twelve children followed over more than twenty-five years, from Elizabeth Hannah in 1856 to Fannie in the early 1880s. A son, John, died at three in 1864, and the next boy, born at Galena in 1867, was given the name again, as John Watson Peart.

Jacob served in the 7th Illinois Cavalry in 1865. He died on Christmas Day 1881 and was buried at Vinegar Hill. Mary Ann was a widow for forty-six years. She died at Highland, in Iowa County, Wisconsin, on 18 March 1928, at eighty-eight, and was buried with him in Vinegar Hill Methodist Cemetery. Her name is on the family monument as "MARY HIS WIFE 1839-1928", and a small footstone over her grave reads MOTHER.

When she died, eleven of her children were living. Her obituary counted thirty-six grandchildren, thirty great-grandchildren and four great-great-grandchildren.

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Cite: Heirology, "Mary Walton (1839-1928)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/mary-walton-1839-1928-66482d.