(1832-1859)
« return to database listMary was the eldest of the Burwell children and one of the first pupils to attend the Burwell School, run by her mother Anna Burwell.
Mary Susan Burwell, eldest child of Robert and Anna Burwell, was born December 17, 1832 in Virginia. She moved with her parents to Hillsborough, NC in late 1835, and was one of the first students at her mother’s school for young ladies. At not yet five, she was likely joined the 14-year-old Mary Webb, 11-year-old Sarah Jane Kollock and 6-year-old Annabella Norwood as one of her mother’s first pupils at the new school.
Mary attended the school until she “graduated” and sometime in the late 1840s traveled to New York, living with her Aunt and Uncle, to study music and acquire some polish before returning to Hillsborough and taking up a teaching position in the family-run school. She appears to have been well-liked, and served as a walking advertisement for the quality of young woman her parents’ school was able to produce.
In 1854, at the age of 21, she married neighbor Frederick Nash Strudwick, son of Dr. Edmund Strudwickk and Ann Nash Strudwick. The marriage united the exceptionally close families, and though Mary went to make her home in the Strudwick house, she was just one town lot away from her family home on Churton Street.
Mary‘s first child, a daughter, lived only two months. The subsequent grief caused Mary to become ill, some suggest with partial paralysis, and was treated by a northern doctor for many months. Her second child, Robert Cincinnatus, was born August 27, 1857. Not long after that, the Burwell family moved to Charlotte from Hillsborough, and in 1858, Mary and her husband moved to Choctaw County, Alabama where the Strudwick family had a plantation.
In July 1859, Anna and Robert Burwell received word that their daughter Mary had died, leaving behind her young son. Fredrick would return to North Carolina and marry a cousin of his first wife, Rosaline Spottswood, who had also been a student at the Burwell School in Hillsborough.
Mary received a flowery eulogy in The Hillsborough Recorder which described her as much beloved by both her family and the family of her husband. In later years, she had become her mother’s confidant, sharing the experiences of being a wife and mother. One of four daughters of Robert and Anna, she was the second to pass away, her sister Fanny had died in April 1856, just three years prior. Mary was buried in Alabama in an unmarked grave. Her son Robbie went on to become a lawyer and a judge.
Mary was called Mollie.
Mary Susan Burwell was born on December 17, 1832. She died on July 3, 1859.
, Frances Armistead Burwell (1838-1856) and Virginia Isabella Burwell (1851-1867). and Virginia Bridges (1832-1859) .