Mary Cary Ambler

Mary Cary Ambler (1732 – May 1781) was an early American diarist. Her 1770 diary provides an early account of smallpox inoculation in colonial America.

Mary Cary was the daughter of Colonel Wilson Cary (1702-1772), owner of the plantation Ceelys on the James in Elizabeth City County, Virginia, and his wife Sarah (1710-1783). In 1754, eighteen-year-old Mary Cary married Edward Ambler (1733-1768), the son of wealthy merchant Richard Ambler (1690-1766) and heiress Elizabeth Jaquelin. Edward Ambler was a graduate of Cambridge University who was six feet tall and fond of wearing red velvet suits trimmed with gold lace.

They had seven children, three of whom lived to adulthood:

• Elizabeth Ambler (1754-1756)
• Richard Ambler (1756-1759)
• Edward Ambler (1758-1782)
• Sarah Ambler Macon (1760-1782)
• Colonel John Ambler (1762-1836)
• Mary Ambler (1764-1768)
• Martha Ambler (1764-1768)

Edward Ambler inherited the Yorktown property of his father in 1766 and the couple lived there. When his brother John Ambler died later that year, Edward Ambler also inherited his father's property on Jamestown Island from his brother. The couple moved to Jamestown, preferring the natural and historical setting. Edward Ambler died "after a tedious illness" in 1768.

In 1770 took her children Sarah and John on a three month journey to Baltimore, Maryland in order to get them inoculated against smallpox, a frequent and lethal disease of the time, by a "Dr.Stephenson", presumably John Stevenson. The process was lengthy and expensive. In her diary, Ambler wrote about the process, the details of their meals and travel, and her appreciation for her Baltimore landlady's library, especially Sermons to Young Women.

During the American Revolutionary War, Ambler decamped further inland for Hanford County, Virginia, renting her Jamestown property to a Captain Edward Travis. She died there in 1781 and was buried in Jamestown at her request.

Mary Cary is sometimes said to have been a love interest of a young George Washington, but this is due to confusion with her elder sister, Sally Fairfax.

References

1. Elizabeth City County, Virginia
2. Randolph family of Virginia
3. Robert Mackey Stribling
4. John Marshall
5. Mary Randolph
6. Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House
7. Mary Rutherfurd Jay
8. Alan Marshal (actor)
9. List of 20th-century writers
10. Zeppo Marx
11. Katherine Johnson
12. List of members of the Virginia House of Burgesses
13. Charlie Chaplin
14. Fauquier County, Virginia
15. List of Kappa Alpha Psi chapters
16. Stewart Granger
17. Martha Washington
18. Grace Hopper
19. List of American films of 1980
20. List of James River plantations