Sea Stories in Stone

Mary Drummond (1819-1861) - Oak Grove, Bath

Seafaring Wife and Mother

Mary Riggs White was the daughter of sea captain John White of Arrowsic, and the grand-daughter of ship builder, Benjamin Riggs of Georgetown. Her husband, Capt. John Drummond also was from a shipbuilding and sea faring family in Georgetown. Among Capt. Drummond's commands were a 290 ton brig, Caledonia, a bark Henry Newell, and two ships built and owned by Trufant Drummond Co. Benjamin Adams and Mazatlan (1170 tons and 463 tons).

In 1839, Mary and John were wed, when he was still a "mariner". By the 1860 Census, however, he was a ship master and Mary employed a domestic in their home on Garden Street in Bath. By then the household included three daughters, aged 15, 12 and four.

Another daughter, Oceanna Mendecino Drummond, had been born at sea, off Cape Mendocino, northern California (probably aboard the ship Mazatlan), in April 1851. 27 months later, the little girl died as the result of whooping cough. Eight years passed. Then in 1861, Mary succomb to Typhoid Fever when she was just 42. Oceanna's small stone stands just to the right of her mother's. Capt. John's plain gravestone is to Mary's left.

Sources:MMM Captains Index, US Census: 1850-60; Holt;
MMM Ships Index; Cemetery records

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