#52 Ancestors 2023 Week 15 Solitude: Ann Fielder's Twenty Years as a "Femme Sole"

My 8X-great-grandmother, Ann Fielder Gantt Wight, * became a widow for the first time in 1692 with the death of her husband, Thomas Gantt. She was about 30 at the time with four children under the age of six and a large estate to manage.  Given those circumstances, many women at that time would have been in a hurry to gain the protection of a new husband.  Widow Gantt chose to remain "sole" for four years, managing her own affairs although I'm quite sure she could have remarried easily at any time. 

She did marry for a second time about 1696 to Captain John Wight of Calvert County MD and had three daughters with him besides becoming step-mother to his son John by his first wife. When Captain Wight died in 1705, Ann was widowed for the second time at age 46. This time she chose not to remarry and managed her family and large estates on her own for the next twenty years until her death in 1726. Again, as a wealthy widow in a time when marriageable women were in short supply, she could have easily made a third advantageous marriage, but did not. Given that she had still had three children under ten at home, this may not count as solitude, but she did make a choice to raise them alone.  In this decision, she followed in the footsteps of her own mother and grandmother who had similarly chosen to spend a long widowhood managing the family affairs rather than remarrying. 

In law, a woman with the status of "femme sole" (woman alone) was able to make legal contracts and sign documents in her own name, unlike a married woman, who could not conduct business without her husband's permission. I suspect that this independence was a big factor in Ann's choice not to marry a third time and maintain her status as "femme sole." 

Ann Fielder was born about 1660 in Hartley-Maudit, Hampshire, England, a younger daughter of Captain William Fielder and Marjorie Cole in a family of twelve children. The Hampshire Hearth tax of 1665 shows William and his family with "eight hearths," indicating that they lived in a large gentleman's house and establishment. William (1679) and Marjorie (1699) are both buried in St. Mary's Church in Hartley-Wintney, along with their son, Edward (1697), a London grocer. 

St. Mary's, Hartley-Wintney, Hampshire

So how did this girl from a small village in Hampshire end up marrying a man on the other side of the Atlantic? When her father died, Ann would have been about 19 years old and in need of a husband.  Since her father was a younger son, there was no great inheritance from the main branch of the family, which was not in great shape anyway after the English Civil War of the 1640's and 1650's. One theory is that Ann's aunt by marriage, Judith Cullen Cole, daughter of a wealthy grocer, was good friends with Ann's mother and from the same small town that Thomas Gantt came from, and probably knew him. There was also a shared occupation and possible business contacts between Ann's brother, Edward, the London grocer, and Thomas Gantt of Maryland who was a "victualler" or grocer in Calvert County MD, and most likely newly-widowed at about the time that Ann's father died. This combination of circumstances may have led to some transatlantic match-making through the Grocers' Guild. 

Thomas Gaunt/Gantt, like a very large percentage of immigrants at the time, was transported to Maryland in 1654 as an indentured servant and was probably in his 20's at the time. Unlike the majority, Gantt was literate. By 1658, he would have completed his indentured service and by 1660, he had acquired his first land holdings at Gantt's Landing on the Patuxent River in Calvert County MD. 

Sometime before 1666, Thomas Gantt married Jone/Joan Robinson who had been transported to the colony earlier in the 1660's.  There were apparently no children from this marriage, or at least none who survived to adulthood. Joan must have died in the early 1680's, leaving Thomas free to marry again to Ann Fielder. 

In any case, Ann Fielder and Thomas Gantt were married about 1684 when Thomas would have been in his late 40's, and had a son, Thomas Gantt Jr., in 1686. They had three other children: Ann who married Col. John Bradford, Elizabeth who died unmarried in 1718, and Edward, who died young. 

Throughout the 1660's and 1670's, Thomas had built up his land holdings and risen steadily in the social ranks as victualler (i.e. purveyor of spirits), inn keeper, merchant and planter.  In the late 1680's, Gantt held the lucrative offices of Justice and coroner. By the time of his death in 1691, he left an estate of more than L400, not including real estate (in the top 1% of his contemporaries.) He owned 350 contiguous acres of prime land along the Patuxent River as well as other land in Charles and Dorchester counties. 

His will, proved by Ann Gantt in January 1692, names his oldest son, Thomas (my 7x-great grandfather on my father’s line), his daughter Ann, his daughter, Elizabeth, to each of whom he leaves a tract of land, and his young son Edward, who is only a reversionary legatee in case of the death of one his siblings. 

As I noted in the beginning, Ann Fielder Gantt, a widow in her thirties with four young children, managed this large estate on her own as a "femme sole" for several years.  Her activities included business transactions with her brother Edward, the London grocer, indicating that she was literate and involved with Thomas Gantt's business. Eventually she married for a second time to Captain John Wight about 1696 as his second wife.  Ann's mother died at about the same time, leaving a will that named her daughter and a legacy to her grandson Edward Gantt, who did not receive a specific bequest in his father's will. 

Captain Wight probably came to Maryland from England in the 1680's and married Mary Gittings, the daughter of John Gittings.  Their only child was John Wight Jr. who was, interestingly enough, my 7X-great grandfather on my mother's line. Captain Wight served in the lower house of the legislature between 1687 and 1700 and also as a justice for Calvert County. 

John Wight and Ann Fielder lived at the Gantt property, renamed Wight's Landing (now White's Landing), located a little south of the village of Nottingham) with their blended family of Gantt and Wight children. Captain Wight and Ann Fielder Gantt had three daughters together: Marjory (1697), Fielder (1699) and Mary (1701). 

Captain Wight died in 1705, leaving a large estate of more than 1000 acres of land and personal property valued at nearly L2000, including silver plate, books, slaves, and part ownership of a trading ship, a huge fortune for the time.

Confronted with managing the affairs of eight children and two complex estates, Ann, now age 45, chose not to marry again, although she most certainly could have.  As the redoubtable "Madam Ann Wight," she conserved the estates for the benefit of her surviving Gantt children, her three Wight daughters and her stepson, John Wight, until her death in 1726 at age 67. 

Ann Wight's 1725 will bequeaths to her son Thomas Gantt, her daughters Margery Sprigg, Mary Belt, and Fielder Powell, as well as to her grandchildren: Thomas Gantt, Thomas Sprigg, Ann Powell, Ann Sprigg, Ann Gantt, Priscilla Gantt, Elizabeth Gantt, and Edward Gantt. Her daughters Elizabeth and Ann and her son Edward had predeceased her. She signed the will as "Madam Ann Wight" and affixed the seal of the Wight family of London. Her son-in-law, Jeremiah Belt, was her executor. 

She did rely on her son-in-law, John Bradford, who married Ann Gantt at about the time Captain Wight died.  Bradford, a merchant, became one of the wealthiest and prominent planters of his generation, serving in the legislature and as a colonel in the militia as well as in the Vestry of King George Parish.  John Bradford Jr., born about 1706, was Ann Fielder's first grandchild. John Bradford shows up on multiple transactions involving Ann Wight over the next twenty years. 

Thomas Gantt Jr. married Priscilla Brooke, the daughter of Col. Thomas Brooke, about 1707. Thomas and Priscilla had seven children: Ann (1708), Thomas III (1710), Elizabeth (1713), Priscilla, my 6X-great grandmother (1715), Edward (1720), George (1727) and Fielder (1730).  About 1737, he married for the second time to Marjory Hollyday, the daughter of Col. Thomas Hollyday, and the widow of Levin Covington. There were no children from the second marriage. 

Thomas inherited 550 acres of land from his father, and he steadily acquired more property throughout his life, including a large tobacco warehouse in Nottingham. He was elected to the Lower House in 1722 and served as a Vestryman of St. Paul's Parish. He was a justice and later chief justice in Prince George's County. 

Thomas lived a long and mostly placid life, dying at age 80 in 1765. 

Marjory Wight married about 1714 Thomas Sprigg Jr. and had three sons and two daughters with him: Thomas, John, Edward, Ann and Mary. She married secondly about 1726 Col. Joseph Belt and had a son and a daughter with him: Humphrey and Marjory. She died in Prince George's County in 1783. 

Mary Wight married Jeremiah Belt, the brother of Col. Joseph Belt, above, about 1724. They had a daughter, Mary Belt, in 1731. Mary Wight Belt died in 1768.

Fielder Wight married John Powell about 1725 and had a daughter Ann Powell, who was named in her grandmother's will. 

Ann's stepson, John Wight Jr., married Ann Greenfield, the daughter of Col Thomas Greenfield, and had seven children with her before his death in 1729, including my 6x-great grandmother Mary Wight in 1702. 

Ann Fielder's legacy lives on in the name Fielder, which is scattered across multiple Southern Maryland families. She passed the name on to her daughter, and it was subsequently passed on to her grandchildren--Fielder Gantt--and great-grandchildren: Fielder Bowie and six generations of Fielder Bowie Smiths. There were also Fielder Bealls, Belts, Joneses, Denwoods, Clagetts, and Dorsetts. 

* I am indebted to the great research of Harrison Dwight Cavanaugh's Colonial Chesapeake Families for information about the Fielders, Gantts, Wights and related families.