Mary Frances Hammersley

1863 Birth of Mary Frances Grant.

Mary Frances Grant was the eldest daughter of General Owen Edward Grant of the Grants of Dalvey (A descendant of King Edward III of England. See 'Burke's 'Peerage & Baronetage' under 'Grant of Dalvey').

Mary and her two sisters Helen Georgina and Katherine were immortalized in paintings by John Singer Sargent and other artists.

1899 estimated date of Marriage to Hugh Greenwood Hammersley (his first wife). Hugh was a partner of Cox & Co., Private Bankers and Army Agents - the firm was failing and, via arrangements with the Bank of England and The Treasury, was taken over by Lloyds Bank Ltd. in 1923.

Mary and Hugh had an only daughter: Eva Mary.

1911 England Census for The Grove, Hampstead, N.W.

• Hugh Greenwood Hammersley, age 52, b. c.1859 in London, UK, Head, Married 22 years, Banker
• Mary Frances Hammersley 47, Wife. At this time she was ill, necessitating a visit from St. Bartholomew's nurse Anne Hill (see below)
• Helen (?)
• Georgiana Baddeley 46, b. c.1865 Sister of Mary Frances, wife of St. Clair Baddeley, of Castle Hale, Married c. 1895 16 years earlier
• Anne Hill 30, b.. St. Nicholas, Cork, Rep of Ireland - Hospital Nurse from St. Bartholomews Hospital, London and Servants:
• Charlotte Mahala Watkins 48
• Fanny Everell 40
• Hilda Annie Leek 20
• Mary Frances Elizabeth Cheal 21
• Irene Russell 17
• Frederick Albert Gibson 21

Mary Frances died in 1911 and is buried in the Churchyard extension of Hampstead Parish Church, London - in a Grade II listed, tall shrine-tomb by Harry Furse who exhibited in the Royal Academy. (the limestone shrine is on a tall pedestal and contains a bronze statue of a winged youth, cradling a sleeping girl.)

There is a charming portrait of her by John Singer Sargent in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The portrait is called 'Mrs. Hugh Hammersley'.

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[Mrs. Hugh Hammersley verified Sargent's skills among potential (but reluctant) English patrons when it appeared at the New Gallery in London in 1893. The positive reviews it received there and at the Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1894 finally quashed misgivings that his "Madame X" (Madame Pierre Gautreau; acc. no. 16.53) had aroused in 1884. The canvas, among the first of a series of ravishing images by Sargent of glamorous English women that culminated in "The Wyndham Sisters" (1899; acc. no. 27.67), is also a paradigm of the period's international style of society portraiture. After Margaret Frances Hammersley's death her husband kept the painting until 1923, when financial reverses (the failure of his bank Cox and Co.) compelled its sale. At Sargent's suggestion it was purchased by Charles Deering, an American friend whose portrait Sargent had painted in Newport in1876 and who collected Sargent's works. It descended in the Deering family. Source: http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/20017465 His supporters included Henry James, Isabella Stewart Gardner (who commissioned and purchased works from Sargent, and sought his advice on other acquisitions), and Edward VII, whose recommendation for knighthood the artist declined. He is buried in Woking, Surrey.]

Mary Hammersley (née Grant) and Violet Hammersley (née Williams-Freeman) were cousins twice over. They were third cousins through their common descent from Sir George Robinson, 5th Bt. (1730-1815) of Cranford Hall, Cranford, Northants. See Burke's 'Peerage and Baronetage'. Mary's grandfather, General James Grant, married Mary Blencowe, daughter of Robert Blencowe of Hayes Park, Middlesex, who married Penelope, daughter of Sir George Robinson, 5th Bt.