Margaret Brown Mitchell

1828–1917

Married a Hobart man at the Scotch Church in 1852, raised eight children in Victoria, and outlived all her brothers and sisters.

Oval portrait of an older woman in a dark bonnet trimmed with lace and a dark buttoned dress. — Margaret Brown Glover, née Mitchell, from a family photograph

Born: 17 March 1828, Glasgow
Died: September 1917, Camberwell, Victoria
Married: Edwin Gardiner Glover (1826–1892)
Lived: 89 years

Margaret Brown Mitchell was born on 17 March 1828 at Quarrytown, Glasgow, and baptised in the Barony parish on 30 March, ‘their 5th child’.¹ She sailed on the Kate at twenty-one.

On 5 August 1852 she married Edwin Gardiner Glover — ‘of the colony of Tasmania’, born at Hobart in 1826 — at the Scotch Church, Church Hill, by the Rev. William Ridley. The notice calls her John Mitchell’s ‘third daughter’; she was in fact the fourth.² The couple moved to Victoria and had eight children. Edwin died at Donald, in the Wimmera, on 17 April 1892, and was buried at Avoca under the words ‘The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’³

Margaret lived on for twenty-five years, dying at Camberwell, Melbourne, in September 1917 — eleven months after her youngest brother, and the last of John and Mary Mitchell’s nine children. She was buried with Edwin at Avoca.³

Carte-de-visite of a bearded man in a dark coat, seated beside a table with a vase of flowers, his hand raised to his chin. — Edwin Gardiner Glover, from a family photograph.

Pink granite headstone in a cemetery, inscribed to Edwin Gardiner Glover, who died 17th April, aged 64. — Edwin’s headstone at Avoca Cemetery, Victoria.

The Record

Sources & References

1
Baptism, 1828

Barony OPR 622/8/322: John Mitchell, smith, Quarrytown, and Mary Kellar had their 5th child born 17th, baptised 30th March 1828, named Margaret Brown; witnesses John Murray and Jas. Martin.
2
Marriage, 1852

Empire, 6 August 1852, p. 2: ‘On the 5th August instant, at the Scotch Church, Church Hill, by the Reverend William Ridley, A.B., Mr. Edwin Glover, of the colony of Tasmania, to Margaret, third daughter of Mr. John Mitchell, formerly of Sauchie Hill, Glasgow, Scotland, now of Sydney, practical engineer.’ NSW BDM marriage index, 1852.
3
Deaths

Find a Grave: Edwin Gardiner Glover, born 19 July 1826, Hobart; died 17 April 1892, Donald, Victoria; and Margaret Brown Glover, née Mitchell, died September 1917, Camberwell, Victoria; both buried Avoca Cemetery. Headstone photograph (the stone gives his age as 64). Eight children, per family records.