Miss Mary Ann REYNOLDS (c.1797/8–1877)
St Mary Magdalen section: Row 26, Grave L67½
MARY ANN REYNOLDS DIED OCT.31.1877 AGED 79 YEARS
FEAR THOU NOT, FOR I AM WITH THEE.
Mary Ann Reynolds was born in Oxford in 1797/8. She is probably the child of that name born to John and Ann Reynolds on 25 December 1797 and baptised at St Michael's Church on 28 December.
She does not appear in the Oxford censuses of 1841, 1851, or 1861, but as she worked as a domestic servant, she may have been away with her employers.
At the time of the 1871 census she was living alone at 2 Park Place, Holywell (on the site of the present Mansfield Road). She was then aged 73, and described as a retired domestic servant.
She died in 1877. In her probate record, she was described as being formerly of 28 Gloucester Green but late of Friar’s Entry; but the burial register says that she died at Gloucester Green:
† Miss Mary Ann Reynolds died at Gloucester Green at the age of 79 on 31 October 1877 and was buried at St Sepulchre’s Cemetery on 5 November (burial recorded in the parish register of St Mary Magdalen Church).
Her personal effects came to nearly £600, and her sole executor was the Revd Thomas Evetts of Monks Risborough, Buckinghamshire.
The Revd Thomas Evetts (1820–1898)
Evetts may be the clue to Mary Ann Reynolds’s relative prosperity and rather fine grave: he must have known her personally as he acted as her executor, and she may have been a servant of his parents, who lived in Oxford.
Evetts was born at Fisher Row, Oxford on 31 August 1820 and baptised at St Thomas’s Church on 3 September, the son of the brewer John Evetts and his wife Sarah, who were married at Cheltenham. At the time of the 1841 census he was a student at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and gained his B.A. in 1842.
On 7 May 1844 at Iffley, he married Elizabeth Smith Parker, a minor. By 1851 he was perpetual curate at Hughenden and was living at the parsonage with his wife and their first four children and six servants. In 1863 Evetts was appointed Rector of Monks Risborough, Buckinghamshire and remained in this position until his death at the age of 77 in 1898. He was also an honorary Canon of Christ Church Cathedral. At the time of the 1871 census he was at the vicarage there with his wife and more children, and the household had seven servants. He died on 12 August 1898, and his effects came to £33,114 6s. 3d.
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