ALS, DLC:GW.

Mary Harding Bristow of Spring Gardens, London, daughter of the Rev. Richard Harding, vicar of Micheldever in Southampton County, was the second wife of Robert Bristow (1712–1776) of Micheldever House, member of Parliament for Winchelsea and New Shoreham in the 1730s–50s. She had three daughters by him and one son, Robert, Jr. (1773-1852), the heir of his father’s estate (Namier and Brooke, History of Parliament: House of Commons, 1754–1790, description begins Sir Lewis Namier and John Brooke. The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1754–1790. 3 vols. New York, 1964. description ends 2:119; Burke, History of the Landed Gentry, description begins John Bernard Burke. A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain & Ireland. 5th ed. 2 vols. London, 1871. description ends 1:146). For previous correspondence concerning the confiscation of Bristow’s ancestral lands in Virginia, including those at Brent Town or Brenton in Stafford (now Prince William) County, by the state’s Revolutionary government and the family’s attempt to have them restored, see Mary Bristow to GW, 27 Nov. 1783, DLC:GW; GW to Benjamin Harrison, 14 June 1784 and note 1, to Bristow, 15 June 1784 and 2 June 1786, to George William Fairfax, 27 Feb. 1785, Fairfax to GW, 23 June 1785, and John Dandridge to GW, 6 Dec. 1788, n.1.