Mary Christina BROWN CONSTABLE (née MACKENZIE) (1832-1906)

Mary Christina Brown Constable, née Macenzie (1832-1906) was the grandmother of Mela Brown Constable (fiancée of Cyril Sladden).

Mary Mackenzie was born at Dinapore, India, on 19th December 1832, the eldest of six children of Kenneth Francis Mackenzie, a Captain in the East India Company’s service, and his wife, Margaret (née Taylor).

On 14th December 1849 at Feorozepore, Bengal, just a few days before her 17th birthday, Mary married widower, Charles Brown Constable, who was 25 years her senior; he who rose to become Lieutenant-Colonel in the Bengal Native Infantry.  Mary became step-mother to his four sons, the eldest of whom, William was just a year younger than herself; the youngest, George, was seven years old at the time of his father’s remarriage.

Mary went on to have seven sons and five daughters of her own:  Henry Alexander (1854-1916), Kenneth Francis (1855-1885), Matilda Henrietta (1857-1917), Laurence David (1859-1930), Emelia Mackenzie (1861-1874), Albert Edward (1863-1928), Frederick Lyon (1864-1942), Mary Octavia (1865-1944), Arthur John (1867-?), Bedford (1869-1930), Margaret Augusta (1870-1951) and Clementina Stirling (1872-1956).

The Brown Constable family left India in the early 1850s and went to live in Scotland where their eldest son, Henry Alexander, was born in 1854.  By September 1855, they had moved to Cheltenham and were living at Wellesley Villa, Cheltenham; by December 1859 they had moved to 1 Lansdown Place, Cheltenham.

Charles Brown Constable died at Cheltenham on 10th February 1887.  By the time of the 1891 census, Mary and her youngest children had moved to 22 Bolingbroke Road, Hammersmith.  In 1901 she lived at 75 Eldon Road, Kensington, with her youngest daughter, Clemmie, and her granddaughters, Dora and Hope.

Mary died on 2nd November 1906 at Acton Vale; she was buried in Cheltenham Cemetery alongside her husband.