Lady Mary Oswald
(1799-1886)
20 April 1863

Volume 10, page 177, sitting number 13,075.

Born on 4 May 1799 at Culzean Castle on the Ayrshire coast, Lady Mary Kennedy was the daughter of Archibald Kennedy, 12th Earl of Cassillis, created 1st Baron of Ailsa in 1806 and 1st Marquess of Ailsa in 1831.

On 10 December 1833 she married Richard Oswald of Auchincruive, son of Richard Alexander Oswald the MP for Ayrshire. Her husband died a month later on 9 January 1834. ‘While on a visit lately to Archibald Hamilton, Esq., and Lady Jane Hamilton of Rozelle, with Lady Mary Oswald, daughter of the Marquis of Ailsa, to whom he had been but recently united, Mr Oswald became suddenly indisposed. He lingered since then, amid dubious hopes of his recovery, and expired this morning at four o’clock’ (Morning Herald, 15 January 1834).

She appears on the 1861 and 1871 censuses living at the Manor House in the village of Inveresk near Musselburgh, just east of Edinburgh.

Lady Mary Oswald died, aged 86, on 11 January 1886. She left an estate valued at £16,767.

‘Lady Mary Oswald, eldest surviving daughter of Archibald, first Marquess of Ailsa, and sister of the Dowager Countess of Newburgh, and of the Lady Alice Peel, died at the Manor House, Inveresk, Midlothian, on Monday last, in her 87th year, having been born in May, 1799. She married in December, 1833, Mr Richard Oswald, younger, of Auchinecruive, and was left a widow within a month of her marriage’ (Evening Standard, 15 January 1886).