Mary Widdicombe Travers

Mary Widdicombe Travers (c. 1783-1854) was a Newfoundland entrepreneur and philanthropist and owner of the Rose and Crown tavern, and Mary Kennedy Widdicombe (or Widdicomb), of St. John's, Newfoundland. Circa 1804, Mary married John Travers (1779-?) also of St. John's. According to family lore, John Travers was a merchant who traded molasses and salt cod fish, and who disappeared at sea sometime prior to 1832.

By 1831, Mary was the owner of a hotel and tavern located at King’s Place, near present-day Duckworth Street, opposite the site of the National War Memorial. In December of 1831, a John Crute was advertising a sleigh and horse for rent from the stables behind "Mrs. Travers's Hotel". Described as a "modest, two-storey frame building," it was a favourite gathering place for the intelligentsia of the time and hosted a number of clubs and societies, including the Sons of Erin, and the Dialectic Society. The Sons of Erin held their St. Patrick's Day dinner at the hotel in 1832, one local paper reporting the "entertainment was sumptuous and abundant, and served up in a style exceedingly creditable to the hostess" and was followed by "a plentiful discussion of good things, to which the melting strains of an Irish piper gave additional rest."

In November of 1832, the tavern was selected as the only polling station for St. John’s for the election of members to the first House of Assembly. Meetings where candidates addressed and tried to win over potential voters were held outside the hotel on 6 November 1832.It was at this site, on hustings erected in front of the hotel, that the candidates gathered on Nov. 6 and made their election speeches to the attendant crowd... The candidates then took their supporters inside in groups of 10, where each man cast his ballot by announcing to all assembled the name of the person he was voting for. and Travers had hired extra servants and used more coal and wood than she normally would. and which had been given by the British authorities to the newly elected House of Assembly in 1833. Travers advertised the Speaker’s chair for sale in a local newspaper as being “elegantly upholstered and finished in black moreen and ornamented with brass.”

At the session of the House in January 1834, Clerk Edward Mortimer Archibald reported that "certain papers and furniture" belonging to the house were in possession of and detained by Mrs. Mary Travers. He was instructed to call on the landlady and demand the articles. This he did, and returned to report that she refused to deliver them.

In June of that year, Mary advertised the items for sale again. In addition to the Speaker's Chair she listed a number of items including the following:1 LARGE DESK - Containing 8 Drawers filled with a variety of Books and Papers of every description. 1 SMALL Ditto, used exclusively by the Speaker; and filled also with Books, Papers, and a Portfolio of great value.... 1 LARGE CHAIR stuffed, superbly covered, and well and substantially built, used by the Usher of the Black Rod. A COCKED HAT of superior quality, but now a little shabby, worn by the Sergeant-at-Arms. Governor Thomas John Cochrane ordered payments to be made to Mary Travers totalling 85 pounds, 13 shillings, four pence for the use of furniture, coal, wood, candles, services and hire of servants; and 108 pounds, six shillings, eight pence for rental of her premises.

Travers continued to operate the hotel up to 1846 at which point it was destroyed in the St. John's 1846 Great Fire,

Life in Prince Edward Island At some point after 1846, Travers and her seven sons and daughters moved to the Kildare Capes, Prince Edward Island, where they acquired a 3000-acre property. The first church on the site was constructed by 1866, and was the first Anglican church in Prince County. Mary Travers and Jane Travers gave the cemetery property, an area of about two acres, to the church.

Travers continued to petition for rent owed her by the Newfoundland House of Assembly. On 7 May 1851, a Mr. Parsons presented to the House a petition from Mary Travers, stating she received payment for the first session according to agreement, "and that for six months thereafter, she had in her charge the various papers and documents belonging thereto, for which she had not been paid" and that "she had been prevented using the house as a boarding house during the time she held it at the disposal of the Assembly." Her mother died later the same year, on 15 September 1854,Died. At St. John’s Newfoundland, on the 22d of August, after a painful illness which she bore with Christian fortitude, Mrs. Mary Widdecombe, aged 99 years; 86 year of which she spent in that town. (Deceased was mother of the late Mrs. Mary Travers, of Kildare.) There is no record of her family receiving final payment for her services.

Reference section

External links section Grave of Mary Widdicombe Travers - https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/160621936/mary-travers