Mary Chew Paca
Wife of William Paca, Signer of the Declaration of Independence
1765 – 1779 A.D.

Mary Chew, who married William Paca in 1961, was the daughter of Samuel Chew and Henrietta Lloyd, and a direct descendant of John Chew, who arrived at Jamesdown in 1622, with three servants, on the ship Charitie. Of the young woman we have but little record except that she was the favourite [sic] granddaughter of Samuel Chew, head of one of the oldest and most prominent Colonial families. In his Historic Families of America, Spooner says of the Chews:

“They belong to that remarkable group of families which, founded in the Southern Colonies by ancestors of excellent birth and breeding, assumed at once a position of social and public consequence, and subsequent generations, by the merits and character of their members, as well as by influential alliances, steadily maintained and strengthened their original prestige.”

William Paca, at the time of his marriage, was a young lawyer who had just reached his majority and had been elected a member of the Provincial Assembly. His young wife did not long survive to enjoy the successes and triumphs that came to her husband during his honoured [sic] husband during his honoured [sic] public career, in which he was a member of Congress, Justice of the Supreme Court of his native State, and finally its Governor. She died in the opening year of the Revolution. She was the mother of five children, only one of whom survived, according to Sanderson.

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Reference: The Pioneer Mothers of America: A Record of the More Notable Women of the Early Days of the Country, and Particularly of the Colonial and Revolutionary Periods by Harry Clinton Green and Mary Wolcott Green, A.B. Third Volume, Published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons.