born с 1600, Gloucestershire, Eng.
died 1669/71, Westmoreland county, Va.
British colonial landowner in North America.
She arrived in Maryland in 1638 and obtained a patent for 70 acres, becoming the first woman in the colony to hold land in her own right. By 1657 she was among the colony's largest landowners. In a border dispute with Virginia in 1646, she organized a group of armed volunteers to support the Maryland colony's governor, Leonard Calvert . On his death in 1647, she became executor of his estate and settled a dispute over back pay for his soldiers that had nearly led to civil war.