No records exist concerning Mary Kittamaquund's death, although in 1654 Giles Brent married Frances Whitegreave Harrison, who had emigrated from England to
York County, Virginia, the previous year and had been wife of the recently deceased Dr. Jeremiah Harrison. Thus it is unclear whether Mary died as a young woman (childbirth deaths being common), or whether she left Giles and resumed her (
matrilineal) Native American identity, or he divorced her as discussed below. In any event, Giles and Frances either had two or no children. The last wills and testaments of Giles (d. 1671) and Margaret (d. 1663) mention Giles' six children "of which four lived," but not his wife Mary. Giles' other quasi-monastic sister Mary died in 1658. If Mary Kittamaquund left or outlived Giles Sr. and returned to become a Piscataway matriarch, she could have moved to Brent lands in Maryland.
St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church (Newport, Maryland) has a Brent family graveyard, as well as a section for burials now unknown, although the church itself was built two centuries after Kittamaquund's contact. Another more modern Catholic church near the Brent family's lands in
Pomonkey, Maryland (named for another related tribe) and near
Port Tobacco which became the
Charles County, Maryland, county seat and a major slave trading port until it silted up also has a graveyard. Mary also could have moved further north, for her tribe traded throughout the
Chesapeake Bay region, even though it was decimated by war and disease in this era. While the oldest, continuous, English-speaking, Catholic congregation in the United States is
St. Francis Xavier in St. Mary's, Maryland (which replaced its chapel in 1660 and is relatively close to Newport though not Port Tobacco), the second oldest is
St. Francis Xavier Church (Warwick, Maryland) in
Cecil County, Maryland. This other important trading area near the
Elk Neck Peninsula allowed trade with
Iroquois-speaking Susquehannocks who had a settlement near
Conowingo, as well as with
Delaware Valley and
Delmarva Peninsula tribes (including the Algonquian-speaking
Lenape and
Nanticoke). Swedes established a trading post,
Fort Christina, at the top of the Elk Neck peninsula near the shortest route between the Chesapeake and Delaware basins.
St. Mary Anne's Episcopal Church (in
northeast Maryland not far from Warwick) was founded during the early Colonial era as some of Mary's Algonquian-speaking Piscataway sold their land in Charles and St. Georges counties and moved north.
Black Sheep Son In May 1679, Mary Kittamaquund Brent – or more probably another Mary Brent (perhaps born in Worcestershire, England, around 1650) – received the first legal marital separation in Virginia. The governor and Executive Council of Virginia issued it on the grounds of her husband's "inhumane usage", but the underlying documents are lost. Mary Kittamaquund's son, Giles Brent Jr. (ca. 1652–1679) had been arrested in 1677 for his actions in
Bacon's Rebellion, especially for killing friendly
Doeg Indians and (with his neighbor and friend George Mason II and about 30 militiamen) taking their land (part of which later became
George Washington's estate
Mount Vernon). Because Giles Brent had laid down his arms and joined
Lord Berkeley's forces, he was not hanged like many other rebels. However, Giles' half-Native ancestry could have caused problems both with the rebels (some of whom wanted to kill all Indians) and with racist elements in Berkeley's faction. In any event, shortly following his divorce from Mary Brent, Giles Brent married Frances Hammersley (b. 1660 and death date unknown) of Middlesex County, but he then died within a few months. His father had patented claims for 1800 acres in his name, which had been across from the Piscataway town and later became part of
Alexandria, Virginia.
Virginia's hidden Catholics Although the English-born Brent women never married or had children, the Brents became the only publicly Catholic family in Virginia for more than a century. Mary Kittamaquund supposedly lived with Mary Brent and Margaret Brent. Rumors persisted of a Catholic church, monastery or retreat house in the area long before St. Mary's Church was founded in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1795 by George Washington's aide, Col. John Fitzgerald. Brent men continued as merchants and lawyers, and also owned and operated plantations and a quarry near the
Occoquan River's junction with the Potomac.
George Brent (d. 1694) became the only Catholic delegate in the
House of Burgesses in colonial times (representing Stafford County in 1688), and in 1686 received title with three London partners to 30,000 acres later known as Brent town where Catholics could legally practice their religion. As anti-Catholicism grew in Virginia – both paralleling developments in the mother country as well as reflecting local conflicts with French and Spanish fur traders and their Native American allies – Brents held no further governmental positions outside their local community for nearly a century. Moreover, George Brent was forced to take cover at his law partner's house for five months in 1688 over false rumors that he was conspiring with Indians about an uprising. Nonetheless, neighbors in what became Spotsylvania County, Stafford County, Fairfax County and Alexandria, Virginia, seem to have spared successive generations of lawyer Brents from the required anti-Catholic oath. Around the time of the
American Revolution,
William Brent and
Richard Brent married the sisters of
John Carroll, a
Jesuit before the brief suppression of that order, and who himself became the first native Catholic bishop in what became the United States. William Brent and Richard Brent became revolutionaries and
Founding Fathers, though less noticed than Marylanders
Charles Carroll and
Daniel Carroll (whose first wife was William Brent's daughter Anna). In 1780, subject to an elaborate but incomplete prenuptial agreement, their 50-year-old maiden sister Sarah Brent became the second wife of
George Mason, who worked to establish religious freedom in Virginia and the new nation.
Erased past British raiders burned Brent family estates during the
American Revolutionary War and
War of 1812. Thus, they may have sustained more damage than their revolutionary Protestant neighbors.
William Brent and
Robert Brent became public servants in Washington, D.C., shortly after its founding (and at least one wrote and recorded a will to
manumit his slave and allow him to retain his freedom without leaving the area, not having a large estate). However, the Virginia Brents eventually became strong supporters of slavery and the
Confederacy. They developed
Brentsville, Virginia, in western Prince William County in the 1820s. Alexandria sent lawyer
George William Brent (1821-1872) to the Virginia Convention of 1861, at which he argued for union in order to support slavery. During the
Civil War, Union troops secured a gun emplacement on Brent property overlooking the Potomac River near Aquia creek, and vandalized the nearby Brent family graveyard, removing brass name plates. Brentsville also sustained more damage than surrounding properties during that war. ==Honors==