Mary Foulkes
Mary Foulkes, d.1724
Mary is one of several people named on this tombstone. Most of the inscriptions on the stone have been destroyed by the weather and footsteps, but the Gwernigron estate is named twice in the surviving words.
Mary Foulkes’ father was Captain John Pierce of Gwernigron. She married, and outlived, the Rev Master Thomas Foulkes MA.
Another Mary is also buried here. She was the widow (“relict”) of Peter Piers, gentleman, of Gwernigron. Piers is probably the same family name as Pierce (above). The name was spelled differently again in 1825, when George Peers married Anne Williams. George was the only son of Mr Peers, late of Gwernigron.
Gwernigron is north west of St Asaph (not far from the Talardy pub and restaurant). It still features a large farmhouse, built in the 17th century, and a dovecote, of the same age or older. Bromfield Foulkes, High Sheriff of Flintshire, lived at Gwernigron in the 1790s.
Public notary Peter Roberts, who lived at Bronwylfa, St Asaph, referred to the estate in his book Y Cwtta Cyfarwydd, which chronicles local events from 1607 to 1646. Under the heading “Gwernigron”, he recorded that Piers ap Robert ap Richard clandestinely married Katherine Hughes, daughter of Flintshire’s High Sheriff, on 20 April 1611.
At that time, local families still used the Welsh patronymic method. Someone in a later generation may have turned ap Piers (“son of Piers”) into the surname Piers.
It appears that a third woman was buried here, the wife of Edward Lloyd. Her name also started with M.