Mary Simpkins

Mary Simpkins was the daughter of William Simpkins (1704-1780), a well known Boston jeweller and silversmith. She married Robert Rand (born 1719), head of the Rand family in Boston, on June 3, 1773. They had five children, including their oldest daughter Mary, who married Jeremiah Fitch in 1804.

After the port of Boston was closed by the British prior to the American Revolution, Mary Rand and her husband decided she should leave Boston, because it was unsafe. While Mary's husband Robert fought with the Colonials against the British, serving as sergeant of the Bedford minute-men at Concord, Mary went to Chelmsford, Massachusetts. She did not return to Boston until 1777.