The Tomb of Mary Gilbert

"Here lies interred
the body of Mary
most deserving wife of
Nath! Gilbert jun!
She was born in London
Sep! 12th 1726
and died in Antigua
the 16th July 1747
in the 22nd year of her Age"

A note by the late Dean George Stanley Baker in his publication "Three Hundred Years of Witness" indicated that, "This spot is probably part of the Chancel of the former Church and the stone slab was no doubt re-laid in the Cathedral approximately over the place in which the coffin was originally interred.  Mrs. Gilbert was the wife of Nathaniel Gilbert who did much work to establish the Methodism in Antigua."  (Cathedral Website)

Methodism in the Caribbean

It is generally accepted that Methodism came to the Caribbean in 1760 by a planter from Antigua, named Nathaniel Gilbert.  Gilbert was a lawyer, the owner of two sugar estates in Antigua and the Speaker of the Antiguan House of Assembly.  He was, prior to his religious experience, very suspicious of and averse to anything that savoured of "enthusiasm".
Sometime in 1755, Nathaniel Gilbert was ill and sent his daughter Mary, who was five years old to fetch a certain book from another room. While we do not know what book he wanted, the book that Mary brought to him was a treatise of John Wesley, "An Appeal to men of Reason and Religion."  This had been sent to him by his brother Francis and was in fact not the book he had wanted at the time.  However, with time on his hands, the ill Nathaniel Gilbert read it and was never the same man again. (The Methodist Church in the Caribbean)

I find it fascinating that three years after the death of his wife, Nathanial Gilbert sired, presumably by his second wife, a girl child and named her Mary as well.  Sadly according to the biography of Gilbert's seventh child William Gilbert, she died in 1768 in England at the age of 17, a full four years younger than her name sake.