Mary Randall Vickers and Her Marriage to Reverend Samuel Philipps

Mary married Revd. Samuel Philipps, by license, at St Peter’s Church in Leeds on 28th December 1786.   

Mary Randall Vickers Family Tree

We do not know when or how Mary and Samuel met, nor how long they wooed before they wed.  But it may have been some time; it is clear that she felt obliged to wait to get married.   

According to Benjamin Randall Vickers’ ‘Sketch of the Life of Mrs Mary Vickers’, “until the age of 29 she steadily resisted every offer of marriage from a conviction, as she has remarked, it was her duty to remain attached to her father‘s interest. When [she was] about 28 her Father retired from Business, leaving it to his daughter Mary and one of his sons.  After this, she soon changed her situation. At 29 years of age she was married to Reverend S Philipps, a Dissenting Minister at Keighley, by whom she had two sons.” 

Sketch of the Life of Mary Vickers

As a “Dissenting Minister”, Samuel Philipps may have been Baptist, Congregationalist, Presbyterian, or even another branch of Methodism other than the Wesleyan Methodism which Mary’s family espoused. 

Samuel Philipps was born in 1761 so was four years younger than Mary, who was almost 30 when they were wed in December 1786.  Their first son, Robert Howl Philipps, was born on 14th February, 1788.  Two years later, their second son, also called Samuel, was born 11th March 1789. 

Family Notes and Baptism Record Relating to Mary Randall Vickers

However their father, Samuel Philipps, died the next month, on 5th April 1789, aged just 28 and after only a few weeks over two years’ marriage.  Mary’s notebook records that Samuel was “buried on 8th April in St John’s Churchyard, near my father’s family tombstone”. (St John’s Church, on New Briggate, is the oldest church in Leeds, built in the 1630s) The burial register records that the family was living in St Peter’s Square.   

Mary’s grief is poured out in her notebook: “Oh! Could I have died with thee. No pen could describe what my widowed soul feels – but here my drooping soul revives. He is not dead but sleepeth – and if ever I was sensible of any social enjoyment while on earth, at that moment did I feel union with his departed spirit. The Lord gave and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” 

Papers Relating To Mary Randall Vickers, 1808-1826

Yet within 16 months young Samuel died of smallpox and was buried on 4th July 1790. He was buried in his father’s grave. 

Robert Philipps stayed with Mary in Leeds until after his eighteenth birthday.  His mother noted in her journal that “My dear Rob Philipps left Leeds Friday May 30th, 1806 for London. I commit him wholly into the care of that God whose faithfulness I have proved”.   

Although Robert had been baptised by his father, soon after birth, his baptismal record was lost; he had to return briefly to Leeds to be re-baptised at the age of 20, on 29th February 1808, in order to be eligible to join the East India Company.  

Papers Relating To Mary Randall Vickers, 1808-1826

That was probably the last time in their lives that Mary and her dear eldest son Robert met. Robert rose to the rank of Captain in the Army of the East India Company and after the first Anglo-Burma war, became Assistant Commissioner for Arakan and Governor for three provinces recently seized from the king of Ava. He died in Arakan in 1828, leaving a common law Indian wife and four children, aged between two and twelve, whose education was funded in part by Robert’s half-brother, Benjamin Randall Vickers. Robert remained close in Mary’s heart for the rest of her life. 

© Peter Vickers, 2026

Peter Vickers studied History at Oxford University before joining the family business, “Vickers Oils” where he spent his entire working career. Having retired from the operating business in 2025, he is researching and writing the stories of the family and business ahead of its bicentenary in 2028.