Mary Peckham was born to Michael and Elizabeth (nee Pickett) on 6 May 1811. According to the Beaulieu parish records she was baptised privately on the same day and was later publicly baptised on 1st March 1812.

​

Mary, her father and her bedridden maternal grandmother are shown in Jude James 'Comyn's New Forest' (ref BRS 52, circa 1817) living at what is now Keeps Cottage at the end of Masseys Lane. A later note added to Comyn's notebooks by the Rev Shrubb indicates her father, Michael, as being buried at the Baptist chapel, the earliest record we have found of a burial there.

When her father died in 1822 he left her all his household goods, beds, bedding, furniture and implements and made her the beneficiary of the income from his real and personal estate (held in trust for her by his brother Joseph) until the age of 21 (1832) when she inherited his estate in full.​

​

She married Robert Kitcher, an agricultural labourer, on 7th August 1831 in Fawley and together they had eight children. She was baptised into the Baptist church on 3rd February 1839.

​

The 1841 census shows Mary, Robert and their family living in Beaulieu Rails likely at Keeps Cottage and next door (or very close) to Robert's brother Joseph and his family. In 1851, 1861 and 1871 they are shown in Beaulieu Rails, the census entries adjacent to theirs indicating they were probably living in Factory Lane (now Masseys Lane), neighbours of the Rev John Bartlett Burt, the Baptist minister. The 1881 census shows them still living there, Robert, now aged 71, a farmer of two acres.

The chapel burial register shows Mary died aged 71 and was buried at the chapel by the Rev J B Burt on 26th November 1882.