Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Mosby, Mary Webster

MOSBY, Mary Webster, author, b. in Henrico county, Va., in April, 1791; d. in Richmond, Va., 19 Nov., 1844. Her parents dying during her infancy, she was adopted by her paternal grandfather, Robert Pleasants, a Quaker planter who had set free more than a hundred slaves. She was educated at a Friends' school near Philadelphia, and married in 1810 John Garland Mosby. She contributed to magazines and annuals under the signature of “M. M. Webster,” and published a book entitled “Pocahontas” (Philadelphia, 1840), treating of the legend of the Indian heroine, from whom, through her maternal grandfather, Thomas Mann Randolph, she was a lineal descendant.