![]() ![]() In her autobiography Somerville recollects that after returning from sea her father said to her mother "This kind of life will never do, Mary must at least know how to write and keep accounts". Her mother taught her to read the Bible and Calvinist catechisms, and when not occupied with household chores Mary roamed among the birds and flowers in the garden. Her mother supplemented the household's income by growing vegetables, maintaining an orchard and keeping cows for milk. The family lived in genteel poverty because her father's naval pay remained meagre as he rose through the ranks. She was particularly close to her oldest brother Sam. She was the second of four surviving children three of her siblings had died in infancy. Her childhood home was at Burntisland, Fife. Thomas Somerville 1741–1830 author of My Own Life and Times. ![]() She was born at the manse of Jedburgh, in the Borders, which was the house of her maternal aunt, wife of Dr. Vice-Admiral William Fairfax painted in 1798 Somerville was the daughter of Vice-Admiral Sir William George Fairfax, scion of a distinguished family of Fairfaxes, and she was related to several prominent Scottish houses through her mother, the admiral's second wife, Margaret Charters, daughter of Samuel Charters, a solicitor. She is featured on the front of the Royal Bank of Scotland polymer £10 note launched in 2017, alongside a quote from her work The Connection of the Physical Sciences. Somerville College, a college of the University of Oxford, is named after her, reflecting the virtues of liberalism and academic success which the college wished to embody.
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