Mary Alice Rostron
Second wife of Peter Burgess. Peter and his first family (wife: Ann Margaret Esplin, their daughter: Elizabeth and their son: William) immigrated on the ship Walpole arriving at New Orleans on 17 April 1845. On the ship manifest their surname was spelled “Browacas:” Peter, Ann, Elizabeth and William.
Ann Margaret Esplin Burgess and son William died at Nauvoo in August 1845.
In the original 1855 Hindley Company roster Peter is listed as a Captain of Ten and “head of family.” This “family” must have included his daughter Elizabeth (who survived the Nauvoo experience) as well as his second wife (Mary Alice Rostron, who he married at St. Louis, Missouri on 6 March 1851) and their first two children: a son named Samuel Rostron Burgess, b. 26 December 1851 at St. Louis and a daughter Mary A. Burgess, born in Missouri in 1853. In the 1856 Utah census Peter, Elizabeth, Mary A. and Samuel Burgess are in the Salt Lake 15th Ward.
The third child of Peter and Mary Alice Rostron Burgess (Martha Maria Burgess, b. 24 December 1856), was born at Salt Lake City also appears in the 1856 census but in 1860 their fourth child, Peter Howard Burgess b. 3 May 1858, was born at St. Louis, so the family must have returned east. This is substantiated by the fact that daughter Elizabeth married at St. Louis on 27 September 1860 to Thomas Tyson Slater.
In 1864 Peter’s entire second family (as well as Thomas and Elizabeth Slater and their daughter Emily) are listed on the original Chase Company roster. They were all from Missouri; but after Peter died at Salt Lake City 24 February 1865 his second family must have returned to St. Louis because that is where they all died: Mary Alice on 30 November 1903, Samuel on 18 January 1918 and Martha Maria on 31 March 1925.