Mary Septima TAYLOR (LERENA by marriage)

Wife of Pablo Armando. PLACE FIELD CORRECTED 14 September 2026. This row's 'where found' held a CITATION - "GRO + SA records" - where the atlas expects a PLACE, so this person was missing from the map and appeared on it as a phantom location instead. The citation is kept here; the field now holds a real place. AND SHE IS NOT ALONE IN GRAVE 7719, established 8 October 2026. The Maitland Road Cemetery Record of Interments, page 4706 entry 423, puts CAREEN MARIA LERENA, aged two weeks, in Roman Catholic allotment, Cons. No. 1, grave 7719 - the grave this archive already held for her as 7719A. The child was buried there in 1947, twelve years after Mary Septima died. AND THE PLOT IS NOW READ WHOLE, 8 October 2026. Her 7719 A is the first of three places in grave 7719, which the 1950 register calls 'In Plot of R. P. Lerina' - her husband's own plot. Careen Maria took 7719 B in 1947 and he took 7719 C in 1950. AND THERE IS A FACE, from 8 October 2026. A studio group of twelve people and an infant, with a dog asleep on a cushion at the front, which David identifies as Mary Septima with her father, her mother and her siblings. She is the small girl at the lower right, against the knee of the seated man with full side-whiskers. IT IS THE ONLY IDENTIFIED LIKENESS OF HER THIS ARCHIVE HOLDS - of anyone in this family before the Cape. NOBODY ELSE IN THE GROUP IS NAMED, and no sibling will be matched to a face here. AND THEN THIS ARCHIVE OVER-READ IT AND WAS CORRECTED. It first said 'at least eight daughters and two sons are in the frame' and offered the number as the ordinary explanation of Septima, meaning seventh. David answered that he thought a grandmother or an aunt was in the group as well, which is the whole objection: a granddaughter, a niece, a daughter-in-law and a neighbour's child all photograph identically. Twelve figures can be counted - three male, eight female, one infant whose sex cannot be told. Daughters cannot. THE RECORD THAT WOULD SETTLE THE SIBLING COUNT is the 1891 census of Northam, already read here for the Brayleys and never counted for the Taylors. THE DATE IS INFERRED AND ONLY INFERRED: she was born 17 September 1884 and the child looks five or six, which puts the sitting about 1889-1891; the dress agrees without narrowing it. A photographer's imprint on the mount would settle it, and the supplied image is cropped to the print. AND HER OWN BAPTISM WAS FOUND ON 8 OCTOBER 2026, which this archive had never had. MARY SEPTIMA TAYLOR, baptised 30 OCTOBER 1884 at NORTHAM, St Margaret, Anglican; father WILLIAM, mother MARY ANN ELLEN. Born 17 September 1884, so six weeks old. IT IS THE FIRST TIME HER PARENTS ARE NAMED TOGETHER IN A PARISH REGISTER rather than in a tree, a census or a birth index - and the earliest record of her own life, pre-dating her 1911 marriage at Wynberg by twenty-seven years. HER SIX SIBLINGS ARE ON THE SAME PAGE SERIES: Horace Archibald and Isabella Temple (both 1874), Margaret Helen Walker (1876), Irene (1879), Lucy Elizabeth (31 Aug 1881) and Agnes Walker (21 Aug 1889), all to the same parents. See data/taylor-baptisms-northam.tsv. AND HER MARRIED SURNAME IS NOW IN HER NAME HERE, because three records carry her under it - the Maitland burial register, the 1935 passenger list and the Johannesburg cemetery index all call her LERENA. A reader searching the surname she was buried under should find her.