Kittamaquund wanted the English colony's leaders to educate Mary so she could communicate between the two cultures, and solicit their help against hostile tribes.
In late 1644, in Governor Calvert's absence, Margaret Brent had allowed her 38-year-old brother Giles to marry Mary Kittamaquund, though she was just 10 or 11 years old at the time.
Calvert was either in England with his brother soliciting support for the Maryland colony, or collecting debts and hiring soldiers in Virginia to protect it.
In any event, during his absence, on February 14, 1645, raiders led by Protestant sea captain and merchant Richard Ingle and his ally Virginia fur trader William Claiborne burned the Catholic chapel and other buildings at St. Mary's City and tried to destroy the new colony.
The previous year, during Governor Calvert's absence, Giles Brent had briefly jailed Ingle for treason against King Charles I.
In April, Ingle and Claiborne sailed back to England with both Jesuit priests, the provincial secretary and Giles Brent all as captives and in chains.
[8] Between December 1646 and April 1647, Governor Calvert's forces finally managed to repel the invaders (which reduced the Maryland colony from approximately 500 to 600 settlers to about 100 English).
At some time during this period, chief Kittamaquund died, and Giles Brent (who had been freed in England and returned to Maryland) claimed all the Piscataway lands as Mary's husband.
[9] This violated Piscataway tribal customs and also conflicted with Lord Baltimore's land grant, which had given rise to the English colony in the first place.
Thus it is unclear whether Mary died as a young woman (childbirth deaths being common), or whether she left Giles and resumed her (matrilineal) Native American identity, or he divorced her as discussed below.
Swedes established a trading post, Fort Christina, at the top of the Elk Neck peninsula near the shortest route between the Chesapeake and Delaware basins.
[23] However, Giles' half-Native ancestry could have caused problems both with the rebels (some of whom wanted to kill all Indians) and with racist elements in Berkeley's faction.
[26] Brent men continued as merchants and lawyers, and also owned and operated plantations and a quarry near the Occoquan River's junction with the Potomac.
Moreover, George Brent was forced to take cover at his law partner's house for five months in 1688 over false rumors that he was conspiring with Indians about an uprising.
In 1780, subject to an elaborate but incomplete prenuptial agreement, their 50-year-old maiden sister Sarah Brent became the second wife of George Mason, who worked to establish religious freedom in Virginia and the new nation.
Alexandria sent lawyer George William Brent (1821-1872) to the Virginia Convention of 1861, at which he argued for union in order to support slavery.