CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · General Reference

Margaret Kemble Gage

wife of General Thomas Gage

Cross-disciplinary reference desk with index cards, atlas, dictionary and catalogue
General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 17, 2026
Entity authorityQ6759593
Source-derived summary

Margaret Kemble Gage (1734–1824) was the wife of General Thomas Gage, who led the British Army in Massachusetts in the American Revolutionary War.

Family life and descendants

Margaret Kemble was born in New Brunswick, Province of New Jersey, and lived in East Brunswick Township. She was the daughter of Peter Kemble, a wealthy New Jersey businessman and politician, and Gertrude Bayard; the granddaughter of Judge Samuel Bayard (b. 1669) and Margaretta Van Cortlandt (b. 1674); and the great-granddaughter of Mayor of New York City Stephanus Van Cortlandt and Gertrude Schuyler. Through her mother, she was a first cousin to the Van Cortlandts, de Lanceys, and the Van Rensselaers. She married Thomas Gage on December 8, 1758, at her father's 1200-acre Mount Kemble Plantation in New Jersey.

Following the outbreak of the American Revolution, Kemble Gage sailed from Boston to England in the summer of 1776 on a ship carrying military widows, orphans, and 170 soldiers who had been badly wounded in the Battle of Bunker Hill. She was joined by her husband a few months later, who was recalled after his failure to resolve divisions with the colonists. Together with their children, the couple settled in a Portland Place address in London.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Margaret Kemble Gage” is wife of General Thomas Gage. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Margaret, Kemble and Gage, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1734, 1824, 1669, 1674—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1734-01-01. For this dossier, Margaret, Kemble and Gage is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “wife of General Thomas Gage” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6759593. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1734, 1824, 1669 and 1674.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Margaret Kemble Gage”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Margaret Kemble Gage primary sources, Margaret Kemble Gage archive and Margaret research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Margaret Kemble Gage”?
  2. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
  3. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Margaret Kemble Gage” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.