Mary Marshall Tabb Bolling was a successful Petersburg merchant who earned a reputation for exceptional mettle during the American Revolution. Bolling’s father, Thomas Tabb, was one of Virginia’s wealthiest merchant, and her husband Robert Bolling, whom she married in 1758, was from another successful merchant family. She assumed the management of an enormous estate following the death of her husband in 1775. To save her property, Bolling refused to flee her home in Petersburg when the British occupied the city in the spring of 1781 and was placed under house arrest. By 1790, Bolling paid taxes on more than 10 percent of Petersburg’s total taxable wealth. Because she never remarried, Bolling was able to exercise control over her property and affairs, but as a woman she was excluded from positions of public authority despite her successful business career. Bolling died on or shortly before October 28, 1814, probably at Bollingbrook, her home in Petersburg. She was buried in the family graveyard.
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