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This article reconstructs the growth from about 1768 of the small estate based on Norwood House, traces the lives and careers of its first occupants, Alexander Nesbitt and his wife Mary, and attempts to demonstrate how, despite the notoriety of her early life, Mary Nesbitt, through ability, determination and opportunism, achieved the position in society which she desired and which most of her contemporaries denied her. It seeks to provide a factual account based chiefly on hitherto unused manuscript material, and excludes the numerous legends, unsupported by reliable written sources, that have grown up around Mary Nesbitt and Norwood House.