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Major General Andrew Moore 
 
" 111.. 
 
 Memories of a Long Life 
 in Virginia 
 
 By 
 
 MRS. JOHN H. MOORE 
 
 Lexington, Va. 
 
 Printed by 
 The McClure Company, Inc. 
 
 StaunloD, Va. 
 
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 Copyright by 
 
 MRS. JOHN H. MOORE 
 
 Lexington, Va. 
 
 1920 
 
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PREFACE 
 
 The writer of these pages is now nearly eighty 
 years old. She has been an unusually close and in- 
 telligent observer, and her memory is wonderfully 
 vivid and accurate. She is one of the few people 
 now living Who knew well Stonewall Jackson be- 
 fore the War between the States, and General 
 Robert E. Lee, and his family, when General Lee 
 lived in Lexington after the war, as president' of 
 Washington College. Some of the friends of Mrs. 
 Moore have thought that her recollection of these 
 great men, and of other prominent people and 
 events, were worthy of a permanent record, and at 
 the insistence of these friends, this little book has 
 been written. It is printed just as dictated by her, 
 without editing, and it will doubtless be found that 
 her original, and at times quaint style, will add 
 much to the interest and attractiveness of the narra- 
 tive. 
 
 ONE OF HER FRIENDS. 
 
 Lexington, Virginia, 
 December 1, 1919. 
 
ANCESTORS 
 
 I am now in my eightieth year, health deHcate, 
 and nearly blind, but my friends have urged me to 
 write some of my early recollections. I have not 
 kept my letters or written a diary, so I must depend 
 on my memory, and things I have heard from 
 others, principally from my father and mother. 
 
 .My father was Samuel McDowell Moore, and 
 my mother was Evalina Alexander, youngest child 
 of Andrew Alexander, who owned a large farm near 
 Lexington, Virginia, where I was born on the 20th 
 of May, 1840. 
 
 Andrew Alexander, my grandfather, owned many 
 slaves, he would never sell one, thought it wrong. 
 He had a school for his slaves, said he wanted 
 everyone on his plantation to be able to read the 
 Bible, and my mother told me of her teaching the 
 maids in the house to read and write. The black- 
 smith on the place had a school ; he was one of the 
 slaves. When my grandfather died, my uncle, Wil- 
 liam Dandridge Alexander, his eldest son, a lawyer 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 in Georgia, came on to settle up the estate. The 
 negroes were given their choice as to whether they 
 would stay in Virginia. A few who had wives on 
 other plantations stayed, all the rest wanted to go 
 with "Marse William." So they made a caravan of 
 covered wagons drawn by mules and horses and 
 moved to a cotton plantation my uncle had bought 
 near Griffin, Georgia. This was about 1843. There 
 were no railroads then. When the Civil War came 
 on, my uncle built a large house on the plantation 
 and invited his two brothers-in-law to move their 
 families there, as Virginia would be the battle- 
 ground, but we stayed in Virginia. 
 
 My uncle was a lawyer, and never married. He 
 was well off, and he raised a company of soldiers — 
 The Alexander Rifles (he was too old for the army 
 himself), and equipped them, sent them to Virginia, 
 and supported their families during the War. At 
 one time he came on to Richmond, Virginia, during 
 the War, to see about his company, when he heard 
 of some of them being in the hospital there. After 
 the war he divided his plantation out to his negroes, 
 and tried to make them self supporting, and he left 
 pensions to some of the older ones in his will. 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 The Alexanders were Earls of Sterling in Scot- 
 land, and descended from King Robert Bruce by his 
 daughter Marjory. I bought two volumes, "His- 
 tory of the House of Alexander," in Scotland. 
 
 My mother's mother was Anne Dandridge Aylett 
 from King William County, Virginia. She was a 
 near relative through the Dandridges of Mrs. Mar- 
 tha Washington, wife of General Washington, and 
 a descendant of Thomas West, Lord Delaware, one 
 of the first Governors of Virginia. She died when 
 my mother was only five years old. My mother as 
 a young girl spent a great deal of time with rela- 
 tives in Richmond and King William County, and 
 with her uncle, Doctor Archibald Alexander, Presi- 
 dent of the Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and 
 his family at Princeton, New Jersey, and with 
 friends in New York and Philadelphia. 
 
 My father, Samuel McDowell Moore, eldest child 
 of Andrew Moore, was named for his grandfather, 
 Samuel McDowell, His mother was Sarah Reid, 
 eldest child of Andrew Reid and Magdelene Mc- 
 Dowell. 
 
 My grandmother told me that when she was 
 fourteen years old she rode on horseback from 
 
 7 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 Lexington, Virginia, to Lexington, Kentucky, to 
 visit her grandfather and grandmother, Samuel Mc- 
 Dowell and his family, who had moved with their 
 family to Kentucky — then part of the State of Vir- 
 ginia. My grandmother accompanied two of her 
 uncles McDowell, members of the Legislature at 
 Williamsburg, Virginia, who were going home. 
 There were no roads to Kentucky, only paths 
 through the forests, and at one place they passed, a 
 party of twenty people had been murdered just two 
 weeks before, by the Indians. My grandmother 
 was with a large party; all the men were armed, 
 and when they camped at night sentinels were 
 posted. Some of the old men thought the sentinels 
 were becoming careless, and after telling the women 
 of the party, they went into the woods and gave 
 fearful Indian war whoops in the night, and scared 
 the young sentinels badly. They were more careful 
 afterwards. 
 
 My grandmother was eighteen years old, and 
 my grandfather was forty-four when they were 
 married. She was married at her father's home 
 near Lexington, Virginia, "Mulberry Hill." The 
 day she was married she put on a cap with a high 
 
 8 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 crown, having one and a quarter yards of muslin 
 in it. My grandfather was a member of Congress, 
 then sitting in Philadelphia. They went in a car- 
 riage with four horses, and had a baggage wagon 
 with servants, and it took them two weeks to get 
 there. They had to cross the Susquehanna River 
 on a ferryboat; when they reached it, the weather 
 was too stormy to cross, and they had to wait 
 several days; the ferryman gave up his cabin to 
 my grandmother. They lived on Pine Street in 
 Philadelphia, in a house with Hancock, of Massa- 
 chusetts. My father was born there, the 9th of 
 February, 1796. 
 
 My grandmother said Mrs. Washington was not 
 pretty, a small, plump woman ; she thought General 
 Washington a grand looking man, noble and hand- 
 some. My grandmother wore a blue satin dress 
 and heels to her shoes a finger length high when 
 she went in to dinner with General Washington. 
 
 My grandfather, Andrew Moore, was born in 
 1752 at "Cannecello," his father's place in Rock- 
 bridge County. His grandfather came over from 
 Ireland in 1740; they were Scotch-Irish. He was 
 educated and studied law. He was the representa- 
 
 9 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 tive of his district in the first Congress, and he was 
 the first United States Senator from west of the 
 Blue Ridge Mountains. He represented Rock- 
 bridge in the Legislature of Virginia for many years, 
 and was a member of the State Convention of 
 1788 which ratified the Federal Constitution. He re- 
 fused to obey the instructions of his constituents, 
 who instructed him to oppose the Constitution at 
 all hazards. He had been a captain in Morgan's 
 Rifle Corps, in the Revolutionary War, having 
 raised a company of a hundred men in one day in 
 Rockbridge County. He was at the surrender of 
 Burgoyne at Saratoga. 
 
 I copy from an address of Hugh Blair Grigsby, 
 delivered at Washington College, June 22, 1870: 
 
 "General Moore was in his day the represen- 
 tative man of the West, Every civil and mili- 
 tary office within the gift of Virginia and the 
 people was freely bestowed upon him. His 
 public career began in 1776, and from that 
 time to the date of his death, 1826 — a lapse of 
 forty-five years — he can hardly be said to have 
 been out of the public service. As a soldier, as 
 a member of the House of Delegates, as a 
 10 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 member of both Houses of Congress, as a brig- 
 adier and major-general, and as the United 
 States Marshall of Virginia, he performed his 
 various duties with the approbation of his 
 country." 
 In the same address he also said in speaking of 
 General Moore: 
 
 "It happened that when Washington re- 
 ceived the grant of the James River shares 
 from the State of Virginia, Moore was a mem- 
 ber of the House of Representatives, and was 
 sent for by the Father of his Country to be 
 consulted about appropriating the shares to 
 the use of some literary institution above the 
 falls of the rivers. General Moore presented 
 the claims of Liberty Hall, and after a consul- 
 tation with his colleague from the Washington 
 district, the late General Francis Preston, who 
 united with him in urging upon Washington 
 the claims of the Academy, he wrote to the 
 trustees, who presented their case in the able 
 argument already noticed in the sketch of 
 Graham, and received that generous benefac- 
 tion which you still enjoy. I also may add 
 11 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 that he probably drew your charter, and cer- 
 tainly guarded and guided it in its passage 
 through the Assembly." 
 
 General Moore was one of the trustees of Wash- 
 ington College. 
 
 When Major Andre was about to be executed as 
 a spy my grandfather was the officer in charge, 
 and as he had known and liked Andre, he begged 
 Washington to excuse him from this duty, which 
 he did. 
 
 My father, Samuel McDowell Moore, was born 
 in Philadelphia where his father, General Andrew 
 Moore, was in Congress from Virginia. He was 
 brought to his home in Lexington when an infant. 
 He was educated at Washington College, now 
 Washington and Lee University, and afterwards 
 studied law. He was elected to the Legislature in 
 1825, and continued in that body until 1833. He 
 was elected to the Convention of 1829 to amend 
 the Constitution of Virginia; he was elected to 
 Congress in 1833, and served many years in the 
 Legislature and State Senate, and in 1861 was elect- 
 ed to the Virginia Convention as a Union man. 
 
 I copy from resolutions of the Bar of Lexington 
 
 12 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 on the death of Honorable Samuel McDowell 
 Moore. After reciting the different positions he 
 had filled, they said: 
 
 "In all these positions he exibited high tal- 
 ent, indomitable will, unflagging energy, stern 
 integrity, and the truest devotion to his 
 country and his country's interest and honor. 
 He was essentially and in all respects 'an hon- 
 est man,' the noblest work of God, as a hus- 
 band, a Father, a citizen, a neighbor, and a 
 friend he was in the strictest sense of the 
 word a true man. Here where he lived and 
 died, where he was beloved and honored by 
 the people, his memory will be ever cherish- 
 ed and revered." 
 These lines from Tennyson were quoted in the 
 newspaper announcing his death: 
 
 "Oh iron nerve to true occasion true, 
 Oh fall'n at length that tower of strength 
 Which stood four square to all the winds 
 that blew!"* 
 
 *A gentleman from Staunton told me that the first time 
 he ever saw my father he was pointed out to him on the 
 street in Staunton as being the best formed man physi- 
 
 13 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 The McDowells came to this country from Ire- 
 land by way of Pennsylvania in 1737 — pure Scotch, 
 The Scotch-Irish went from Scotland to Ireland, 
 but never married or mingled with the Irish Pa- 
 pists. The animosity and dislike has continued 
 between the two races to this day. 
 
 Samuel McDowell,* my father's great-grandfath- 
 er for whom he was named, was born in 1733. He 
 was educated and studied law. He fought the 
 Indians in many expeditions; was at the battle of 
 
 cally and as having the best walk and carriage of any 
 man in Virginia. My father always went to see his 
 mother, who lived in another part of the town from us, 
 every morning after breakfast before going to his law 
 office. 
 
 There was not a State Convention in Virginia that one 
 of my family was not in until after the Civil War. Gen. 
 Andrew Moore was in the Convention that ratified the 
 Constitution of the United States and voted for it. My 
 father, Sam'l McD. Moore, was in the Convention of 
 1829, and my uncle, Capt. David E. Moore, was in the 
 next Convention, and my father was a member of the 
 Convention of 1861, at the beginning of the war between 
 the states. 
 
 *The sister of Samuel McDowell married a Greenlee. 
 When she was a hundred years old she had such a re- 
 markable memory that when there was difficulty in estab- 
 lishing the boundaries of land in the county, men went 
 to her, took her depositipn, and she told them of the 
 boundaries of the lands, often fixed by a stream, logs, a 
 rock or hill, and they verified them. 
 
 14 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 Point Pleasant. He was a member of the House 
 of Burgesses and carried the Augusta Resolutions 
 to that body recommending a declaration of in- 
 dependence from the British Government, and he 
 voted for a dissolution of the Union with Great 
 Britain. In October, 1776, he was a member of the 
 first House of Delegates under the Constitution, 
 and cordially co-operated with Jefferson and 
 George Mason in carrying through the bill abol- 
 ishing entails, and the bill for religious freedom, 
 and putting the new State on a republican footing. 
 On the death of his father in 1743 he became the 
 sole heir of all the lands as the oldest son, but he 
 divided the property equally with his brother and 
 sister. That was long before the law of primo- 
 geniture was done away with. After leaving the 
 Assembly he was engaged in military services, and 
 at the battle of Guilford he commanded a regiment. 
 His son John was also in the battle. After the wat 
 he with his family moved to Kentucky, then a 
 part of Virginia. He was appointed the Circuit 
 Judge of his district, and his son William the prin- 
 cipal judge. His son Ephriam was a celebrated 
 physician, and a monument was erected to his 
 memory in Kentucky a few years ago. 
 
 15 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 My grandmother's father was Andrew Reid. 
 He was Clerk o£ the County of Rockbridge for 
 many years, and was one of the heroes of Point 
 Pleasant. He built "Mulberry Hill," his home near 
 Lexington, where he owned a large farm, adjoin- 
 ing that of his nephew Andrew Alexander, and he 
 inherited another large tract of land, (which has 
 since sold for $20,000). He sold it during the 
 Revolutionary War for paper money, and after- 
 wards bought two cows with this depreciated 
 currency. The McDowells were descended from 
 Robert Bruce, and all of my Scotch ancestors 
 fought for Charles Stuart. 
 
 Magdelene McDowell, daughter of Samuel 
 McDowell, married Andrew Reid. She was a very 
 bright, intelligent woman and read a great deal. 
 I heard my father say that when he and his broth- 
 er David were boys staying with their grandpar- 
 ents, his grandmother would become so absorbed 
 in a book that children or servants would take the 
 keys from her outside pockets and get anything 
 they wished from the storeroom without her know- 
 ing it; and one night her daughters returning from 
 evening service at church found her without the 
 
 16 
 
My Mother, Evelina Alexander Moore 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 high muslin crown of her cap; it had been burned 
 off by the candle by which she was reading and 
 she did not know it. There was a band of ribbon 
 between the crown and the front of the cap. 
 
 My grandfather Moore's oldest brother, William, 
 lived to be ninety-three years old. He was in the 
 battle of Point Pleasant at the junction of the Ka- 
 nawha and Ohio Rivers in 1774, where the Indians 
 were defeated. In advancing he saw an Indian 
 had wounded Colonel John Steel, and was about 
 to tomahawk and scalp him; he shot the Indian, 
 and knocked another down with the butt of his 
 rifle, and then took Steel, who was very large, on 
 his shoulder, and the two rifles in his hand, and 
 carried him out of the battle, and then went back 
 into the fight. Steel said there was no other man 
 who could have done it or would have done it if 
 he could. He was an officer in the army at the 
 surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. 
 
 17 
 
ANTE-BELLUM— MEMORIES 
 
 "I remember, I remember, 
 The house where I was born." — Hood. 
 
 I was born May 20th, 1840, My first remem- 
 brance is at my grandfather Alexander's. I was 
 a very small child. I first remember seeing a large 
 room, with shelves filled with books, and a bright 
 wood fire. I remember going to church, to the 
 old Presbyterian Church that was in the cemetery 
 at the head of the town. We went in an old fash- 
 ioned carriage, with steps that let down, the steps 
 when not in use, folded up inside the door. Dr. 
 Skinner, a Scotchman, was the Presbyterian 
 preacher, I was christened when I was three years 
 old. When the preacher put the water on my fore- 
 head, I thought he was playing with me, and I 
 ran down the aisle as fast as I could. My mother 
 had to go after me to have me christened properly. 
 At church a lady and two little girls sat in the pew 
 behind us. One Sunday, the nice, kind lady hand- 
 
 18 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 ed me a piece of taffy. Now, my mother was the 
 most particular person that I have ever seen ; when 
 she turned and saw me, my hands all daubed with 
 the sticky molasses candy, she was perfectly shock- 
 ed. I remember her catching my hand by the 
 wrist and wiping the candy off. As we left the 
 church, I remember my mother saying, "What 
 did that woman bring molasses candy to church 
 for?" 
 
 Soon, we moved down to the new Presbyterian 
 Church. The minister always told first the visits 
 he was going to pay Monday morning. He would 
 begin at Mr. So and So's and spend one half hour 
 there, etc., etc. Next, he read out the collection 
 for the missionaries. One Sunday morning he 
 read out that Mr. So and So had given "Sax and a 
 quarter cents to convort the world." The con- 
 gregation became dissatisfied with Dr. Skinner 
 and asked for his resignation, but he refused to go, 
 so he was tried before Synod. Dr. Skinner was 
 very smart, prone to ridicule and had attacked 
 some of the ladies. Dr. MacFarland and several 
 other preachers, among them one named Brown, 
 sat at the trial. Dr. MacFarland had an unusual- 
 
 19 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 ly large nose and Mr. Brown had very large, pro- 
 minent eyes, so Dr. Skinner said, "As the eyes 
 and nose are both against me, there is no chance 
 for me." There really was no chance for him and 
 he was dismissed. He was succeeded by Dr. 
 William S. White, such a good, holy man, a Chris- 
 tian whom everyone loved. His prayers were es- 
 pecially beautiful and were as though they were 
 inspired. He came when I was a child and he died 
 here after the Civil War. 
 
 In 1843, my father bought forty acres of ground 
 near the Virginia Military Institute and built a 
 large, brick house on it. The Institute had begun 
 as a school in 1839. My grandfather Alexander 
 suggested that it would be better to have a military 
 school like West Point, and let the cadets guard 
 the Arsenal. Colonel Thomas L. Preston brought 
 the subject up in the Franklin Society, where it 
 was discussed. The Franklin Literary Society met 
 every Saturday night in their own hall, where they 
 had a good library. The gentlemen of the town 
 would discuss the important subjects of the day, 
 and they decided that a military school would do 
 well here. A charter was procured from the Leg- 
 
 20 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 islature. It was decided to get a West Point grad- 
 uate for superintendent, and Joseph R. Anderson, 
 of Botetourt County, a West Point graduate, was 
 asked. He refused, but recommended Francis H. 
 Smith, also a West Point graduate, who was a pro- 
 fessor at Hampden-Sidney College at Farmville, 
 Prince Edward County, Virginia. These good old 
 Presbyterians wrote to Dr. George Baxter, who was 
 President of the Presbyterian Theological Sem- 
 inary at Farmville, as he knew Smith very well, to 
 ask about him. Dr. Baxter had been pastor of the 
 Presbyterian Church in Lexington for years before 
 he went to Farmville. He recommended Colonel 
 Smith, after which they invited him to come. 
 Francis H. Smith accepted and moved to Lexing- 
 ton. 
 
 When he arrived at the Institute, it consisted of 
 an arsenal, containing arms for the militia. A 
 band of soldiers guarded this. In front of the ar- 
 senal there was a barracks with a dwelling for 
 officers in each end of it. In those days there was 
 a general muster of the militia every fall. Major 
 John Alexander, my mother's uncle, commanded 
 the militia in this county as well as those of the 
 
 21 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 neighboring counties. All of the state at that time 
 was laid off in districts. 
 
 When I was a child, I remember my nurse taking 
 me down on the street to see the general muster. 
 I would see the drilling and the cavalrymen gallop- 
 ing up the street. Two men that were specially ad- 
 mired were Mr. Hubard Bowyer and Mr. Lewis 
 Davidson. They were splendid riders and had fine 
 horses. I remember seeing women with stands at 
 the street corners, selling cider and "gungers." 
 "Gungers" were large, round, flat molasses cakes 
 that Mr, Pettigrew made. 
 
 When General Smith, though he did not have 
 that title until during the Civil War, first came to 
 the Institute, he occupied one of the dwellings in 
 one end of the barracks and Colonel Thomas L. 
 Williamson the other. The choice of General 
 Smith as superintendent proved a very wise one, as 
 he was a man of brilliant intellect and wonderful 
 energy. He devoted himself to building up the 
 school. 
 
 There was a large yellow building for the mess- 
 hall, and Mr. Eskridge was the commissary and 
 quartermaster. He lived in rooms above the mess- 
 
 22 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 hall. He had four daughters, most attractive 
 young ladies. One daughter, Miss Maria, married 
 General Lindsay Walker, and another married Col. 
 Duke, of Albemarle County. 
 
 Professor Bartlett, of West Point, was detailed 
 to come here to assist General Smith in starting 
 the school. Many, many years afterwards, my 
 husband and I were in Newport, Rhode Island, 
 and met General Bartlett and his family there. He 
 told us how much he liked General Smith in those 
 early days, and about assisting him in starting the 
 school. After this General Smith built a super- 
 intendent's house on a line with the barracks and 
 our house, and about half way between the two. 
 Colonel John T. L. Preston was one of the first 
 professors and taught Latin. He was a graduate 
 of Yale, a very accomplished gentleman. He was 
 a grandson of Lord Randolph, of England, and a 
 near relative of Edmund Randolph. He belonged 
 to the distinguished Preston family of Virginia. 
 
 Colonel Williamson, to whom I have already re- 
 ferred, was a gentleman, true, honest, and brave. 
 His family were my most intimate friends and 
 companions. 
 
 23 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 Colonel Gilham was also one of the early pro- 
 fessors. He was a Virginian, and his wife came 
 from New York. His wife, her sister, and his 
 mother-in-law were all beautiful women. Miss 
 Hayden, Mrs. Gilham's sister, died with brain fever 
 here. She was only eighteen or nineteen and had 
 been preparing for a ball at the Institute, so she 
 was hurried in her ball dress and dancing slippers. 
 Her friends among the cadets were her pallbearers 
 and they wore long white scarfs that had been ar- 
 ranged for them. Her hair had been cut off and my 
 mother made a lace cap for her to be hurried in. 
 The Gilhams being Northern people did not know 
 how to get along with our spoiled colored servants. 
 When they first came here they hired two very 
 accomplished servants from one of my father's 
 aunts, — a good cook, and house girl, but they want- 
 ed them to do much more work than they were 
 accustomed to doing, so they would not stay, but 
 walked home. After that Colonel Gilham could 
 not hire any other servants in Lexington. 
 
 Thomas J. Jackson was another professor at the 
 school; he came in 1851. He roomed at the bar- 
 racks and was very intimate at our house, visiting 
 
 24 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 there very often. He was six feet tall, a stiff mili- 
 tary looking man, I remember that he always sat 
 very upright on his chair. He had fine, blue eyes, 
 brown hair, and a good complexion, a handsome 
 man. He told my mother once that he felt that 
 all ladies were angels. When he was thinking of 
 marrying, he consulted with her and made her his 
 confidant. Every Sunday morning, when going to 
 Sunday School, he would call for me, I was not 
 grown at that time. After he had been here for 
 some time, he established an afternoon Sunday 
 School for colored people in the Presbyterian lec- 
 ture room. One of our house girls told me that 
 Major Jackson preached better than any of the 
 preachers. General D. H, Hill, a great friend of 
 Jackson's, was a professor at Washington College, 
 His wife was a Miss Morrison, of Charlotte, North 
 Carolina. She and her sisters were pretty, cultured, 
 and attractive women. Jackson was a very fre- 
 quent visitor at the Hill's and also at Dr. Junkin's, 
 He married Miss Eleanor Junkin, the second 
 daughter of Dr, Junkin, President of Washington 
 College. She lived only a year after she was mar- 
 ried. Miss Margaret Junkin, the eldest daughter, 
 
 25 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 was the second wife of Colonel John T. L. Preston. 
 Jackson lived several years with the Junkins after 
 his first wife died. 
 
 When Major Jackson lived at Dr. Junkin's one 
 of his sisters in law was an invalid and he used to 
 carry her in his arms down stairs every morning, 
 and carried her up stairs to her bed-room every 
 evening. Major Jackson could not keep awake in 
 church, would sit up straight and nod his head. 
 One Sunday his youngest sister-in-law stuck a pin 
 in his arm while he was asleep and he at once 
 pinched her, much to her surprise. A cousin of 
 mine, a young man, said that during the Civil War 
 there was a large gathering of soldiers, and officers 
 for religious services on a hill-side, one Sunday; 
 when Jackson, who was seated on a camp stool, 
 slept, and rolled off the stool and down the hill, and 
 in that whole assembly there was not a smile, such 
 was the respect had for Jackson. 
 
 I was in Richmond when I heard that General 
 Jackson was wounded. I went at once to see Mrs. 
 Jackson, who was staying at Dr. Moses D. Hoge's 
 with her baby girl. They had been with Jackson, 
 and were just back when the battle began. I said to 
 
 26 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 Mrs. Jackson that I hoped his Ufe could be spared* 
 as we couldn't do without him. She went to him 
 that evening and was with him when he died. I 
 have thought that God took Jackson and his prayers 
 away when he did not intend us to succeed. Jack- 
 son was taken away from the evil to come. His 
 second wife was General D. H. Hill's sister-in-law, 
 Miss Anna Morrison, of Charlotte, North Carolina. 
 They bought the house which is now the Stone- 
 wall Jackson Hospital. They had one little girl 
 who died there. 
 
 In the autumn of 1860 there was a most beautiful 
 display of the Aurora Borealis. The whole north- 
 ern sky was aflame, and we had the largest comet 
 that I have ever seen. Major Jackson came and 
 invited me and the Williamson girls to go and look 
 at the comet through his telescope at the Institute. 
 As a young girl all my associations were with the 
 Institute children, as there was none at Wash- 
 ington College. 
 
 There was a green hill between our grounds and 
 the Virginia Military Institute parade grounds, be- 
 longing to Mr. Alexander Sloan, who kept the hotel 
 in the village. He did not like General Smith and 
 
 27 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 would not sell to him, but my father bought the 
 lot and sold it to the Institute to enlarge their pa- 
 rade grounds. When the hill was being cut down 
 on a level with the parade grounds, the rocks flew 
 in every direction. A large rock went through the 
 roof into the second story bedroom of General 
 Smith's house, and one piece of rock flew clear over 
 our house into the flower garden. It weighed 
 twenty pounds. 
 
 My delight as a child was to see the cadets 
 march out on the parade ground with their musi- 
 cians, Ruben and Mike, at their head — two very 
 black men, dressed in scarlet coats and white pants 
 and cocked hats. Ruben was short and round like 
 his drum, and Mike was thin and tall like his fife. 
 At our church fairs the ladies used to have dolls 
 dressed like Ruben and Mike. These dolls were 
 great favorites with the Lexington children. 
 
 General Smith was a most devoted Episcopalian. 
 The Williamsons and Gilhams were also Episco- 
 palians and General Smith was anxious to start an 
 Episcopal Church. All the Presbyterians assisted 
 him in every way. He bought a lot which was very 
 near Washington College, from Mr. William N. 
 
 28 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 Tate, of Staunton, a brother-in-law of old Dr. Ed- 
 ward Graham. They built a very pretty red brick 
 church with white pillars. One Presbyterian elder 
 gave $500, and another gave all the stone for the 
 foundation of the Church. All contributed liberally. 
 When the Church was consecrated, the Presbyterian 
 choir sang for the service ; Cousin Betty Alexander, 
 Mr. John Lyle, Mr. John Barclay, and others. The 
 Bowyers of "Thorn Hill" were among the first 
 people confirmed in the new church. Mrs. Bowyer 
 was a Miss Hubard, of Eastern Virginia, and had 
 been brought up an Episcopalian, and she and her 
 four daughters were confirmed, but Mr. Bowyer, 
 who was not a member of any church, said, "I'll 
 be damned, if I am not a Presbyterian still." My 
 mother took me to the Episcopal Church, and 
 I asked why all those people were talking out loud 
 in the church and she said that they were praying, 
 and I promptly said that they must be better than 
 the people in our church, because only one man 
 prayed there. The first Episcopal preacher that I 
 remember was Mr. Robert Nelson, and he was al- 
 ways very intimate at our house. He came to our 
 house one evening and I said, "Oh, Mr. Nelson, 
 
 29 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 what made you preach in your shirt?" I had never 
 seen a surplice. After this all the people connected 
 with the Institute were Episcopalians, as far as they 
 who could be secured. When the Eskridges left, 
 a Mr. Gibbs, an Englishman, was the commissary 
 and quartermaster. He was an Episcopalian, as was 
 also Mr. Norgrove, another Englishman, who was 
 the Institute tailor. Major Thomas J. Jackson 
 joined the Presbyterian Church after he came to 
 the Institute, as a professor. 
 
 When I was five years old my father was in the 
 Legislature, and we spent a winter in Richmond. I 
 enjoyed being with so many children of my relatives 
 in Richmond and down in King William County. 
 When I was eight years old, I had the whooping 
 cough, and my little maid, Bella, told me that the 
 doctor thought I could not live and that "mistis" 
 was crying. My cousin, who was two years older 
 than I, came to see me one evening. I asked Bella 
 if she would not like to belong to Miss Sarah, and 
 she said that she would. So it was agreed that in 
 case I died. Cousin Sarah was to have Bella and the 
 cat. I learned to read when I was five years old, 
 and was going to Miss Campbell's school when I 
 
 30 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 was six. Bella used to go with me to carry my 
 books, and always came for me. Miss Campbell's 
 school was for the very small children, and the 
 Ann Smith Academy for the older girls. 
 
 In those days we did not have the elaborate, com- 
 plicated water system* of modern times, but we had 
 good, pure water, piped from a large spring in 
 Brushy Hills. My grandfather Alexander had 
 owned the spring, and he sold one-fourth to the 
 town, one-fourth to the Institute, one-fourth to 
 College, and kept one-fourth for his family and 
 their heirs. A great many people had rather primi- 
 tive bathrooms. We had one built just outside the 
 house. It had a trough from the hydrant to sup- 
 ply it with cold water, and we brought kettles of hot 
 water from the kitchen. My father, when asked 
 why he had such a large bath tub, replied that he 
 wanted one large enough to lie down in. He was 
 
 *There were several other large springs afterwards 
 added to the water supply of the town, but the water of 
 these Brushy Hill springs was limestone (hard water). 
 We now have an abundant supply of soft water from a 
 stream (Moore's Creek). The town owns the water shed. 
 The little town of Lexington, Virginia, now has good 
 pavements, electric street lights, and the houses have all 
 modern improvements. 
 
 31 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 six feet tall. I have heard that Dr. Estill, one of 
 our leading physicians, in very hot weather would 
 lie down in his bath tub to read. One day he was 
 found asleep, his book floating on the water. 
 Colonel Preston had contracted malaria while visit- 
 ing in Missouri. He had chills and fever. When 
 the fever would come on him, he would get in a tub 
 of cold water. The old ladies thought that it would 
 kill him; for at that time all fever patients were 
 kept as warm as possible, not even allowed a drink 
 of cold water. In addition to these outside bath- 
 rooms, everybody had foot-tubs and sitz-baths. In 
 those days, though it was a great deal more trou- 
 ble, the people bathed as much as they do now, and 
 were very neat. Once an old gentleman was visit- 
 ing a friend in the country near town. He was 
 offered a sitz-bath in his room. The sitz-bath was 
 shaped like a large hat with a wide brim that one 
 could sit down on. The host forgot to tell his guest 
 that the prop for the sitz-bath was broken, and so, 
 when he took his seat on the brim, he pitched back- 
 wards and he, water, tub, and all went over to- 
 gether. He was furious, thinking that a joke had 
 been played on him. 
 
 32 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 As soon as I was large enough, I went to the 
 Ann Smith Academy.* This was a school estab- 
 lished for girls by the early settlers and named for 
 the first teacher, Miss Ann Smith, who was an 
 Englishwoman. My mother had gone there when 
 she was a girl. When I went there, Mrs. Notting- 
 ham and her four daughters taught the school. 
 Miss Lizzie, the eldest, taught the large girls. 
 There was a large school room in which Miss Sarah 
 taught her classes. Mrs. Nottingham taught the 
 smallest children. Miss Mary and Miss Hannah 
 both taught music. Miss Mary was deaf and had 
 only three of the smallest pupils — myself, Lillie 
 McDowell, and Lou Myers. One day she had the 
 three of us counting out loud and we made so much 
 noise that Miss Sarah had to come in to see what 
 was the cause of all the commotion. Miss Hannah 
 was very pretty and was quite a belle. The Not- 
 
 *There were pianos at an early date at the Anne Smith 
 Academy, and my grandfather, Gen. Andrew Moore, had 
 a piano sent from Philadelphia to his home near Lexing- 
 ton, Va. His eldest daughter, then only about twelve 
 years old, could play quite well, but when she tried to 
 play on the new piano, was so overcome with embarrass- 
 ment, with the whole family around her, that she made 
 a perfect failure. My father's sisters played beautifully. 
 
 33 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 tinghams had a very fine school, and were splen- 
 did teachers. They always had some boarding 
 pupils too. The old Ann Smith Academy stood 
 where the High School now is. 
 
 These old Scotch-Irish settlers always established 
 schools and churches wherever they went. This 
 part of the country was almost entirely settled by 
 them. These people were called Scotch-Irish, and, 
 although they had lived in Ireland, they had never 
 married or intermingled with the Irish Papists. In 
 1749 they had established the Augusta Academy. 
 My great-great grandfather's brother, Robert Alex- 
 ander, who was an A. M. from Edinburgh Univer- 
 sity, taught the school. Soon it was moved nearer 
 to Lexington and was called Liberty Hall. General 
 Washington endowed the school, and after that it 
 was called Washington College. General Wash- 
 ington consulted my grandfather, Andrew Moore, 
 about endowing this College. This was the only 
 school General Washington ever endowed. When 
 Liberty Hall burned down, the present center build- 
 ing and the buildings on each side of it, with the 
 square columns, were built. The first president 
 that I remember was Dr. Ruffner. He was suc- 
 
 34 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 ceeded by Dr. Junkin, who had been president of 
 Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. 
 
 Mr. Robert Nelson, rector of the Episcopal 
 Church, married about this time, and went to 
 China as a missionary. Then Dr. William Nelson 
 Pendleton, with his family, came here from Fred- 
 erick, Maryland, to be rector of the Episcopal 
 Church. The Junkins and Pendletons were both 
 very accomplished and highly educated people. 
 
 When I was ten years old, in 1850, the corner- 
 stone for the new barracks was laid at the Virginia 
 Military Institute. I remember going down there 
 to see it with my uncle, William D. Alexander. 
 Soon after this my uncle, William Alexander, my 
 mother and I, with a party, went on a trip all 
 through the North. We went as far as Winchester 
 in carriages, and the first railroad that I ever saw 
 was there ; we took the train and went on to Wash- 
 ington. It was a very wonderful sight, seeing the 
 railroad. We stopped at the National Hotel. The 
 night we reached Washington General Zachery 
 Taylor, President of the United States, died, it was 
 thought from cholera. He had eaten cherry pie and 
 buttermilk. Mjy mother said next day that the toll- 
 
 35 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 ing of the bells had kept her awake. Henry Clay 
 was staying at the same hotel with us. My father 
 was a devoted friend and admirer of Clay, and when 
 my uncle introduced me to him as my father's 
 daughter, I remember his patting me on the head 
 and talking kindly to me. We went to see General 
 Taylor, lying in state in the East Room in the 
 White House. I saw the grand funeral procession. 
 General Winfield Scott led the military procession. 
 Next came the grand funeral car with black and 
 white plumes at the corners, and "Old Whitney," 
 his war horse, was led behind it. We saw Mr. 
 Millard Filmore, the Vice-President, inaugurated in 
 the old Senate Chamber. We also saw Daniel Web- 
 ster. 
 
 Leaving Washington, we went to Philadelphia. 
 The city was draped in black for a mock funeral 
 in honor of President Taylor. We left, however, 
 before this took place. When we reached New 
 York, the city there was also draped with black 
 for a mock funeral. The procession took four hours 
 to pass, much longer than the original. Soldiers 
 and a band led the procession, then came the 
 funeral car, with an old white horse led behind it. 
 
 36 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 Next came groups representing all the trades. I 
 remember one group carrying brooms. 
 
 We stayed at the Irving Hotel. Like the mod- 
 ern tourists, we went to see all the theatres and 
 operas, but what pleased me most was a beautiful 
 pantomime of Cinderella at Nibloe's Gardens. We 
 went to Saratoga Springs, Niagara Falls, Lake 
 Champlain, and to Boston. In Boston, we met our 
 cousins from Richmond. They were also travel- 
 ing in the North, though we did not know it un- 
 til we met them there. 
 
 It was in 1853 that an unfortunate murder oc- 
 curred in Lexington. Judge Brockenbrough had a 
 large law class here for many years. This class was 
 not connected with Washington College in any 
 way. It was only after the Civil War that it be- 
 came a part of the Washington and Lee University. 
 I think it was in 1853, when I was thirteen years 
 old, that a man named Christian was in Judge 
 Brockenbrough's law class. This man did not 
 stand well in the community, neither as to charac- 
 ter nor sense. In fact, the class made a butt of him 
 on all occasions. My cousin, Mary E. Anderson, 
 who was visiting at my father's house, was intro- 
 
 37 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 duced to Christian at a public entertainment. Her 
 friends warned her not to allow him to attend her. 
 Soon she received a note from Christian asking to 
 escort her to church Sunday night. She declined to 
 go with him. She spoke of this to her cousin, 
 Thomas Blackburn, a cadet at the Virginia Mili- 
 tary Institute. He advised her to have nothing to 
 do with Christian. After refusing to go to church 
 with Christian, she received a second note from him, 
 asking who had influenced her against him. She 
 did not answer this note at all. She had only seen 
 the man once. She showed the note to young Black- 
 burn, who with another cadet, went to see Christian 
 and told him that it was he who had influenced his 
 cousin. He told him that he knew nothing per- 
 sonally about him, had only heard about him 
 through hearsay. They parted friends and shook 
 hands. This was on Saturday. When the law 
 class heard of this, they considered Christian a 
 coward and tried to make him challenge Blackburn, 
 telling him that he must fight a duel. The conse- 
 quence of this was that Christian secretly armed 
 himself with a cane, two pistols, and a large bowie- 
 knife, went to the Presbyterian Church Sunday 
 
 38 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 night, and waylaid Blackburn at the church door 
 to speak to him. Blackburn was with Miss Julia 
 Junkin, the pretty daughter of Dr. George Junkin. 
 When he had seated the lady, Blackburn went out 
 to meet Christian on what is now Nelson street, at 
 the side of the church. There young Blackburn 
 was soon afterwards found dead. There was a stab 
 in his back, the cape of his cadet overcoat cut in 
 many places, and the knife had been thrust nearly 
 through his throat, cutting both jugular veins. Peo- 
 ple who were going into the church found him. The 
 cadets were allowed to attend church and to visit on 
 Sundays in those days, and also Friday evenings. 
 The whole corps was quickly on the scene, as well 
 as many other people. Christian, covered with 
 blood, fled to the hotel. He was taken out from the 
 back door and put in jail. General Smith and other 
 officers from the Virginia Military Institute were 
 soon on the spot and had the body of Blackburn 
 put in a cart and ordered the cadets to follow it to 
 the Institute. Some of the law students were 
 greatly distressed, thinking they had made the 
 creature do the dreadful deed by their teasing and 
 nagging, of course, never thinking that Christian 
 
 39 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 would murder Blackburn. Judge Brockenbrough 
 and his law class did everything to save Christian. 
 He was tried in the court of Bedford, and cleared. 
 Shortly after this, when I was thirteen years 
 old, my mother and I went to Richmond and to 
 Lower Virginia on a trip, visiting relatives. We 
 were always visiting, and very often our relatives 
 and friends would come to visit us. They would 
 drive through the country in carriages or stages. 
 A great many people in Lexington had large car- 
 riages, because we had to do all our traveling in 
 our carriages or in stages, driving from two to four 
 horses. When General Smith came, he drove a 
 high top barouche at which everybody laughed. 
 He drove one horse, "Old Coaly." One night some 
 of the students from Washington College stole Gen- 
 eral Smith's barouche, carried it to the room they 
 then used as a chapel, and nailed it to the platform. 
 They hung the harness up on the guard tree on 
 the parade ground and led "Old Coaly" out to the 
 woods and left him there. General Smith had to 
 send Christie Birmingham, an old Irishman who 
 was at the Institute for years and years, and some 
 other men to get his barouche. All the time they 
 
 40 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 were trying to unfasten it, the students pelted them 
 with clods and chips. 
 
 The old hickory guard tree still stands on the pa- 
 rade ground. It was called the guard tree because 
 when the cadets encamped on the parade ground, 
 the guard tent was placed under this hickory tree 
 and the guard stationed there. 
 
 When I was fifteen years old, in 1855, I went to 
 boarding school in Charlottesville, Virginia. That 
 was the fall when the yellow fever was so bad in 
 Norfolk. Many of Colonel Williamson's relatives 
 came up to stay with him, refugees from the fever. 
 
 I came home to spend Christmas and my mother 
 gave a large party on Christmas night. General 
 Smith and many of the officers of the Virginia 
 Military Institute were at the party. Suddenly, 
 Christie Birmingham came running in to tell them 
 that the cadets were in rebellion at the barracks. 
 General Smith and the officers rushed down there 
 at once, and when General Smith appeared under 
 the arch, a huge bucket of water was poured upon 
 him. In spite of this, he was equal to the occasion. 
 He stepped out in the court yard and calling to 
 them said that he would give them ten minutes in 
 
 41 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 which to appear. Holding his watch in his hand, 
 he waited for them, and had the long roll beaten. 
 As they had taken down the steps, they had to 
 come sliding down the posts like rats, but every 
 man was there on time. 
 
 My father took me back to school. We went as 
 far as Staunton in the stage. We had had a very 
 deep snow, and were all day going the thirty-six 
 miles to Staunton, not arriving there until about 
 nine o'clock at night. From Staunton we went over 
 the temporary track of the Chesapeake and Ohio 
 Railroad, as the tunnel had not been completed. 
 We went over the mountain with two engines, one 
 in front pulling us, and one behind pushing us. 
 The views were magnificent; everywhere the deep, 
 deep snow, and long icicles hanging from the rocks. 
 That winter I heard Thackeray lecture on George 
 the Third. 
 
 When I came home in the spring of 1856, I was 
 sixteen years old. Hoops and heels had both been 
 introduced into fashion. My mother had never 
 worn heels, but my grandmother Moore, who had 
 worn shoes with heels a finger length high when 
 she was young, could not walk without heels, so 
 
 42 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 she always got a shoemaker to put some on her 
 shoes. I came home, put on hoops, heels, long 
 dresses, tucked up my hair and thought that I was 
 a young lady. As I was the only child, I had to 
 assist in entertaining; for we always had a great 
 deal of company. In those days entertaining was 
 carried on in a lavish way; for we had our trained 
 family servants to depend upon. Aunt Doshia was 
 a splendid cook, there never was a better; Humph- 
 rey, a young man, was the butler; the seamstress 
 was named Priscilla; the gardner and carriage 
 driver was Henry, and his wife Louisa, was the 
 laundress; and Bella was my maid. Both Pri- 
 scilla and Louisa helped with the cleaning. 
 
 There were a great many young men, students 
 and cadets, as well as the older men from Judge 
 Brockenbrough's law class, who used to come fre- 
 quently to our house. One of these law students 
 persisted in coming to church with me every Sun- 
 day morning, though I much preferred the young- 
 er students and cadets. So that at last, one Sun- 
 day morning when we walked into church, there 
 was just room in the pew for two. I flourished in 
 with my wide hoop, sat down in one end of the pew 
 
 43 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 and turned my back on him. Though my mother 
 told me to move up, I would not, and the young 
 man had to find a seat across the aisle, to the 
 amusement of many of my friends in the gallery. 
 
 When a young girl, I was fond of riding. Ladies 
 in those days rode on side saddles, with both feet 
 on one side of the horse, with long flowing skirts, 
 often nearly reaching the ground. My habit was 
 made of black cloth. Down in Eastern Virginia, 
 in King William County, where I frequently visit- 
 ed, the roads were level and fine. A large party of 
 young people would go out riding every morning. 
 One morning we were about to start. My cousin 
 William Aylett's large horse that no one but 
 himself could ride was brought out, and a gentle- 
 man from New York City was put upon him, two 
 grooms holding him, and when we started they 
 let him go — and go he did, tearing along the road 
 and out of sight ; he went because his horse would 
 go, like John Gilpin. After considerable time he 
 returned at the same furious speed, rushing by us 
 like a cyclone, pale and frightened. The grooms 
 at the stable caught the horse, and assisted the 
 gentleman off, and he never rode again while with 
 us. 
 
 44 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 I rode a great deal at home, often taking long 
 rides through the country. I once rode with my 
 cousin William A. Anderson, a girl cousin, and 
 another young man, from Glenwood my uncle's 
 home, away up to Bald Knob, said to be the high- 
 est mountain in Virginia, higher than the Peaks of 
 Otter. My horse stopped and I could not make 
 him go. I looked down and saw a large rattle- 
 snake lying across the path, the steep mountain 
 side was above and below. I backed my horse 
 away and the two young men threw stones at the 
 snake, whether they struck it or not I don't know, 
 but afterwards there was a great rattling, even the 
 trees seemed full of rattles. We waited and after 
 awhile we passed on; it seemed as if dozens of 
 rattle snakes were rattling, such an all-pervading 
 sound it was and so shrill. The mountaineers fear 
 other snakes more, the moccasin and the coper- 
 head; for the rattlers give warning and cannot 
 strike unless coiled. The top of the mountain is 
 bare of trees, scrub oaks surrounding it looking 
 like apple trees, causing the mountain to be called 
 Apple Orchard, or Bald Knob. The decent of a 
 mountain is always more trying on a horse than 
 
 45 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 the ascent when it is very steep, as this was. We 
 lost our way going back, and when at last we 
 reached home we found men about to go in search 
 of us. 
 
 At one time my father bought a beautiful coal 
 black horse for me, — "A perfect horse for a lady," 
 the man said, so I mounted and with my escort 
 started out for a ride. We went by the V. M. I. 
 parade ground where the cadets were drilling, and 
 as we passed a company, they lowered their guns 
 with the bayonets on them, then my horse sprang 
 over a ditch and sidewalk on to the parade ground, 
 he lowered his head, and kicked up, until I felt his 
 heels would hit my back. Not succeeding in 
 throwing me, he then reared and danced on his 
 hind legs, and at last charged the largest body of 
 cadets. I managed to stop him before he struck 
 them, and turning rode a much subdued horse off 
 the parade ground. My escort remarked that he 
 was greatly surprised at my being able to stay on 
 that horse. I rode this horse several times, then 
 my father was afraid for me to ride him longer 
 and sold him. One of his tricks was to lie down in 
 the first stream he came to. 
 
 46 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 Parties of young people used to go to Natural 
 Bridge, fourteen miles from Lexington, in stages 
 and carriages, having a picnic under the Bridge. 
 One bright October day six of us went on horses, 
 three young ladies and three gentlemen. After 
 spending the day there we waited until the full 
 moon rose above the mountains, then mounting 
 our horses we rode full speed through the frosty 
 air in the moonlight, passing the carriages and 
 reaching home long before them, horses and riders 
 greatly excited by the exhilarating air. 
 
 One day in the cool weather of the spring I took 
 a long ride. My escort said we could come home a 
 shorter way by fording South River. We rode into 
 the water, my escort leading the way, not knowing 
 it was so high. Recent rains had made the current 
 very strong, and when I reached mid-stream my 
 horse was swept down, and would not swim; we 
 were near a dam, and I feared might be carried 
 over, but I managed to get back to the ford and 
 across the river with great difficulty, and when my 
 escort saw me being swept down the river, my 
 horse's head just above the water, he was terribly 
 frightened. He said afterwards, "Why didn't you 
 
 47 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 scream?" We galloped up the towing path of the 
 canal, my clothes and long skirt streaming with 
 water, but I suffered no bad effects from the 
 wetting. 
 
 I never returned to school after I was sixteen, 
 but took private lessons at home. I took music, 
 French and drawing from Dr. Ludwig, of Berne, 
 Switzerland. In the fall of 1857 my mother and I 
 went to a wedding down in King William County. 
 In 1858, I went to another wedding in King Will- 
 iam County. This time I went alone and was one 
 of the bridesmaids. I stayed three weeks and had 
 a very gay time, dancing every evening and riding 
 horseback all over the country every morning. I 
 spent part of the winter of 1858-59 in Richmond 
 and part in Washington. Mildred Maben, my 
 cousin, went to Washington with me and we stay- 
 ed at Brown's Hotel under the care of Governor 
 and Mrs. Letcher. Brown's Hotel was the center 
 of all Southern society in Washington. We met 
 Mrs. Clement C. Clay, who wrote "Belle of the 
 Fifties," and Mrs. Chestnut, who wrote "Diary from 
 Dixie," and Miss Reedy, who afterwards married 
 General Morgan, of Kentucky. While I was there 
 
 48 
 
Samuel McDowell Moore 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 I saw General Sam Houston, of Texas, a cousin of 
 Governor Letcher, who was then in the Senate of 
 the United States. He was a tall, fine looking man, 
 and very eloquent in the Senate. Everybody tried 
 to hear him speak. General Houston was from my 
 home town, Lexington, Virginia, and as a young 
 man went to Tennessee. An old uncle of his said, 
 as the large party started for Tennessee, that he 
 had not much hope of Sam Houston ever being 
 anything, as he was so wild. Sam Houston said, 
 "Why, uncle, I will come through here on my way 
 to Congress." And so he did. He was elected 
 Governor of Tennessee and soon after that he was 
 married. The night he was married, he found his 
 wife was in the most deplorable distress, weeping 
 violently. She confessed that she loved another 
 man and that her father and mother had made her 
 marry him because he was the Governor of Tenn- 
 essee. He was so shocked that he fled that night, 
 disappeared and went off and joined the Cherokee 
 Indians in Georgia. He lived with these Indians 
 ten years and after that went to Texas. The girl 
 he married got a divorce and married the man she 
 loved. Houston joined the army in Texas and 
 
 49 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 fought so bravely that he became an officer. After 
 the battle of San Jacinto when the Texans defeat- 
 ed the Mexicans, Santa Anna was taken prisoner 
 and General Houston protected him against the 
 Texans, who wanted to kill him. He was made 
 President of the Republic of Texas. When I saw 
 General Sam Houston in Washington, he wore a 
 ring on each finger and one on his thumb. He said 
 that friends had given them to him. 
 
 I went to President Buchanan's reception and 
 to many given by the senators and had a very gay 
 time in Washington. I met President Buchanan's 
 niece, Miss Lane, and also Mrs. Stephen A, Doug- 
 las, a most beautiful woman. Mrs. Senator Clay 
 had a niece married at St. John's Church and there 
 was a reception at the hotel afterwards. The lanc- 
 ers had become very fashionable as a dance that 
 winter. We only danced square dances, the lanc- 
 ers, and cotillions. There was very little round 
 dancing. I never danced round dances. We re- 
 turned to Richmond and in the spring I came 
 home. 
 
 That summer I spent August at the White Sul- 
 phur Springs with some relatives and also about 
 
 50 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 two weeks at the Sweet Springs. At the White 
 Sulphur they had introduced the German and al- 
 ways danced it in the mornings so as not to inter- 
 fere with the regular ball in the evenings, as every- 
 body did not dance it. I had a very gay time that 
 summer. 
 
 The winter of 1859-60 my mother was very ill 
 and died June 12, 1860. Before she died she in- 
 sisted that my father should take me on a trip 
 through the North. So about September my father 
 and I went. We traveled all through the North, 
 going to New York, Boston, Niagara Falls, and 
 down the St. Lawrence to Montreal. In New 
 York we saw "The American Cousin" with Jeffer- 
 son in the cast. I remember seeing many pictures 
 of Lincoln, Bell, Everette, and Breckenridge, who 
 were all running for the presidency. 
 
 51 
 
WAR EXHERIENCES 
 
 Lincoln was elected, and my father was elected 
 to the Virginia Convention which met on the first 
 of February in Richmond. I went with him. The 
 Convention was in session three months, Febru- 
 ary, March, and April, 1861. The whole State of 
 Virginia was in favor of the Union, except the City 
 of Richmond, and the Convention was almost en- 
 tirely composed of Union men. There were only 
 thirty secessionists in the Convention. South 
 Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, which had al- 
 ready seceded, sent commissioners to the Conven- 
 tion to persuade it to secede. South Carolina sent 
 John Preston, a remarkably handsome man and 
 such an eloquent speaker. He was one of the Pres- 
 tons of Virginia. His two daughters, who had 
 just returned from school in Paris, very beautiful 
 girls, came with him. Georgia sent Judge Ben- 
 ning, and Mr. Anderson came from Alabama, as 
 ambassadors to persuade the State of Virginia to 
 secede. Each made a speech. Preston's came first. 
 
 52 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 The city of Richmond was almost entirely in favor 
 of secession and the secessionists were wild with 
 excitement. I even heard many middle aged 
 gentlemen say that if Virginia would not secede 
 they would go to South Carolina. The Convention 
 met in a large music hall, and great crowds of 
 ladies and gentlemen attended every day. Excite- 
 ment all over the State was intense. Richmond 
 was a hot-bed of secession. The speeches of these 
 three ambassadors made a great sensation. My 
 father, although suffering from a cold, determined 
 to resist the torrent, and arose and offered resolu- 
 tions and made the first speech in the Convention 
 opposing the secession of Virginia. I was present 
 only a few feet from where he stood, and I thought 
 how grand his white head looked as it towered 
 over the surging throng that hissed and yelled and 
 groaned because he dared to oppose them. The 
 speaker, Mr. Janney, President of the Convention, 
 sounded the gavel again and again. When my 
 father's speech was done, a member of the Conven- 
 tion, Mr. Holcomb, a violent secessionist, arose to 
 answer him, and then the galleries cheered and 
 yelled, clapped and stormed so that Mr. Janney 
 
 53 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 1 
 
 ordered them cleared. Mr. John Janney was a tall, 
 thin old man, with snowy hair and beard, fearless 
 and determined. Then the secessionist speaker re- 
 fused to speak any more that day. He made an- 
 other long speech the next day when the galleries 
 were filled. 
 
 The night after my father's speech, a great mob 
 paraded the streets of Richmond, with torches, vis- 
 iting the hotel where he was staying, yelling, hoot- 
 ing, and groaning below his windows. He was 
 playing chess at the time, and continued his game 
 as if all were quiet. The mob threatened to burn 
 my father and Mr. Janney in effigy. Jennings Wise 
 made them a speech, begging them to disperse, 
 telling them that McDowell Moore was a brave 
 man and that everybody knew where he stood. 
 Then the mob rushed through the streets down to 
 the Capitol and the Governor's Mansion, yelling and 
 screaming. "Honest John Letcher," afterwards so 
 well known as Virginia's War Governor, was a 
 Union man. When the mob filled the garden, John 
 Letcher walked out to meet them on the front 
 porch, closing the door behind him, and made them 
 a speech. Even that wild mob was quieted by his 
 courage and boldness. 
 
 54 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 The Convention was composed of such Union 
 men as my father, John B. Baldwin, Robert Y. 
 Conrad, of Winchester, Alexander Stuart, and 
 others. At last, the secessionists found that they 
 could do nothing with the Convention. Roger A. 
 Pryor, a violent fire-eater and extreme secession- 
 ist, went to Charleston, South Carolina, accom- 
 panied by an old man named Ruffin, a rabid seces- 
 sionist. Pryor was tall and dark like an Indian, 
 with long black hair down on his collar. He col- 
 lected a crowd of people at Charleston and told 
 them in a fiery speech that the only way to make 
 Virginia secede was to attack Fort Sumter. The 
 next day, the attack was made, old Ruffin firing the 
 first gun. Then Lincoln called for troops to invade 
 the South, and Virginia seceded. My father did 
 not vote for the ordinance, but after it was passed, 
 signed it. The same night, carrying banners, trans- 
 parencies, and torches, greatly rejoicing crowds pa- 
 raded the streets of Richmond. The city was il- 
 luminated and cannon were fired at the Capitol 
 Square. Governor Letcher got General Smith to 
 come to Richmond to be his military adviser. The 
 Governor made the nominations, and the Conven- 
 
 55 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 tion confirmed the appointments of officers for the 
 army of Virginia. General Robert E, Lee ap- 
 peared before the Convention, offering his sword to 
 Virginia. My father expressed to me his admira- 
 tion of General Lee as he appeared and spoke that 
 day. 
 
 There was great solicitude in the Convention as 
 to who should be put in charge at Harper's Ferry, 
 the gateway to the beautiful Valley of Virginia, the 
 land of plenty, which was to feed our armies. My 
 father arose and told them that he could tell them 
 of a man, who, if he were to defend it, would do so 
 at all odds. He then told them that it was Thomas 
 J. Jackson, whom he knew intimately as a professor 
 at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington. My 
 father told them something of Jackson's record in 
 the Mexican War, and of one incident, when Jack- 
 son was ordered up a hill to take some breast- 
 works. His commander sent an order for him to re- 
 treat, as the firing was too intense for any man to 
 stand. Jackson sent hack word that he would obey 
 the second order after he had obeyed the first. He 
 took the works and was promoted on the field. We 
 are told that "in the whole army in Mexico, no 
 
 56 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 officer was promoted so often for meritorious con- 
 duct or made so great a stride in rank." Jackson 
 was put in command at Harper's Ferry, and the 
 world knows how he defended the Valley of Vir- 
 ginia. 
 
 Jackson left Lexington with the cadets, who be- 
 came drill masters for the troops in Richmond. The 
 Virginia Military Institute furnished many of the 
 officers of the War. About this time, some of the 
 young men here in Lexington raised the Rock- 
 bridge Artillery. Colonel Williamson had two 
 sons in it. Colonel Preston one, and my husband 
 and two of his brothers were in it. There were in 
 it forty-seven graduates of Washington College, 
 fifteen young men from the Episcopal Seminary 
 near Alexandria, and many A. M. graduates of the 
 University of Virginia. The Rector of the Episco- 
 pal Church here. Dr. William N. Pendleton, was a 
 graduate of West Point, and he drilled them and 
 was their captain. He went with them to Harper's 
 Ferry to join Jackson's Brigade. When ordering 
 them to fire. Dr. Pendleton would always cry, "Fire, 
 boys, and the Lord have mercy on their souls." 
 David E. Moore fired the first gun in the Valley. 
 
 57 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 Nearly all of our men in this part of the country 
 were in the Stonewall Brigade. 
 
 Dr. Junkin, the President of Washington Col- 
 lege, was from Philadelphia, and was a very strong 
 Union man. Some of the students tied a secession 
 flag to the statue of Washington that stands at the 
 highest point on the College building. Dr. Junkin 
 had it taken down at once. After the State of Vir- 
 ginia had seceded, the students put it up again^ 
 and the professors united and backed the students 
 up, and would not allow Dr. Junkin to have it re- 
 moved. Then Dr. Junkin make his preparations to 
 leave, and with his family went back to Philadel- 
 phia. He took one daughter with him and his 
 niece, but he left behind his oldest daughter, Mrs. 
 Preston, and two sons who were Presbyterian 
 preachers, and a nephew. One of his sons, William 
 F. Junkin, raised a company of which he was cap- 
 tain. His nephew was in the Confederate army 
 also, and was taken prisoner. 
 
 The students at Washington College formed a 
 company and called it the Liberty Hall Volunteers. 
 The ladies of the town made them a beautiful silk 
 flag and presented it to them. Old Dr. White 
 
 58 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 prayed over them and blessed them. Some of the 
 professors went as officers, and they joined Jackson 
 at Harper's Ferry. 
 
 The 21st of July, 1861, the battle of Manassas 
 was fought. We had no railroads or telegraph here 
 before the War, but all day long on the 21st, we 
 could hear the guns at Manassas. I think it was 
 one hundred and fifty miles away. In the evening 
 many of the country people came to town to ask 
 if we had heard where the battle was. Our only 
 communication was the great, big, lumbering stage 
 that came in about twelve or one o'clock at night. 
 There was a crowd of citizens gathered around it 
 on its first arrival after the battle to hear the news 
 from the people in the stage. Colonel Cameron wa? 
 in the crowd. He had five sons in the army. As a 
 young man climbed out of the stage, with two 
 guns in his hands, one went off and shot three men. 
 Colonel Cameron fell dead, and Willie McClung, a 
 boy of sixteen, had part of his skull shot off. He 
 lived a week. Another young man was wounded 
 in the hand. This was a terrible shock to the com- 
 munity. After the excitement subsided we began 
 to hear news of the battle. One of the first things 
 
 59 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 we heard was that our College Company was lying 
 back of the Rockbridge Artillery and acting as their 
 support. A shell came over and killed four of these 
 College boys, and a number of young men from the 
 county were killed and a number wounded. Gen- 
 eral Pendleton's son, Sandie Pendleton, was on 
 Jackson's staff. He was a splendid young fellow, 
 brave and true, a brilliant young man, and very 
 kind. After every battle, he would write a letter 
 and send it by a courier, telling of all the Lexington 
 boys, whether safe or otherwise. One young man 
 was mortally wounded and died on the battle field. 
 He sent a message to his mother, saying that he 
 was afraid that he had given her a great deal of 
 trouble, but that he had died with his face to the 
 enemy. A young cousin of mine who was in the 
 College Company, died of brain fever after the bat- 
 tle. My cousin, William A. Anderson, was in the 
 College Company, too. In the charge he was shot 
 through the knee. We had no nurses and few sur- 
 geons, and he was put in a box car with a lot of 
 other wounded men, and was sent down to Rich- 
 mond. When he reached Richmond his leg was 
 swollen up as large as his body. He was taken to 
 
 60 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 the home of his uncle, General Joseph R. Ander- 
 son, and was nursed there for many months, but 
 he was left a cripple for life. 
 
 That summer of 1861, a large number of students 
 from the University of Virginia came to Lexington 
 to be drilled at the Virginia Military Institute for 
 officers. I had two young ladies from Charlottes- 
 ville staying with me and one of my cousins. Our 
 house was very near the Institute, and it was head- 
 quarters for many of the young men, and we four 
 ladies had a very gay time that summer, in spite of 
 the war. One day we had a picnic at the Natural 
 Bridge. We hired a large old stage coach that held 
 nine people, and with several other carriages, we 
 drove out and had our picnic under the Bridge. 
 So many of those fine young men who were here 
 that summer were killed during the War. And 
 then, we hardly realized that the war was going on. 
 
 In 1863 I was on a visit with friends in Charlott- 
 esville when the battle of New Market took place. 
 I saw an entire division of our troops come through 
 Charlottesville. Many of the soldiers were almost 
 barefooted, and all were poorly clothed. They were 
 very jolly in spite of this. An old gentleman wear- 
 
 61 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 ing a stove pipe hat (silk dress hat), stood at his 
 front gate to see them pass. As the soldiers passed 
 by, the whole line cheered and guyed and laughed 
 at the old gentleman and his hat, telling him to 
 come out of the keg, to come out of that pipe, etc. 
 General Fitz Lee was stationed at Charlottesville 
 then. He gave a ball one night and soon after re- 
 ceived a letter from his uncle. General Robert E. 
 Lee, reproving him and telling him that it was no 
 time for festivities. When I returned home from 
 Charlottesville, as we reached Staunton, I heard of 
 the battle of New Market, and that our Virginia 
 Military Institute boys, just young fellows, were in 
 the fight and saved the day. It was a most gallant 
 fight, and six or eight of the cadets were killed. 
 One of them, a cousin of mine, young McDowell, 
 had dined with us just before I left home. After 
 I reached home the cadets and officers came back. 
 One of the officers, who had been wounded, stayed 
 at our house. He had had part of his skull shot 
 off. This had affected his brain, and he could not 
 remember anything, could not read or write, and 
 spoke very brokenly, like a Frenchman. I used to 
 tie his head up in one of my father's large white 
 
 62 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 handkerchiefs. When we heard that the Yankees 
 were coming and were going to burn the Institute, 
 he was afraid that he would be taken prisoner and 
 left. I told him that I would pass him off as my 
 French cook. He finally recovered. The battle of 
 New Market, of course, was a great victory. A 
 very popular saying at that time was, that, "While 
 we were tearing up the railroad, the Yankees were 
 tearing down the turnpike." 
 
 In the summer there was a meeting of the Con- 
 vention in Richmond, and my father went. In Feb- 
 ruary, 1862, I went with my father and a party to 
 Richmond to see Jeff Davis inaugurated President 
 of the Confederacy. My father went on to Georgia. 
 I stayed at the Exchange Hotel with some friends. 
 Agnes Reid and Mattie Jordan, from Lexington 
 were in the party. It was raining the day of the 
 inauguration, and we took a carriage to go to see 
 it, Mr. Davis had never been popular, and a great 
 many people, especially in Virginia, objected to his 
 being made President. My father never admired 
 him, but said his state papers were fine. From the 
 very first. General Lee was the idol of the South. 
 My father came back from Georgia, called for me, 
 and we returned home. 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 It was in 1863, after the battle of New Market^ 
 that the Yankees came to Lexington. General 
 Grant found that the Valley of Virginia was feed- 
 ing Lee's army, so Sheridan was ordered to destroy 
 all the crops and provisions in the Shenandoah Val- 
 ley from Staunton to Harper's Ferry. Sheridan not 
 only destroyed the crops and provisions, but burned 
 nearly all the dwelling houses as well, turning wo- 
 men and children out of their homes. In one 
 county he burned sixty dwelling houses. David 
 Hunter was ordered to come through this part of 
 the Valley and to destroy the crops and provisions. 
 On his way, one of his drunken soldiers tried to 
 get into the room of a gentleman's invalid daughter. 
 The gentleman, struggling to protect his daughter, 
 was nearly overpowered, but his old colored cook, 
 seeing the plight which her master was in, promptly 
 brought him an axe, and with it he killed the sol- 
 dier. Hunter hung the man for this deed. 
 
 When the Yankees reached the hills across the 
 river from our little town, they began to shell the 
 village. Forty houses in this town were struck. 
 The Virginia Military Institute was in session at 
 the time, and the cadets marched out and joined 
 
 64 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 Breckenridge's army at Lynchburg. Before they 
 left, they brought their trunks and many of the In- 
 stitute stores over to our house for safe-keeping. 
 Many of the officers' families also brought their 
 goods and clothes to our house, until large though 
 it was, it was soon overflowing with all these 
 things. Someone burned the covered bridge over 
 the river, thinking to stop the troops, but they sim- 
 ply forded the river and came on. Colonel William- 
 son's three daughters (their mother was dead), and 
 all their servants, came to stay at our house. They 
 brought as many of their clothes and valuables as 
 they could possibly carry. 
 
 The next morning the Yankees marched in and 
 encamped all around the town. All the lots back of 
 our house were filled with their tents. The soldiers 
 were turned loose on the town and took anything 
 they wanted, regardless of the people. We all 
 buried our silver, and in many cases it remained 
 buried throughout the war. Some people had 
 guards, and my father, who was an old man, re- 
 quested a guard for our house. Until then I had 
 stood at the back door of the house on the porch, 
 2nd kept the soldiers back, telling them that I ex- 
 
 65 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 pected them to behave as gentlemen. A great many 
 of them were Germans, and could not speak Eng- 
 lish. One came rushing and screaming on the 
 porch and another told him that he must behave, 
 as there was a real lady in that house. I stood for 
 hours in the door keeping them back. One of the 
 Williamson girls said that it was a shame for me 
 to have to stand there by myself, (I was only 
 twenty-three years old), and face the dreadful 
 creatures, so she came down to stay with me, but 
 the first man who made a face at her, she fled up- 
 stairs and would not come down any more. 
 
 The Yankees burned the barracks and all the 
 Institute houses, except the Superintendent's 
 house. General Smith's daughter was extremely 
 ill and Mrs. Smith went to Hunter and asked him 
 to spare her house as her daughter's life was in 
 danger. This was the only house at the Institute 
 that was saved, except the gate-keeper's lodge. 
 Three hundred barrels of rosin, which was used in 
 making the gas for the Institute, and which were 
 stored just behind the barracks, were burned when 
 the barracks were burned. The intense black 
 smoke and red fire were seen for miles and miles 
 
 66 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 in the country. Governor Letcher's wife was sit- 
 ting in her bedroom with her baby in her arms 
 when one of Hunter's officers opened her door and 
 told her that the house was on fire and that she 
 had better leave, but he told her that she could 
 not take anything out with her. She ran to the 
 bureau to get some clothes for her baby. The of- 
 ficer poured camphine in the drawer and made it 
 blaze up in her face, so she had to leave without 
 even a change of clothes for her infant. 
 
 We had two barrels of flour hidden in a closet 
 under the stairs. The Yankees did not leave any 
 food untouched; in many cases there was not a 
 grain of food left in the house. We succeeded in 
 keeping our two barrels of flour and when the 
 Yankees left I sent buckets of it around to the 
 people who did not have anything to eat. 
 
 While the enemy was here the servants were 
 afraid to sleep out in the servant houses in the 
 yard, so they came in the house and slept in the 
 halls. None of us undressed or went regularly to 
 bed while the Northren troops were here. One 
 day in passing through the hall, I met one of our 
 little negro servant girls, about six years old. She 
 
 67 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 was a child I always thought did not have very 
 much sense. She stopped me and said, "Dem Yan- 
 kees axe me if we got any Institute things in de 
 house, and I say no, we aint got nothing." I could 
 not help feeling badly about the child's lying that 
 way, when I had tried so hard to teach her to tell 
 the truth. All the sheep and cattle in the whole 
 country round were killed. As the hills were cov- 
 ered with the dead carcasses, we were afraid that 
 it would make the town unhealthy, but it did not. 
 One night one of the Williamson servants came up 
 stairs to get a candle from me. We had only can- 
 dles to burn. My father hearing the noise, thought 
 one of the Yankee soldiers had gotten in the house. 
 He came out and Dorcus seeing him from the stairs 
 became frightened thinking that he was a "Yankee, 
 and holding the candle high over her head cried, 
 "Officer, here, officer here." She knew how dread- 
 fully afraid the Yankee privates were of their of- 
 ficers. Of course, this commotion awakened every- 
 body in the house. The Yankees took the bronze 
 statue of Washington that stood in front of the In- 
 stitute. This was returned from Wheeling after the 
 War. There was a drawer filled with bonds in our 
 
 68 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 house, hidden somewhere, which they got hold of. 
 After the War, a man from Ohio wrote my father 
 telling him that if he would send him $500 he would 
 return the bonds. My father fortunately had a 
 friend in Congress from West Virginia, and he re- 
 covered the bonds without paying the $500. Guards 
 were sent around to search all the houses for 
 arms. At Mrs. Compton's, as the officer was going 
 through the house. Miss Lizzie was leading the 
 way upstairs, when suddenly a string broke and a 
 shower of spoons and forks came raining down 
 the steps from under her hoops. The officer was 
 greatly amused, and kindly helped her pick them 
 up and gave them back to her. Hoops served a 
 great purpose in helping the ladies hide their 
 special treasures. One friend of mine coming out 
 from Washington during the War, brought a pair 
 of cavalry boots tied up under her hoops, and also 
 a hat. 
 
 When the Yankees left Lexington, at the end of 
 three days, many of the younger negroes went 
 with them. We were left without anything to 
 eat except a little fried bacon and bread. My 
 father became ill from constantly eating this. One 
 
 69 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 morning coming down the stairs, I found a nice 
 fat partridge had flown into the hall. I ran and 
 closed the doors as quickly as I could and had the 
 servant man come and catch it. One of my 
 friends, a young lady, was very superstitious and 
 dreadfully frightened by my finding a bird in the 
 house. She wanted me to let it go, but I told 
 her that it was a special Providence. Old Aunt 
 Doshia, our cook, made an excellent broth of the 
 bird and broiled it for my father, and I really 
 think that it saved his life. 
 
 That fall, we had the meeting of the Presbyter- 
 ian Synod here in Lexington. They had been ap- 
 pointed to meet here before the Yankees came 
 and when the country was in a prosperous con- 
 dition. Now all was changed, and we had scarcely 
 anything at all. We had even cut up our carpets 
 into lengths and sent them to the camps for the 
 soldiers to sleep on. We had sent all the bed 
 clothes and everything that we could possibly 
 spare from our houses to the hospitals. However, 
 we scoured the country round for lamb and mutton 
 and anything we could get to eat. A family of 
 our relatives, who lived some distance in the 
 
 70 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 country, came to stay with us and brought a good 
 many provisions with them. The preachers had 
 the proverbial appetites, so we laughed and said, 
 "What the Yankees left, the preachers took." 
 
 During the War, my father, his niece, Mrs. Nel- 
 son, and I, went to the Alleghany Springs near 
 Christiansburg. We left Lexington at two o'clock 
 P. M. in the stage and reached Bonsacks at nine 
 the next morning, traveling all night in the lumber- 
 ing old coach. We breakfasted at Bonsacks with 
 Rucker, the celebrated Yankee spy, who had been 
 taken prisoner. We went on to Alleghany Springs 
 that day. 
 
 The winter of 1864 we had a great many refugees 
 in Lexington. They came here thinking it a safe 
 place. Several families came from Winchester, 
 among them Mr. Lloyd Logan and his family. He 
 had a very fine large house in Winchester. One of 
 the Yankee generals decided to stay there himself, 
 so the Logans had to leave and stay with friends. 
 When Jackson came down the Valley, driving the 
 Yankees before him, he captured the army at 
 Harper's Ferry, and found Mr. Logan's hand- 
 some piano, silver, and other goods, had been ship- 
 
 71 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 ped north by this Yankee general. Jackson, of 
 course, returned them to their owner. Then Mr. 
 Logan moved up to Lexington, thinking this a 
 safer place than Winchester. There was not much 
 fighting that winter. General Payne's Cavalry 
 was wintering in the County. About February 
 Mr. Logan rented the Blue Hotel and gave a large 
 supper party there. There was a whole roast pig 
 at the foot of the table, and ducks, chickens, and 
 lamb. There were all kinds of elegant meats, but 
 very few sweets. It was a grand supper with every- 
 body seated at a long table in the hotel dining- 
 room. We had buckwheat cakes, sorghum mo- 
 lasses, and rye cofTee. General Payne took me in 
 to supper. After the supper, they cleared away 
 the tables and we had dancing. 
 
 Shortly after this great supper, my Cousin Belle, 
 and I went down to Richmond to visit friends. We 
 left Lexington in one of the old lumbering stages, 
 which held nine people. There were three ladies 
 on the back seat, strapped in. The gentlemen 
 were in front. We had to cross the river on the 
 ferryboat, as the bridge had been burned. It was 
 very cold winter weather, and they had put straw 
 
 72 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 in the bottom of the stage to keep our feet warm, 
 and also hot bricks. As we went rumbling along 
 with great noise and rattling of the old stage, we 
 ladies began to smell something burning. The 
 hot bricks had set the straw on fire. As we were 
 strapped in on the back seat, we were in great dan- 
 ger, so I said quietly to one of the gentlemen, 
 "Please stop the stage." He said, "Oh, no, we 
 have not time to stop." I replied, "Well, you had 
 better stop, the stage is on fire." That brought a 
 different response, some of the gentlemen even 
 jumping out before the stage could be stopped. I 
 carried a large hat box of provisions with me, a big 
 jug of molasses, butter, etc. The people in Rich- 
 mond had few provisions and little to eat, and 
 still they were giving parties and dances and en- 
 joying themselves. 
 
 There was a great deal of complaining about Mr. 
 Davis, Congress, etc., etc., saying that if General 
 Lee were given control, he would do something. 
 Davis removed Joseph E. Johnston from command 
 in the West, August 17, 1864, and the Northern 
 people said that that was the death blow of the 
 Confederacy. February 9, 1865, Lee was made gen- 
 
 73 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 eralissimo and he restored Joseph E. Johnston to 
 the command of the army in the West. 
 
 My father had written to me at Richmond that 
 I had better come home, as he thought the War 
 was about over. So I started with a party — my 
 cousin, Belle, her brother-in-law, Docton William 
 F. Junkin, old Doctor Archibald Graham, and his 
 wife, and a young married lady who was trying to 
 get to Staunton, and five or six gentlemen. We 
 found the cars crowded. There were a great many 
 exchanged prisoners sitting on the roofs of the 
 cars, so many that they had to put props under 
 the roofs to help hold them up. The Chesapeake 
 and Ohio R. R. had been partly destroyed and so 
 we came up by Highbridge and Farmville. When 
 we reached Burksville, we had to stop there twelve 
 hours. It was very cold, and they made a fire in 
 a cabin for us. The next day we went on to Lynch- 
 burg. There we expected to take the canal up to 
 Lexington, but the canal was broken and could not 
 be used. Lynchburg is only forty miles from Lex- 
 ington, and some of the younger men walked. We 
 could not get any horses, as nearly all of them had 
 been taken for the army. Then we heard that if 
 
 74 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 we went on to Salem there was a stage from there 
 that went three times a week to Lexington. So 
 we got on the train and went on to Salem. When 
 we reached there, we found that all the seats on 
 the stage had been engaged for three weeks. We 
 stopped at the little hotel there for a week, and 
 lived on bread and fried bacon. Doctor Junkin 
 borrowed a horse and buggy from a brother preach- 
 er, and took Belle down to Buchanan, where her 
 uncle, Colonel John T. Anderson lived, and he 
 sent her on her way home from there. She had to 
 leave her trunk with us. After great difficulty, 
 we found that we could hire a common road wagon, 
 without any springs, and two old Confederate 
 horses, from a farmer nearby. They were two bad 
 looking old horses. We put all the trunks in the 
 wagon and with our shawls over our heads, for it 
 was very cold weather, we seated ourselves on 
 the round topped trunks, and began the journey. 
 There was a good macadam road from Salem to 
 Buchanan, and so we got on pretty well the first 
 day. When we got to Buchanan we drove up to 
 the hotel, but the man told us that he could take 
 us in to sleep, but that he could not give us any- 
 
 75 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 thing to eat. This was a blow to us, as we had 
 had nothing to eat all day. I remembered that my 
 mother had a relative living near the hotel, and so 
 I went to her house. She was very much surprised 
 to see me and wondered where I had come from. 
 When I arrived they were just bringing in the most 
 delicious supper and the house was delightfully 
 warm and comfortable. I told her about the party 
 at the hotel and she sent a large tray over to them. 
 I went to bed in a large old fashioned tester bed 
 with a feather bed on it, which I found most ac- 
 ceptable after my ride on the trunks. The next 
 morning my cousin sent over a tray of breakfast 
 to the party at the hotel, and gave us an elegant 
 lunch to take with us. The road from Buchanan 
 to Lexington was in the most deplorable condition 
 — great holes and ruts in it. With our poor old 
 horses we had to drive very slowly, and the young- 
 er people had to walk up all the hills. An old lady 
 was the only one who stayed on the wagon. Pres- 
 ently, as we were crossing an enormous mud hole, 
 one of our old horses fell and we thought that he 
 was dead. We gathered around him and lifted 
 him up and fortunately revived the old horse, and 
 
 76 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 we went on. At last, as we went rumbling along, 
 slowly and with great care, one of the wheels came 
 off. We did not reach Lexington until ten o'clock 
 at night. My father, who had not heard from me 
 for a week or two, was greatly relieved to see me. 
 
 General Lee surrendered and the soldiers began 
 coming in. We were awfully distressed. When we 
 told Aunt Doshia that she was free, she informed 
 us that indeed she was no "free nigger," and that 
 the Yankees had nothing to do with her, and that 
 master was never going to get rid of her. Hum- 
 phrey had gone off with the Yankees and he sent 
 word by one of the other servants that he would 
 not have left but that Henry, the coachman, had 
 treated him badly. During the War Henry and our 
 wagon and horses had been impressed into service 
 in West Virginia, and Henry was taken ill out 
 there, and sent word to my father, and my father 
 went after him. Henry was extremely ill after 
 this with typhoid pneumonia. 
 
 One very cold winter Aunt Doshia who had 
 got too old to cook, informed me that she was go- 
 ing to sleep in my room. I was very much shocked 
 at this, but as she generally did as she pleased, I 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 made ready to receive her. I had a very large bed- 
 room with a dressing room attached. I had a 
 couch fixed up in the corner by the fire for Aunt 
 Doshia and here she slept the entire winter. In- 
 stead of being in the way, she was the greatest 
 comfort; for she always kept the open wood fire 
 going. We had a great deal of company in the 
 evenings and when I would go to my room I would 
 find Aunt Doshia with a bright fire, ready to en- 
 tertain me.* One night the old woman told me 
 that somebody had told her that I was going to 
 marry an old widower. She was highly indignant 
 and said that I had one father and did not need 
 another. Sometime after this I was leaving for 
 Richmond, and she was in such distress she follow- 
 ed me around weeping. This worried me and I 
 told her not to act like this, that I was not going 
 to stay very long and that she would be taken care 
 of if she was sick. She said, "La, child, I aint 
 'fraid of that, but I might die while you is gone and 
 
 *She was a brown skinned "ginger cake" color, always 
 neat and clean, dressed in black with white apron and 
 white handkerchief around her neck, but her turban was 
 always made of a bright red handkerchief. I offered to 
 give her white handkerchiefs for her head, but she said, 
 "No, chile, that's for dead people." 
 
 78 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 nobody will take care of my funeral like yous will." 
 She had often told me just how she wanted her 
 funeral, and had put away an old silk dress that 
 my mother had given her that she wanted to be 
 buried in. When I came back from Richmond and 
 arrived home in the middle of the night, she was 
 the first person to meet me. It was a gratification 
 to me to know that, when she did die, she had a 
 big funeral. 
 
 General Lee was invited by the Board of Trus- 
 tees of Washington College to be its President, 
 and Judge Brockenbrough, who was Rector of 
 the Board of Trustees, was appointed to go down 
 to where General Lee was living and deliver the 
 invitation. General Lee was then living in Cum- 
 berland County where Mrs. Cocke had offered 
 him a place of hers, and where he had retired from 
 Richmond with his family. Judge Brockenbrough 
 told the Board that he really did not have clothes 
 suitable to go to visit General Lee. Mr. Hugh Bar- 
 clay, a member of the Board, had a handsome suit 
 of broadcloth and he loaned it to Judge Brocken- 
 brough, who, properly dressed, went down to in- 
 vite General Lee to come to Lexington. General 
 
 79 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 Lee accepted the invitation, and that fall he came 
 riding on Traveller up to Lexington to take the 
 position of President of Washington College. Be- 
 fore he came, the ladies of the town had done 
 everything they could to fix up the house for him, 
 and they had arranged everything as well as they 
 could. General Lee used to tell about the first 
 night he slept in Lexington. The ladies had put 
 rufHed pillow cases on the bed and he said that 
 he was afraid to turn over for fear of rumpling 
 the ruffles. When General Lee came we had two 
 regiments of Yankee soldiers stationed here to 
 "keep us straight." General Lee had to appear 
 before an officer. One of the professors accompan- 
 ied him and the professor asked General Lee af- 
 terward how he could be so polite to the officer 
 when the officer had been so rude to him. General 
 Lee replied, "I owe it to myself as a gentleman." 
 Everybody here fairly worshipped General Lee and 
 idolized him. After a while his family joined him 
 here. He would often take rides through the coun- 
 try on Traveller. One day out on the Brushy 
 Hills he met a man, an old soldier, who recognized 
 him, and stopping him said, "General Lee, will 
 
 80 
 

MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 you shake hands with me?" "Certainly," replied 
 General Lee. Then the man drew back and said, 
 "Now, I am going to give three cheers for you." 
 General Lee said, "Oh, no." But the man insisted, 
 and out there in the woods he gave three cheers 
 as loud as he could. General Lee used to ride 
 often with his daughter Mildred. As they would 
 ride through the country, the children would run 
 screaming, "Here comes General Lee, here comes 
 General Lee." Genral Lee asked them one day 
 how they knew him, and they replied that they 
 had pictures of him. He was the noblest looking 
 man I have ever seen. None of his portraits do 
 him justice. His manners, dress, and everything 
 about him were perfection. My father became ill 
 one spring and every morning General Lee came 
 and inquired of me how he was. He had only 
 been in Lexington a very short time before he 
 seemed to know everyboy, especially the children. 
 Every child would run out to speak to him. The 
 country people would send him the finest turkeys, 
 ducks, etc., that they raised on their farms, for 
 they all loved him. 
 
 An old lady of most doleful countenance, never 
 81 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 known to smile, was having her portrait painted, 
 and the artist, a young man calling on General 
 Lee, was asked how he was getting on with the 
 portrait? He said the family did not like it, they 
 thought the expression was not bright and ani- 
 mated enough. General Lee with a twinkle in his 
 eye, said, "Well, Captain, did it ever strike you 
 that Mrs. N, had a very jolly face?" A cousin of 
 mine met General Lee one day and he told her to 
 tell me not to marry a certain young man, that 
 he was too small a man for me, and suggested 
 two others he thought would be better. 
 
 The students began coming in very fast to the 
 College from all parts of the South to be under 
 General Lee. A great many of the Southern peo- 
 ple wanted to build General Lee a home. When 
 they told him of this, he wrote a letter declining, 
 and said that he could not accept anything like that 
 from them, but if they chose to build a president's 
 house for the College, he would live in it during 
 his lifetime. After that, the reconstruction days 
 came, and the Southern people had no money, so 
 they were not able to raise the money for the 
 house. When the president's house was finally 
 
 82 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 built, the College paid for it from its own funds 
 and it cost $20,000, General Lee and his son, 
 Custis, planned it and had it built. When General 
 Lee's health failed, the Trustees of the College 
 had a meeting and offered him the house for him- 
 self and family always. General Lee again de- 
 clined it, saying that his children could take care 
 of their mother and that the house should always 
 be the president's. One day I was calling on 
 Mrs. Lee. This was after General Lee's death. 
 The trustees had offered the presidency of the 
 College to General Custis Lee, who was a professor 
 at the Virginia Military Institute. I said that I 
 hoped that General Custis would take the place, 
 and Mrs. Lee said that she hoped so too, but that 
 he did not feel that he was equal to it, but she 
 thought that he was. She also remarked, that un- 
 less Custis did take the place, she would not think 
 of living in that house, as it ought always to be 
 the president's house. However, Custis did accept 
 the presidency. General Lee only lived five years 
 in Lexington. The spring before he died, he and 
 one of his daughters took a trip to Florida. He had 
 a perfect ovation all along the way. People would 
 
 83 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 collect at the railroad stations just to catch a 
 glimpse of him. 
 
 During the War, Governor Letcher gave Colonel 
 Smith the title of General, and then the other pro- 
 fessors were made Colonels. After the new bar- 
 racks and the professors' houses were built. Gen- 
 eral Smith had the old superintendent's house pull- 
 ed down and then put up a much larger and hand- 
 somer building for the superintendent further back 
 from the street, but all were burned by Hunter, 
 except, as I have said before, the Superintendent's 
 house and the gate-keeper's lodge. Afterwards the 
 cadets and officers all went to Richmond and car- 
 ried on the school at the Alms House there. This 
 was during the last winter of the War. After the 
 War General Smith began the school here again 
 with fifteen cadets, and they recited in the offices 
 of the superintendent's house and boarded in the 
 town. Of course, later on many more cadets came 
 in and General Smith, in order to help rebuild the 
 barracks, made each of the professors give up a 
 part of his salary. Years afterwards the Legis- 
 lature repaid them for all the salary that they had 
 given up for this cause. General Shipp was Com- 
 
 84 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 mandant at the time, and he advanced the money 
 to build the house he was to occupy as Command- 
 ant. 
 
 Colonel Williamson, and Colonel Gilham were 
 among the first professors at the Institute. The 
 Williamsons were my dear friends. The Colonel 
 had three daughters and two sons. They lost their 
 mother just before I lost mine. Colonel William- 
 son married again, a lovely sweet woman, and she 
 had one son, who is now a distinguished man. The 
 old Colonel was honest, true, and brave, and all of 
 his descendants have inherited these qualities. 
 The last of his first wife's children, Olympia, beau- 
 tiful and bright, has just passed away, July, 1919. 
 Some of the other professors were Colonel Thomas 
 M. Semmes, Captain John M. Brooke, General G. 
 W. C. Lee, eldest son of General Lee, and Commo- 
 dore Matthew F. Maury. Commodore Maury was 
 a most agreeable man, and his charming family 
 were very much liked. 
 
 General Smith had a store and paid the profess- 
 ors in dry goods and groceries, and in that way he 
 added to the fund for rebuilding the barracks, mess- 
 hall, etc. Many of the cadets paid their bills, but 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 many did not, which left the Institute with a very 
 heavy debt, though there were at least 350 cadets 
 at one time. General Smith got the Institute in 
 good condition and all the buildings finished, and 
 everything was very prosperous, when the read- 
 justers or repudiators of the State debt appeared, 
 and gave General Smith a great deal of unneces- 
 sary trouble, nearly ruining the Institute. General 
 Smith devoted fifty years of his life to the In- 
 stitute. He had many trials, and in his last days 
 the Board of Visitors called him to account for 
 bad management and extravagance when he had 
 done all that mortal man could do to make the 
 school a success. 
 
 Colonel Preston owned his own house in the 
 village. At that time there were no houses be- 
 tween the two institutions, except our house, and 
 my father let General Williamson have a lot on 
 which he and his son, Thomas, built a house them- 
 selves. They did not have much money, so built 
 three rooms in a row which made it look like a 
 tenpin alley. As time went on and the Colonel 
 had a little money he would add another room, the 
 first one added being across one end of the house 
 
 86 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 making a parlor, and later he added a front porch, 
 and then other rooms until he got enough room for 
 his large family of children and grandchildren, 
 and I never saw a happier family. 
 
 General Pendleton, Rector of the Episcopal 
 Church in Lexington, went in the War as a Captain 
 of the Rockbridge Artillery. He was promoted 
 and came out of the War a Brigadier General. At 
 the close of the War he returned to his Church and 
 in conducting the services would not pray for the 
 President of the United States. One Sunday he 
 said things not pleasant to the United States of- 
 ficers who were in the Church, so after service 
 they arrested him and put him on parole and 
 closed the church for several months. His only 
 son, Sandie, a splendid young man on Stonewall 
 Jackson's staff, was killed very near the close of 
 the War. He had taken part in many battles. Gen- 
 eral Pendleton was a very handsome man and 
 bore a striking resemblance to General Lee. 
 
 In October, 1870, I went to Richmond. I left 
 Lexington for Lynchburg on a canal boat. We had 
 no railroads at that time and it took us all night 
 to reach Lynchburg, as the water was so low in 
 
 87 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 the canal that we stuck on a sandbar. There were 
 twenty-one locks in the canal in twenty miles. As 
 we arrived in Lynchburg in the morning, having 
 taken all night to go forty miles, I saw the train 
 that we expected to take for Richmond, just leav- 
 ing. I called out to everybody to come on deck 
 so that when the train crew would see what a 
 crowd there was they would come back for us, 
 which they did. My cousins, Mr. Alexander 
 Bruce's family. Dr. T. L. Preston's family, and Dr. 
 Junkin's family, had been spending the summer in 
 Lexington. We who were going on to Richmond 
 ran and got in the cars quickly and went on to that 
 city. That was the last boat and the last train for 
 several weeks. Tremendous rains began in the 
 mountains; the canal and dams were almost de- 
 stroyed; railroads and bridges were washed away 
 by a great flood which came rushing down the 
 river. Not a drop of rain fell in Richmond, but 
 telegrams from Lynchburg warned them that the 
 flood was coming. The lower part of the city was 
 flooded and I saw people climbing out of second 
 story windows into boats. I was in Richmond for 
 a cousin's wedding, and while I was away, General 
 
 88 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 Robert E. Lee died on the 12th of October, 1870. 
 In the fall merchants and others were in the habit 
 of having their goods brought up to Lexington in 
 boats on the canal, and there was great destruc- 
 tion, the banks of the canal being strewn with fur- 
 niture and all kinds of goods. A handsome casket 
 for General Lee was found floating on the river. 
 The covered bridge over North River at Lexington 
 was swept down the river. It struck and smashed a 
 large warehouse full of goods and carried every- 
 thing before it down the stream. 
 
 We young people in Lexington used to have 
 boating parties on the river, and sometimes we 
 went by moonlight. There was a high dam about 
 a mile from the covered bridge, "at the point," 
 and we had a fine stretch of water to row on. One 
 very cold winter we had a sheet of very thick ice 
 for a long time, which was unusual here, for some- 
 times for three or four winters the river does not 
 freeze at all, and every day a great many persons 
 went down to the river to skate; students and 
 cadets, and many young ladies learned how to 
 skate. Mary Lee was spending the winter here 
 with her mother, and she used to go every day and 
 
 89 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 sometimes all day long. Crowds of town people 
 who did not take part in the skating would go 
 down to look on. 
 
 Mrs. Lee was a great sufferer from rheumatism 
 and was helpless many years before she came here. 
 She lived three years after General Lee died, and 
 her daughter Agnes died just three weeks before 
 her mother did. Mrs. Lee was a very interesting 
 and intelligent woman, as were also her daughters. 
 
 On the 17th of September, 1875, my father died. 
 I spent the winter in Richmond, then went to 
 Charlottesville, and then spent the month of May 
 at "Berry Hill," Mr. Alexander Bruce's home in 
 Halifax county. In 1876 I went to the Centennial 
 Exposition in Philadelphia. The rest of the sum- 
 mer I spent at Capon Springs. 
 
 90 
 
MY FIRST TRIP TO EUROPE 
 
 On October 11, 1876, I sailed for Europe. We 
 left New York in the Bothina, Cunard Line, and 
 reached Liverpool October 21st, after a rough voy- 
 age and ten days' seasickness. We stayed at the 
 Adelphia Hotel until Monday, the 23rd. I was too 
 ill to notice anything very much and I thought I 
 should die on the way to London, I was in such 
 an exhausted condition. When I looked out of 
 the car window on the bright green fields and the 
 sheep feeding, I repeated over and over again to 
 myself, "The Lord is my shepherd, * * * 
 Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the 
 shadow of death, I will fear no evil. * * *." 
 Oh, what a comfort that Psalm was to me when I 
 felt so desolate and dying in a foreign land. 
 
 We reached London in a fog, the rain pattering 
 down, and the lady we expected to meet us was no- 
 where to be seen. We went to the Euston Hotel 
 and remained there two nights. The servants 
 were neat and obliging, but the rooms although 
 
 91 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 neat and nicely furnished seemed damp and cheer- 
 less with only candles to light them. We went 
 from there to Miss Moore's boarding house, 21 A, 
 Hanover Square, and I soon was established on a 
 lounge in a comfortable room with a bright fire, 
 looking out on the dark houses and tall chimneys 
 which seemed to be packed in not very clean wool, 
 — indeed the fog had exactly the appearance of 
 dirty wool. I was only well enough to drive out 
 once through Hyde Park, which was lovely, green 
 and bright in the pale sunlight. The houses and 
 streets were very handsome, but all looked dark 
 and damp. The carriages were, very many of 
 them, different from ours in America. I drove in 
 a funny little buggy with the driver perched up 
 behind, the reins going over our heads to the un- 
 seen driver. This was a Hansom cab, afterwards 
 common in America. 
 
 I remained in London until November 3rd, then 
 went to Dover, where I stayed all night at the 
 Harp Hotel, very good, but like everything else 
 in England, seemed damp to me. I crossed the 
 Channel November 4th, and took the train for 
 Brussels. The country was green, but the houses 
 
 92 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 and cottages are not like ours. Soon the wind- 
 mills began to appear on the hill tops, like giants 
 stretching their long arms up against the sky. We 
 reached Brussels at ten or eleven o'clock at night. 
 We were a party of five ladies. Our leader spoke 
 in French to some men, asking them where the 
 Hotel Windsor was. She had the baggage put on 
 a cart, four men took hold of it and started off at 
 a rapid pace, our leading lady telling us to follow, 
 as the hotel was just around the corner. We fol- 
 lowed the baggage to the corner and past a great 
 many other corners, our baggage getting further 
 and further ahead of us; we breathless, tearing af- 
 ter, as fast as our strength would allow ; our leader, 
 a strong English woman, keeping in front, while 
 the rest of us struggled along, I bringing up the 
 rear, weak and faint. The baggage, men, and all 
 disappeared entirely from our view, and we five 
 lone females were left lamenting in the almost de- 
 serted streets of the first really foreign city we 
 had ever been in, for in England, of course, we 
 felt more at home among English speaking people. 
 We looked in vain for a carriage, and when we 
 stopped to inquire our way at a shop which was 
 
 93 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 lighted at that late hour, we could make none of 
 the people understand us; so we again took up the 
 line of march and soon encountered a policeman, 
 upon whom we five unprotected females immediate- 
 ly pounced. We explained in all languages known 
 to us that we wished to go to the Hotel Windsor. 
 He pointed out the direction, and said he would 
 show us the way, at least we understood him to 
 say so, and when he started off we all frantically 
 followed, but he distanced all pursuers and like the 
 baggage, disappeared from view, leaving us strug- 
 gling up a steep, dark, narrow, old street, faint 
 and weary. We continued on in the direction 
 which had been pointed out to us, and soon dis- 
 covered another policeman. We not only spoke to 
 him, but laid hold of him, our Englishwoman tak- 
 ing his arm, and calling on us to follow, made him 
 show us the way. We weaker mortals, panting 
 and stumbling along, sometimes losing sight of our 
 leaders entirely, sometimes catching a glimpse of 
 them standing waiting for a moment while we 
 toiled up the steep streets, until at last we beheld 
 our beloved long lost trunks on the cart, standing 
 in front of the Hotel Windsor, while proprietor, 
 
 94 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 family, waiters, and baggagemen stood around them 
 wondering what had become of the owners. We 
 were soon comfortable in the hotel, which was a 
 good one, low priced, and in an excellent situation 
 in the higher part of the city near the King's 
 palace and the park. 
 
 The park or square is very pretty. All of the 
 finest statuary was wrapped in straw to prevent 
 the severe cold of the winter from injuring it. 
 When I was there, near the first of November, the 
 weather was quite cold and a good fire was neces- 
 sary for our comfort. We had some fine weather, 
 and some rain. We went through many of the old 
 streets; saw the old fountain, the Manikin west of 
 the Hotel de Ville, or town hall, and saw a mar- 
 riage performed there. We were told that all mar- 
 riages in Brussels must be performed at the Hotel 
 de Ville, then in a church, if desired. We took our 
 seats in a room where were a few other people; 
 three soldiers were standing guard near the en- 
 trance. A kind of stage or rostrum ran entirely 
 across the end of the room, with a high-back chair 
 and desk, and square stools arranged in front of 
 it, in a semi-circle. Presently we heard a little 
 
 95 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 stir and a light haired woman, fair and fleshy, in 
 black with trained dress, black velvet cloak and 
 bonnet with white plume, white roses and tulle 
 strings, walked in with an elderly man; behind 
 them came a slender looking man, leading in a large 
 red faced lady in trailing silk dress and black lace 
 shawl; the bride's mother, I suppose. Three or 
 four other people came in with them, and very 
 soon afterwards an old usher threw open the wide 
 folding doors opposite the stage, and a very big 
 man, all dressed in uniform, sword by his side, 
 cocked hat and plumes, red sash and white gloves, 
 stalked in grandly, touching his hat to the guards, 
 who saluted profoundly, walked up the steps, and 
 seated himself in the high-backed chair. An assist- 
 ant came forward and ordered the bridal couple to 
 take the two stools in front of the big man, while 
 the parents and two friends took their seats on the 
 stools on either side of them. The big man read 
 them a lecture, then they made promises, put on 
 rings, signed papers, and were married in the most 
 businesslike manner. 
 
 We went down into the old town square or mar- 
 ket place, with the quaint, queer old houses looking 
 
 96 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 down upon it, just as they have for so many years ; 
 they look dark and old, but tell no tales of the 
 days gone by. But there just opposite the Hotel 
 de Ville, is a grand monument which tells a glorious 
 story of how in the past two of the noblest men that 
 ever lived, died here on this very spot for their 
 country and their freedom. Egmont and Home 
 died here, while the Duke of Alva looked on from 
 a window of that dreary old house just behind the 
 scaffold, where now stands the monument with 
 figures of the two heroes in locked embrace on top 
 of it, dressed in full armor, looking so noble, so 
 fearless and bold. Twenty-five noblemen were ex- 
 ecuted at the same time in 1568. On either side of 
 the pedestal stands a statue of a soldier in full 
 armor, as if to guard the sacred spot. It was hard 
 to realize the dreadful days of yore, when the noble 
 martyrs' blood was poured out here to serve as 
 seed to the harvest of liberty and freedom. Now 
 the sun shines brightly, the same blue sky, the 
 same old houses on which the noble heroes gazed 
 their last, are looking down on us, while busy, 
 merry crowds pass here and there through the 
 square, and peasant women in bright colored 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 clothes and wooden shoes, sit at their fruit and 
 flower stands, making a pretty bright picture in 
 the old place. 
 
 I went to see the Wertz Gallery and was con- 
 vinced that Wertz was a madman. I saw huge 
 pictures of gigantic angels, devils, gods and god- 
 desses. His subjects were taken from Homer and 
 Milton, and showed wonderful power of a certain 
 kind. One of the smaller paintings represent Na- 
 poleon Bonaparte standing cool and composed with 
 arms folded, in the flames of hell, while he is 
 surrounded by widows and orphans who upbraid 
 him and hold up mutilated arms and dishes of 
 blood for him to look at. Wertz had a taste for 
 the horrible. He seemed to paint windows and 
 doors and recesses with people looking out of them, 
 a great deal, and sometimes it was difficult to be- 
 lieve there was not a door or window where he had 
 painted one. I saw some quite pretty pictures. 
 We went to the museum of pictures and saw a 
 great many curious old paintings of the Dutch 
 school, and a great many other pictures, some of 
 them very fine, others very horrible, of martyr- 
 doms. Some old portraits interested me very 
 much. The gallery is a very handsome one. 
 
 98 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 We also visited the Parliament buildings which 
 are very handsome and in excellent taste. We 
 went to the palace of the Duke of Orange; saw a 
 good deal of statuary and some good paintings and 
 a handsome ballroom with some quite good mod- 
 ern paintings in it. We went to see the great 
 Cathedral, which is badly situated and not a hand- 
 some building, although it is very extensive. A 
 very handsome equestrian statue of the old Cru- 
 sader, Godfrey de Bouillon, stands opposite the 
 handsome church of St. Jacques, Sir Condenburge. 
 Nearby is the King's palace on the park. All 
 around the park are wide streets with very hand- 
 some public buildings and palaces facing the park, 
 and very beautiful streets with fine houses are in 
 this, the Court end of the city. We went to see 
 lace made, and looked at a great variety of beauti- 
 ful laces. One woman was making a point lace 
 fan for the Paris Expositioin which took place in 
 1878; it takes two years to make a fan with an 
 elaborate pattern such as the one I saw. The poor 
 women generally lose their sight about middle life, 
 and the powder used for bleaching the lace (which 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 becomes very yellow from being worked with so 
 long), is very injurious to the health. How horri- 
 ble it seemed to be ruining the eyesight of these 
 poor wretches. We walked up and down through 
 the fine Gallery St. Flubert, which is 690 feet long 
 and sixty-four feet high and twenty-six wide. It 
 is paved with marble, and covered with glass, with 
 rows of handsome shops on either side ; a beautiful 
 arcade. We enjoyed looking at the magnificent 
 display in the windows. The shops of Brussels 
 have a very excellent and handsome display of 
 goods at very moderate prices. 
 
 Several times we saw the king driving in his 
 open carriage, with four horses and two outriders. 
 
 We first saw dogs made useful by pulling carts, 
 at Brussels, and it looked so queer to me to see a 
 muzzled dog hitched to a cart filled with milk cans, 
 or bread, or stones, while a peasant woman in 
 short dress, wooden shoes, bright-colored stock- 
 ings and handkerchief tied over her head, walked 
 along beside the cart. Sometimes two or even three 
 dogs were hitched to one cart. The tram-way, or 
 street cars, in Brussels are very nice. 
 
 We went from Brussels to Antwerp on the 10th 
 100 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 of November, 1876. We passed Vilvoord, where 
 William Tyndale was confined for two years, and 
 then burned for translating the Scriptures into 
 English and distributing them in England. 
 
 We went to a hotel near the station at Antwerp, 
 but found that it was not a very good one, though 
 we had comfortable rooms. The weather was cold 
 and raw, a light snow falling during the night. We 
 took a carriage and drove about to see the city. 
 We saw a great many men ; fine houses being built ; 
 a pretty park ; and handsome monument ; but I was 
 more interested in the old part of the city, with its 
 narrow streets, and quaint, queer old houses. I 
 noticed all along the streets mirrors fastened out in 
 front of the windows of the upper stories of the 
 dwelling houses, so that the inmates could see 
 everything in the street below, without the trouble 
 of leaning out. We passed through the fruit mark- 
 ets, and saw a great many peasants in their very 
 picturesque costumes. The women all wore wood- 
 en shoes, bright-colored stockings, short dresses, 
 white lace caps, and queer bonnets of straw, shaped 
 like flower pots, trimmed with a wide bow of rib- 
 bon fastened on the back of them and with ribbon 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 ends hanging down to their waists. They looked 
 like Mother Hubbards, with their tall bonnets. I 
 saw one old woman riding on the top of her cart- 
 load of baskets, her bonnet making the point of the 
 pyramid, three dogs pulling the cart, and a young 
 man walking by the cart driving the dogs. These 
 peasants are good natured, healthy looking, red- 
 faced, broad, stout people. Rubens was accustom- 
 ed to seeing warm flesh tints, no wonder he made 
 his figures coarse and red, when he had such mod- 
 els before him all the time. 
 
 We went to the Museum which had a finer collec- 
 tion of paintings than that of Brussels. Most of 
 the pictures in the two Museums are by the same 
 painters. I saw a great many by Rubens. His 
 pictures disgust me by their coarseness, but he was 
 a wonderful painter. His picture of Christ crucifi- 
 ed between two thieves, is the mose powerful of all 
 his works, I think, but the agony and writhing of 
 one of the thieves is horrible, so true to nature that 
 I almost expected to hear him shriek. A Crucifix- 
 ion by Van Dyke struck me as very beautiful in 
 its refinement and subdued coloring; but I turn 
 from the wonderful, powerful, and horrible church 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 pictures to the bright mystic scenes of Teniers. I 
 think Rubens the greatest of the Flemish painters 
 and most powerful, but his pictures do not give me 
 pleasure. Van Dyke's I like better, and many 
 paintings by other artists I thought very fine. Some 
 of Rembrant's portraits are magnificent. I saw a 
 man in the Museum at Antwerp, who had no arms, 
 copying a picture. He sat in a high chair and held 
 the brush between the toes of his right foot, and 
 the pallet with his left foot, of course, he had off 
 his shoes, and the toes of his stockings were cut off. 
 He seemed to use the brush well, and was making 
 quite a good copy of the picture. I observed him 
 while seeming to look at the paintings near him. 
 
 I went to the Cathedral which is a very large, 
 handsome, Gothic building. We walked about a 
 great deal through the city, and saw remnants of 
 its former glory, and of its present prosperity and 
 improvement. 
 
 We went from Antwerp to Cologne on the 12th 
 of November, 1876. We stopped at Aix-la-Chapelle 
 three hours. We walked to the Cathedral and saw 
 the tomb of Charlemagne, which is a large marble 
 slab in the floor of the Cathedral in front of the 
 
 103 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 altar, with the inscription "Carlo Magno" on it. 
 A bronze candelabra presented by Frederick Bar- 
 barossa hangs just over the tomb. 
 
 We reached Cologne Saturday evening, the 12th 
 of November, and went to the Hotel du Dome, a 
 good hotel near the station and to the Cathedral, 
 the latter of which is the one object of great in- 
 terest at Cologne. We had comfortable rooms, 
 I had a fire made in my stove. All day Sunday I 
 stayed closely in the house, for a bitter cold wind 
 blew snow and hail about and the people going 
 past to the Cathedral seemed nearly frozen and 
 hardly able to walk for the wind. Monday the 
 weather was warmer, so we took a carriage and 
 drove through the principal parts of the city, hold- 
 ing handkerchiefs to our noses, for the odor of the 
 streets was most unpleasant, and we each bought a 
 bottle of Cologne water. The streets were wet 
 and muddy from the melted snow, but seemed 
 otherwise clean. We went to the Church of St. Ur- 
 sula and saw quantities of bones said to be the 
 bones of St. Ursula and her 11,000 virgin attend- 
 ants, who were slain here on their return from a 
 pilgrimage to Rome, when they were on their way 
 to their homes in England. 
 
 104 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 We went into the great Cathedral and I thought 
 I had never seen any building so beautiful, so 
 grand, so magnificent. The fine Gothic arches and 
 noble columns were the grandest I had ever seen. 
 To stand and look down the long lines of columns 
 with the graceful arches rising from them, away, 
 away up, over my head, every line, every curve in 
 most beautiful harmony and proportion, was a rare 
 treat to my eyes. The exterior is as beautiful as 
 the interior; the graceful slender spires rising high 
 above the roof, handsome windows, doors and 
 heavy stone arches, all beautifully proportioned, 
 making one grand, magnificent, sublime object of 
 perfect beauty. 
 
 We took our meals in a nice dining-room, adjoin- 
 ing which was a large concert room. On Sunday 
 night a concert was given and a great many people 
 seemed to be present. I retired to my room, the 
 music being too profane for Sunday. 
 
 The next evening the Mayor of the city gave a 
 large entertainment in the hall, which we saw a 
 great deal of from the dining-room. It was the fif- 
 tieth anniversary of his marriage, the anniversary 
 of his daughter's marriage, and the betrothal of his 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 younger daughter. There was a stage across one 
 end of the room and long tables were placed down 
 the whole length of the hall, two or three rows of 
 them. Plates and glasses and black bottles all 
 along the edges of the tables, pyramids of flowers 
 and cake decorated the center. The guests sat in 
 chairs close around the tables, ate, drank, and 
 smoked, then all would lean back in their chairs 
 and sing, each person holding a paper with a copy 
 of the words of the song, I suppose. There was a 
 very good orchestra in the hall to play the accom- 
 paniments and they played pretty waltzes and other 
 pieces, then some of the people would leave the 
 tables and waltz in the empty space between them 
 and the wall. A great many speeches were made, 
 the speaker rising from his seat. Eating and drink- 
 ing filled up all the pauses. The entertainment 
 was kept up until late. Long after I had slept I 
 awoke and heard music and dancing still going on. 
 We left Cologne on November 15, 1876, and 
 went up the Rhine to Mayence, reaching Frank- 
 fort on the train that night. We had a bright, love- 
 ly day to go up the Rhine ; the water was clear and 
 the mountains purple in the sunlight. The Rhine 
 
 106 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 seemed a small river, but the scenery is very beau- 
 tiful, and the veil of romance and sentiment thrown 
 over it all made the trip most interesting. The old 
 ruins seemed placed on the very spots best suited 
 to produce a picturesque effect. Every point had 
 some historical or legendary association, and even 
 the little town of Bingen with its vine clad hills 
 brought up Mrs. Norton's beautiful lines, while 
 Byron's matchless words were constantly in my 
 mind all the way. I was like one in a dream, and 
 felt like shaking myself and saying, "Is this really 
 the Rhine, are those beautiful mountains and gray 
 old ruins the ones I have heard and read of, but 
 most surprising of all, is this really me, myself, is it 
 I, my very self, seeing all this with my own eyes and 
 drinking in all this beauty with my whole being, 
 with Byron's beautiful ideas and words to describe 
 it and express it for me?" 
 
 We reached Frankfort in the afternoon of the 15th 
 of November, and went to the Frankfort Hoff, a 
 new and very excellent and handsome hotel. The 
 next morning we attended to a little shopping, and 
 found nice shops, very fine goods, and prices mod- 
 erate. We then took a long walk through the city, 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 and we met a gentleman whom some of the ladies 
 asked the way to the Romer, where the Emperors 
 used to be elected and where the new Emperor and 
 his electors used to show themselves to the people 
 from the balcony. The decorations, etc., date from 
 1740. The gentleman was very polite and insisted 
 in very good English, on showing us the way. He 
 walked with us to the old square, pointed out 
 many objects of interest, and took us into the Ro- 
 mer, or Kaisersaal or Imperial Hall. He then said 
 he would take us to an old stone bridge built by 
 Charlemagne. It was much impressed by the solid 
 old structure with its arches looking as if they 
 would stand as long as the world stands. We 
 walked back to our hotel another way, our guide 
 telling us of many very interesting places, and ac- 
 companying us to the door of the hotel. 
 
 We took the tram-way late in the afternoon and 
 went out to the Palm Garden, a pretty park with 
 large hot houses and a fine concert hall. It is sit- 
 uated just out of the city. We saw the hot houses 
 with their beautiful palms and flowers, and then 
 took our seats at one of the small round tables in 
 the concert hall, which was brilliantly lighted by a 
 
 108 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 magnificent chandelier and gass jets. Galleries 
 supported by columns ran all around the hall, ex- 
 cept at the end opposite the door where was the 
 place for the band on a raised gallery. Little tables 
 with chairs at them were placed all over the hall 
 and along the gallery, and very soon every place 
 was taken in the large hall by nice looking, hand- 
 somely dressed people. Waiters ran about receiv- 
 ing orders; every one began to eat meats, salads, 
 ices, cakes, pies, and vegetables, and drink beer or 
 wine, the most beautiful music being played by the 
 band all the while. Then ladies took out their 
 knitting or embroidery, and a cloud of tobacco 
 smoke testified that nearly every man in the room 
 was smoking. As hungry as I was, for I had had 
 no dinner, I would drop my knife and fork to listen 
 to the exquisite music, while my German neigh- 
 bors plied their knives all the time; for all the 
 Germans I have seen at the table eat with their 
 knives, running them into their mouths in a truly 
 alarming manner. An entrance fee is charged at the 
 gate of the Parbrean, then you pay the waiter for 
 dinner, or other refreshments you order. We had 
 nice beef-steak and other very good food, and 
 wound up with ice-cream. 
 
 109 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 V/e left Frankfort November 17th, and rode in 
 the cars twelve hours to Berlin. The country is not 
 particularly interesting, parts of it are pretty and 
 some of the towns we passed through interesting 
 from associations of Weimar and Goethe. We 
 reached Berlin at night. We could not speak 
 German, and no one at the station could speak any- 
 thing else, but the officials looked at our baggage 
 and tickets, then put us in charge of a man with a 
 brass plate on his coat, and we tried to make him 
 understand with the assistance of a huge helmeted 
 policeman what hotel we wished to go to. Just 
 then a little man, a traveler, came up, and in good 
 English offered to assist us. Oh, wasn't I glad to 
 hear the English tongue! At Berlin things are 
 done with military precision, and in less than ten 
 minutes after the cars arrived, passengers, bag- 
 gage, and even ourselves were sent out of the sta- 
 tion in the quickest, most quiet manner. We went 
 to the Hotel du Rome, were asked tremendous 
 prices for rooms, and then were given some, a little 
 lower priced, but not nice, and besides, the in- 
 evitable feather bed. I removed that nuisance, and 
 by dint of pantomime made the chambermaid un- 
 
 110 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 derstand I must have sheets and blankets, which 
 were very soon produced. We ate a la carte, and 
 were charged extra for milk to put in our coffee, and 
 butter for our bread, and soon we found that the 
 people at that hotel were trying to take advantage 
 of us in every possible way, so we found one much 
 more reasonable and more comfortable. 
 
 We took long drives through the city. Saw the 
 handsome palaces and public buildings, and the 
 very handsome statue and monument to Frederick 
 the Great, which stands in the Park. The column 
 has a beautiful statue of Victory on top, made of 
 brass cannon taken from the French during the 
 Franco-Prussian War in 1870. 
 
 We spent one day at Potsdam, and saw Freder- 
 ick the Great's new palace where Queen Victoria's 
 eldest daughter lives. She is the wife of Frederick, 
 Crown Prince of Prussia. We met her riding on 
 horseback, with her two young daughters and a 
 gentleman. She is fat, fair, rosy, and good looking. 
 We went through the most interesting parts of the 
 palace, and then drove on to Sans Souci, beautifully 
 situated, and most interesting from its associations. 
 We saw the large chair in which the Great Fred- 
 Ill 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 erick died, standing at the window, where he look- 
 ed his last out over the splendid view of the beau- 
 tiful country. We saw many other residences of 
 princes, kings and emperors, but none of then 
 interested me like those associated with the great- 
 est of all Prussian Kings, Frederick the Great. An 
 English lady who was travelling with us seemed 
 very much suprised at my knowledge of the his- 
 tory of the reigning families of Germany, and I 
 told her I had read Carlyle's history of Frederick 
 the Great. One of the greatest treats we had at 
 Berlin was going to the opera. 
 
 From Berlin we went to Dresden, where we had 
 very cold weather and snow, but enjoyed the 
 splendid picture galleries much more than the gal- 
 leries at Brussels and Antwerp. The Sistine Ma- 
 donna is by far the most beautiful of all the Ma- 
 donnas; it is worth going from America to Dres- 
 den to see. 
 
 In November, 1876 we went to Vienna, where it 
 was still cold. We went to a large, handsome hotel, 
 and I had a large room with a huge porcelain stove 
 in the corner, round and tall like a monument. I 
 ordered fire, which seemed to be made from the out- 
 
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Sallie Alexander Moore 
 In 1880, then forty years old 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 side in the hall. I could hear them pouring coal 
 in, and although after waiting for some time, there 
 was no heat. I called again for fire, then I had to 
 ring a third time, but never got any heat that day. 
 I went to bed very cold, covering with the feather 
 bed provided, steamer rug and everything I had. 
 I awoke late in the night, nearly suffocated with the 
 heat. The monument had become hot. I threw off 
 the feather bed and rushed to the window, which 
 had double sashes, two opening inside and two out- 
 ward, and a great cushion like bolster between the 
 two sashes. All the windows I saw in Vienna had 
 these double sashes and cushions between them. 
 That heat lasted me the whole time I was there, 
 and when I left they sent me a bill for three fires. 
 Vienna is a beautiful city, and we took a carriage 
 and drove all about to see the sights. We went to 
 see the Emperor's stables. One stable had the 
 white horses from Hanover for the Emperor's 
 carriage, to be used on state occasions, and another 
 stable was filled with cream colored horses for the 
 Empress. There were large stables full of the 
 most beautiful horses and ponies from everywhere, 
 and every stall had fastened in front of it the pedi- 
 gree of the horse it contained. 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 From Vienna we went to Trieste, a beautiful city 
 on the Adriatic. Situated near Trieste is Miramare 
 on the Sea, the home of the ill-fated Maxmillian, 
 former Emperor of Mexico. It has the most beau- 
 tiful palace and grounds, indeed it was the most 
 homelike palace I saw anywhere. 
 
 From Trieste we went on to Venice, crossing the 
 Sea at night, and reaching Venice a dark rainy 
 morning, everything dismal, the black gondolas 
 looking like hearses, came to meet us and took us 
 to a very nice hotel, but when the sun came out 
 everything was glorified and beautiful. I tried to 
 take a nap after being awake all night, but it was 
 so quiet I could not sleep after being in cities with 
 cobble stone pavements, horses and vehicles. I 
 arose and from a balcony watched men bring a boat 
 load of fresh water and fill a cistern in a court-yard 
 opposite, (across the canal) — just an open boat full 
 of water. The men dipped buckets of water and 
 poured them into the cistern. Their feet were bare 
 and they got a good washing for once. 
 
 We stayed two weeks in Venice. While there I 
 heard the beautiful Oratorio of Moses in Egypt, the 
 Italian language being so beautiful with music, so 
 
 114 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 different from the German. We went in gondolas, 
 and when we came out they called the numbers, 
 just as we do carriages in other cities. St. Mark's 
 Cathedral and Piazza are beautiful, especially at 
 night; columns and arches all around the square 
 and a lamp in every arch. The shops are brilliant- 
 ly lighted all around the square also. We went in- 
 to the Old Council of Ten, and through the Bridge 
 of Sighs into the prison. The Bridge of Sighs has 
 two narrow pathways divided by a partition. We 
 took long excursions in the gondolas through the 
 Grand Canal and round the lagoons. 
 
 Then we went to Florence and spent December 
 there. I had letters from Mildred Lee and from 
 Bishop Richard Wilmer, introducing me to people 
 in different places, who were very nice to us. We 
 stayed at Madame Jotties, a good little Italian 
 woman. Florence is a most beautiful and interest- 
 ing city. We spent much time in the Pitti and 
 Uffizi Picture Galleries. 
 
 Driving in the park I met the Empress Eugenie, 
 former Empress of France, in an open carriage. I 
 also met a gentleman driving an open vehicle with 
 twelve fine bay horses and two footmen mounted 
 
 115 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 up behind his carriage. He was driving through 
 one of the narrow streets without side-walks, and 
 I had to take refuge in a doorway. When I came 
 back to Madam Jotties, I asked her if it was the 
 King or who it was, she laughed and said. "No, 
 indeed, it is not the King, but an American." He 
 had formerly driven sixteen horses and the govern- 
 ment of the city had to limit him to twelve, and 
 they were afraid it was dangerous. This was in 
 1876. I was in Florence again some years later 
 and he was driving sixteen horses. He had told 
 the authorities that he would leave the city if they 
 would not let him have more than twelve horses. 
 I was seated on a bench in the park one day and 
 saw him driving around the circle very rapidly and 
 it was a beautiful sight to see the sixteen bay horses 
 with their bright and burnished harness. After I 
 left there, I saw in one of the English papers that 
 his sixteen horses had become frightened in the 
 park, and torn through the narrow streets of the 
 city, upsetting vehicles and doing a great deal of 
 damage, and he was thrown out. 
 
 I went from Florence to Rome about the first of 
 January. I had many friends in Rome. I met Doc- 
 
 116 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 tor Edward P. Terhune and his family there, his 
 wife was Marian Harland, the writer. I also met 
 the Taylors from Virginia who were missionaries 
 in Rome. Also met Mrs. Haxall, of Richmond, Vir- 
 ginia, and Mrs. Amoss who was a sister of Dr. Zol- 
 ikoffer. 
 
 Rome to me was the most interesting place in 
 the world; the ruins, pictures, sculpture, museum, 
 and music were all so wonderful, and as I settled 
 myself for several month I could enjoy that at my 
 leisure. The museums at the Vatican were most 
 interesting, and when I would get tired I would go 
 into St. Peters. In cool weather it was always 
 warm and in warm weather it was always cool, it 
 seemed to have its own temperature. One day 
 while I was resting in St. Peter's some ladies came 
 up where I was and finding I was from America, 
 asked me if I knew any of Commodore Maury's 
 family, that they had heard some of the family 
 were in Europe and they wanted to find them, as 
 they knew them. I told them they were at Nice, 
 and I gave them their address. They had been in 
 Rome just the week before. 
 
 After Easter I saw fourteen people, mostly wo- 
 117 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 men, going up the Santa Scalla (Holy Stairs) on 
 their knees; there were rough boards put on the 
 marble steps to protect them, and people must 
 climb up on their knees without using their hands 
 and say all of the prayers of the Rosary on each 
 step. It takes four hours to climb them. Mrs. 
 Terhune's good maid Rose, was made ill by it, as 
 the place is very cold. Martin Luther tried to as- 
 cend these steps, and when he got half way up he 
 thought of a text, "The just shall live by faith." 
 He got up and came away. I saw many people 
 kissing the toe of the bronze statue of St. Peter 
 in St. Peter's. Many women wiped it with their 
 handkerchiefs before kissing it. The toe was part- 
 ly worn away. Neither the Terhunes nor myself 
 were presented to Pope Pius IX, but Rose was. 
 
 One day when driving through one of the streets 
 of Rome I passed where a very handsome house 
 was being built and fifteen workmen were stand- 
 ing in a row eating their dinner, which consisted 
 of a chunk of dark bread and an orange, except 
 one man, who had a lump of dates instead of an 
 orange. At San Remo in Italy I saw women carry- 
 ing stones on their heads to build houses with ; they 
 
 118 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 carried all of the mortar up to the workmen. I 
 often met two women walking abreast carrying 
 large bags of flour on their heads, and I saw long 
 lines of women coming down the mountains with 
 large baskets of oranges on their heads, and they 
 even carried our trunks on their heads. The wo- 
 men wind the cloth around the top of their heads, 
 making a mat to protect their heads. The Italians 
 who made the St. Gothard tunnel were only paid 
 sixty cents a day and furnished their own food once 
 a day, which consisted of polento, (our grits). I 
 could get a good dressmaker for thirty cents a 
 day in Rome. 
 
 One day we joined a party and went down into 
 the Pope's treasury and saw all of his jewels; the 
 triple crown, coronation robes of Charlemange, and 
 a great many more magnificent jewels of all kinds. 
 Sometimes we would spend a day on the Capitol 
 Hill, and one night we visited the Coliseum and 
 Pantheon by moonlight. Sometimes, in the after- 
 noons, we would go out on the Pincion Hill and 
 there would be crowds of people there to hear the 
 band play, and one afternoon we saw King Victor 
 Emanuel First of Italy. The Royal Guards were 
 
 119 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 the most magnificent men I ever saw. The first 
 one I saw seemed to be a giant with his magnifi- 
 cent uniform and helmet. I remarked to one of 
 my friends that I was sure that he was Goliath. 
 The Italian officers are very handsome, they use a 
 good deal of gold braid which is very becoming to 
 their dark beauty. I used to see the Bersagliere, 
 the advance guard of the Italian army, going 
 through the streets double quick, all of them with 
 cock plumes on their hats waving in the air. Very 
 often I met Princess Margarita, and Prince Hum- 
 bert, and their little son, who is now the King of 
 Italy, all of them in their separate carriages. One 
 day I went on an excursion out to Tivoli. The 
 scenery around Rome is very beautiful. The 
 Apennines remind me very much of our Blue Ridge 
 Mountains, and the Campania, which I had imagin- 
 ed a vast plane, I found a very undulating country. 
 The ancient arches of masonry which support 
 the aqueducts, extending across the country, four 
 of which are still in use, are very beautiful. The 
 pipes are said to be large enough for a man to 
 crawl through. They bring the water from the 
 mountains, eighteen miles distant, to Rome, to 
 
 120 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 supply her many beautiful fountains, it being the 
 purest water in Europe and the only place where 
 I dared drink any water at all. 
 
 When the Carnival began I was invited to a 
 balcony on the Corso, the principal street in Rome. 
 The Carnival lasted about two weeks and would 
 begin every day about two o'clock. From this bal- 
 cony I could see all the processions, the throwing of 
 confetti, etc. ; we were protected by wire masks 
 over our faces. One day when I was leaning over 
 the balcony rail gazing down below into the crowd, 
 someone struck me right in the face with a huge 
 bouquet, but fortunately I had my wire mask. It 
 was the jolliest, most good humored crowd I ever 
 saw, and never a drunken man among them. I 
 never saw a drunken man on the Continent, where 
 they drink the light wines and beer. One morning 
 during the Carnival we were driving down the 
 streets going sightseeing, and we met a funeral pro- 
 cession led by a body of Capuchin monks in their 
 long brown coats and sandalled feet, singing the 
 most melancholy dirge, followed by a hearse and 
 procession of carriages. It seemed so strange in 
 that street with the houses so gaily decorated. 
 
 121 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 Afterwards we heard that the lady who had died 
 was a very wealthy banker's wife and had had her 
 house beautifully decorated for the Carnival in 
 Japanese hangings, and she herself dressed as a 
 Japanese woman. She had died suddenly with 
 heart trouble in the midst of the festivities. 
 
 I had gone to Naples for a week or two in Jan- 
 uary, and we went again in the spring. Of course, 
 everybody knows Naples is the most beautiful 
 place — the Italians say, "See Naples and die." And 
 I feel sure that it is one of the most beautiful 
 places in the world. I stayed at the Hotel Britanic 
 on the heights on the Corso Victor Emanuel which 
 was kept by Madam McPherson, a Scotch woman; 
 she was the head of the house, keeping office, books, 
 etc., while her husband occupied the position of 
 head waiter. He was a very fine looking man and 
 as he marched in at the head of the line of waiters, 
 each dressed in evening clothes, he looked like a 
 count or a lord. They always had a table d'hote 
 dinner, with changing of plates and knives and 
 forks at every course which takes up much time, 
 and often during the dinner we would have the 
 most beautiful music in the hall; there were a 
 
 122 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 group of performers on the harp, violins and man- 
 dolins, and one man had a most beautiful voice. 
 
 One day we went out to Capri, three hours out 
 from Naples, and these same musicians were on the 
 boat. It was a beautiful day, the water clear and 
 bright, and dolphins jumping up and down spout- 
 ing water, made rainbows. When we reached Cap- 
 ri, of course the first thing we did was to go 
 to the Blue Grotto, and we got off the steamer in- 
 to little boats where we had to lie down and be 
 pushed into the Grotto. Afterwards we landed on 
 the other side of the Island, and mounted donkeys 
 and rode up over the Island on the heights. The 
 girls who drove the donkeys were considered very 
 beautiful, but what struck me most forcibly were 
 their shrill voices when they yelled to the people 
 to take their donkeys, they were worse than the 
 hackmen in our cities. It was a funny sight to see 
 the tall Englishmen seated on the little donkeys, 
 holding their feet up to keep from dragging on the 
 ground. Once afterwards in Switzerland I met 
 two English ladies who had been of the party at 
 Capri, and asked them what became of them, as 
 we did not see them any more at Naples. They 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 told us they had stayed to spend the night with 
 friends in a hotel in Capri, but that it was so 
 stormy they did not get off of the Island for two 
 weeks, because the boats could not land. 
 
 We took the various excursions around Naples, 
 and one day went up Vesuvius. We found at the 
 hotel when we were ready to start that the coach- 
 man, Ernesto, whom we generally got, was away, 
 so we went to a cab-stand and hired a large car- 
 riage, with a fine looking driver and horses, for 
 the trip up Vesuvius. I was the one who selected 
 it because I liked the looks of the horses and driver. 
 After we started, some of the ladies in the car- 
 riage began to find fault with the coachman, say- 
 ing that he looked like a brigand, that he might 
 murder us or throw us down the precipice, but as 
 I had chosen him, I defended him, and said he 
 was an honest, good looking man. After the dis- 
 cussion had lasted for some time he turned around 
 and in very good English told us that he was 
 Ernesto's brother, which settled the ladies very ef- 
 fectively. Of course he was very nice to me, as 
 I had taken up for him. After we returned to the 
 hotel, we met Ernesto, who said he had never had 
 a brother. 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 Of course we spent a whole day at Pompeii, that 
 most interesting place, going all through the ruins 
 of the city. Another time we went through Pom- 
 peii, Mrs. Terhune and I got permission from the 
 guide to leave the party and go by ourselves 
 through the most interesting places, and we had 
 with us a copy of Bulwer's "Last Days of Pom- 
 peii" and she read the principal scenes aloud. We 
 drove out to Sorrento and stayed all night at 
 Castle Marrie, and then made another excursion in 
 the opposite direction. We drove through Grotto 
 Posilipo, which is a tunnel, out to Baiae, and to 
 Lake Avernus, and the Sibyl's Cave, and then we 
 ascended the volcano of Solfatara and walked all 
 around inside of the crater. At one place the 
 steam and sulphurous gases were rushing out with 
 great noise; some poor invalids in wheeled chairs 
 were sitting in front of it to inhale the fumes, and 
 another place a great spring of boiling water was 
 bubbling up and steaming. Solfatara was quiet 
 then, but when it is in eruption, Vesuvius is quiet, 
 and vice versa. We were told that long ago when 
 Solfatara was in eruption and Vesuvius was quiet, 
 some escaped prisoners hid in the crater of Ve- 
 
 125 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 suvius. Near Solfatara is a mountain that was 
 thrown up in the night by an earthquake, and they 
 call it Monte Nuovo. 
 
 While I was in Naples I induced an English lady 
 to go to the Scotch Church with me, she said she 
 had never heard any "sectarians," that at home in 
 England she and her husband read the services 
 at home, that they hardly ever went to church, be- 
 cause the preachers were such "muffs." We heard 
 a splendid sermon at the Scotch Church, but I do 
 not think she appreciated it. There were Scotch 
 and English churches everywhere. At Rome 
 there was a Scotch Church and an English church 
 outside of the gates, because the Pope did not al- 
 low them to be built inside, but since the new 
 government they have built American Presbyter- 
 ian, Baptist, and Methodist churches. The Metho- 
 dists have a large following there making their 
 church very successful. The Jews of Rome had 
 always been confined to the Ghetto, and when the 
 Pope was crowned, the leaders of the Jews had to 
 do homage to the Pope at the Bridge of St. Angelo 
 as he passed over. Pius the Ninth was the first 
 Pope who did away with that custom. Now under 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 the new government the Jews are not confined to 
 the Ghetto, and in late years a Jew, Mr. Nathan, 
 was Mayor of Rome for two terms. 
 
 Among some articles I had packed in Italy and 
 sent home, some of the tropical snails were brought 
 accidentally, thought to have been in the straw the 
 things were packed in. They were the edible 
 snails, yellow with black stripes, some pink and 
 red and plain yellow. They first appeared in the 
 grounds of my home and increased rapidly. On 
 rainy days I would see professors of our institu- 
 tions looking for snails along the hedges and walls. 
 I think they have spread out in many directions, 
 but I never heard of anyone eating them as they do 
 in Paris and Spain. 
 
 We returned to Rome from Naples, and when I 
 left Rome I joined the Terhunes and we went to 
 Florence. We went to Pisa one day. The whole 
 country was in bloom. We ascended the Leaning 
 Tower, and enjoyed the wonderful echo in the 
 Baptistry. We returned to Florence spending 
 several weeks there, then went on to Genoa, and 
 thence to Milan, where we spent a week or two, 
 and saw the Cathedral which is the most beauti- 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 ful creation of man in this world. Of course we 
 went down into the crypt and saw the mummy of 
 old Carlo Borromeo, lying in his rock crystal cof- 
 fin with all his jewels and riches around him, and 
 the silver statues Mark Twain wanted to melt up. 
 
 From Milan we went on to Lake Como, where 
 we spent several days enjoying the exquisite 
 scenery and this most beautiful lake. While flow- 
 ers and the magnolia trees were blooming around 
 the Lake, the high mountain tops were covered 
 with snow. 
 
 When we left Como, Dr. Terhune hired a dili- 
 gence and we went on to the town of Lugano on 
 the beautiful Lake Lugano. I saw a magnificent 
 thunder storm on the Lake, From there we went 
 on towards the St. Gotthard Pass to Airolo, where 
 we spent the night, crossing the Pass the next day. 
 This was early in July, 1877, the tunnel was not 
 finished then, we saw them at work on both ends. 
 It was very cold on top of the mountain, and a 
 small lake up there was covered with ice, and there 
 was a great deal of snow. But we gathered Alpine 
 flowers all the way which were growing out close 
 up to the banks of snow. Crossing we reached the 
 
 1?8 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 town of Andermatt, and from there we crossed 
 the Furka Pass, the highest pass in Switzerland, 
 and saw the Rhone glacier where the River Rhone 
 rises. 
 
 Travelling through Switzerland we were very 
 much surprised to see how the women work, I 
 saw them carrying huge piles of hay on their backs 
 until they looked like walking hay-stacks. They 
 also carried large cans of milk on their backs. 
 
 We went to Lucerne, and during the six weeks 
 I spent there I was always trying to decide which 
 was the most beautiful lake and which had the 
 most beautiful scenery, Lucerne or Lake Como. I 
 thought the monument of the Lion of Lucerne to 
 the Swiss Guards who died in defense of Marie 
 Antoinette and Louis XVI was the most striking 
 in the world, it is by Thorwaldsen. 
 
 <At Lucerne I joined two ladies, a mother and 
 daughter, and we went by Lake Constance Ito 
 Munich and Stuttgart, and at Munich I was much 
 struck by the portrait gallery of beautiful women 
 that one of the kings collected. He had a very 
 good portrait painter, and had the portraits of all 
 the beautiful women he could find or hear of, from 
 
 129 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 a shoemaker's daughter to queens and princesses. 
 He had three or four very large rooms in the 
 palace filled with them, and among them was a 
 portrait of Lord Erskine's daughter, the English 
 woman who married a German, Baron Torpheus, 
 and who was the authoress of "Initials." I got 
 that book to re-read while in Munich. Every place 
 I went I always tried to get the book that most 
 clearly described the life of the city where I was 
 stopping. I also went to Baden-Baden, and after- 
 wards returned to Lucerne. From Lucerne we 
 crossed the Brunig Pass and were at Interlaken 
 two weeks. While there we had fine weather and 
 every evening at sunset we saw the beautiful Al- 
 pine glow on the Jungfrau, the grandest and 
 most splendid snow mountain I have ever seen, 
 looking out between and towering above two 
 green mountains, it would blush rosy red, then a 
 lovely pink, and all at once startle one with its 
 snowy whiteness. 
 
 We went by the Lake of Thun on to Bern, and 
 by Lousanne to Geneva. From Geneva I visited 
 the home of Voltaire, Ferney, and Madame de 
 Stael's home at Coppet, and I drove in a diligence 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 out to the Valley of Chamouni and enjoyed the 
 magnificent scenery on the way. We stayed at a 
 very good hotel, and I hired a guide and a mule 
 and rode up Montauvert by a narrow path taking 
 two hours to reach the Mer-de-Glace. The mules 
 would step on the edge of the precipice, and the 
 guide said the reason was because they were ac- 
 customed to carry bundles and panniers up the 
 mountain. I heard my guide tell another guide 
 that I knew how to ride. There was a very large 
 party going up with me. The sun was bright and 
 warm, melting the ice and snow and making the 
 surface of Mer-de-Glace very slippery. I bought 
 a pair of woolen socks to put on over my shoes 
 from a Swiss woman up there, which were a great 
 help. We crossed stepping over crevasses, and go- 
 ing on to the Mauvais Pass. A party of Ameri- 
 cans had told me at Interlaken that they had pass- 
 ed there just a week or two before and that just 
 as they were crossing the Mauvais Pass a large 
 piece of rock came pitching down from the height 
 above as they were stepping along on the narrow 
 ledge, threatening them with destruction. One of 
 the guides cried out they were lost, but the large 
 
 131 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 ■ ^ 
 
 rock passed between two people, the fragments on- 
 ly wounding a few of them. One old lady had a 
 scalp wound and it bled so freely they thought she 
 was going to die, but found afterwards that she 
 was only slightly injured. After the Bad Pass we 
 rested at a chalet called the Chapeau. We had re- 
 freshments and then mounted our mules which had 
 been brought up to meet us, and rode down the 
 mountain. The Alpine glow on the glaciers and 
 snow mountains was beautiful from Chamouni. 
 
 From Geneva I went to Paris with Mrs. Haxall 
 and Mrs.. Amoss, about the first of October, I 
 spent October and November there, and we stayed 
 at a boarding house kept by Miss Ellis, an English 
 lady, not far from the Arch-de-Triumph. My 
 friends, Doctor and Mrs. Zolikoffer were at the 
 Hotel Chatham. 
 
 That fall while I was in Paris I went to the 
 funeral of the King of Hanover. He died in Paris 
 where he" was an exile. Mrs. Zolikoffer called for 
 me in a carriage and took me to a friend's house 
 on the Champs Elysee to see the procession. The 
 King was a first cousin of Queen Victoria of Eng- 
 land; and the Prince of Wales, afterwards King 
 
 132 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 Edward VII, walked behind the funeral car with 
 Hanoverian princes, and Austrian royalties; these 
 latter were dressed in brightest colors and finest 
 court dresses, knee breeches and velvet cloaks; the 
 car was drawn by eight white horses, led by eight 
 tall lackies dressed in scarlet coats, white satin 
 breeches, long white stockings, cocked hats, and 
 were very much trimmed up with gold lace. There 
 were ten thousand French troops in the procession 
 and bands of music. The King of Hanover was 
 buried in England, where he was the Duke of Cum- 
 berland. Mrs. Zolikoffer had a German friend who 
 had been lady-in-waiting to the Queen of Han- 
 over; she persuaded the blind King and his daugh- 
 ter, Princess Frederica, to receive Doctor and Mrs. 
 Zolikoffer in their Paris residence. It was funny 
 to hear the Doctor tell of their experience. He was 
 greatly disgusted, said they were handed from one 
 flunky to another, and from one room to another, 
 waiting a long time. At last the King and his 
 daughter arrived, after being seated the King talk- 
 ed to the Doctor five minutes, and the Princess to 
 Mrs. Zolikoffer five minutes, and then the King and 
 his daughter departed, leaving them to be escorted 
 
 133 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 out by the attendants again; but Mrs. Zolikoffer 
 was delighted. ■ 
 
 Mrs. Amoss had a private carriage and took me 
 all about the city, showing me everything of in- 
 terest. We spent a great deal of time in the Louvre 
 Picture Galleries. I went to St. Dennis with the 
 Zolikoffers, and to Versailles. I had many friends 
 in Paris that fall. 
 
 There was a movement at that time in France 
 to restore the Empire, and young Louis Napoleon, 
 Eugenie's son, came over from England to Brus- 
 sels to be ready. A great many soldiers were 
 brought into Paris, we could see them parade up 
 and down and drill in the square. I was struck 
 by the French soldiers being so small, they were 
 the smallest men in Europe, such a contrast to the 
 big English, German, and Italian soldiers. They 
 kept the city quiet. The shopkeepers and people 
 of Paris generally seemed to be anxious for the 
 restoration of the Empire, and many of them wore 
 great bunches of blue violets, the Bonaparte flower. 
 The question was settled by a vote of the people 
 in favor of the republic. 
 
 I went with Miss Ellis, the English lady who kept 
 134 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 the pension, to the Garden d'Acclimation, and saw 
 the first birds of Paradise ever brought to Europe, 
 there were four of them, and many other beautiful 
 birds. When we tried to come home, every car 
 and vehicle was taken, there was such a crowd. 
 Finally we saw a milk woman in her white cap 
 and apron, driving by in her milk cart, so we beg- 
 ged her to take us in, which she did, and we mount- 
 ed up behind her, and the milk cans, in the nice 
 little open cart, and drove away, through the city 
 streets, but before reaching the pension Miss Ellis 
 made her let us out at the corner for fear the 
 boarders would see us driving in a milk cart. 
 
 October was very pleasant, but in November 
 the cold rains began and the days became shorter, 
 and I heard from all sides what a bad winter cli- 
 mate Paris had, so the first of December I joined 
 friends and went south by Marseilles to Nice. It 
 was so beautiful there, sitting in the sunshine lis- 
 tening to the music. While there we went over to 
 Monte Carlo at Monaco, to see the gamblers. They 
 had there the finest orchestra in Europe, and gave 
 three concerts a day. It is such a beautiful place. 
 How strange it was to watch ladies and gentlemen 
 
 135 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 sitting around the tables so intent on the game. I 
 did not take a chance, but some of my friends did 
 and lost a small amount of money, which cured 
 them of gambling. Afterwards we heard that some 
 people lost all they had, and went out and commit- 
 ted suicide. 
 
 We spent some time in Nice, and then went over 
 to a place near Genoa, called Peggli, where they 
 had a hotel in a magnificent old palace. While 
 there I met a Prussian officer and his wife, who sat 
 next me at the table d'hote dinner. He was sec- 
 ond surgeon on the staff of old Emperor William 
 the First, during the Franco-Prussian War. I al- 
 ways registered from Virginia, and he told me he 
 had read everything he could find about the Civil 
 War, and he said, "Madam, you had all the great 
 generals on your side." He seemed to have the 
 greatest admiration for Lee and Jackson. This 
 was in 1878. I asked him a great deal about Von 
 Moltke and Bismarck, and he said that Bismarck 
 was such an autocrat, that he wondered why the 
 Emperor did not get rid of him. 
 
 After staying several weeks there, I went to San 
 Remo, a most beautiful place, and there I met two 
 
 136 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 Scotch-Irish ladies from near Belfast. It was their 
 first trip abroad. One of them was helpless from 
 rheumatism and had her Scotch-Irish maid with 
 her. As soon as they knew that I was a Presbyter- 
 ian of Scotch-Irish descent, they adopted me. 
 They were very unhappy there among so many 
 Papists, as they called the Roman Catholics, they 
 thought they might poison them; they showed me 
 the tea leaves, said the tea did not taste right. I 
 told them there was no danger, that Catholics did 
 not do anything like that now, only wanted their 
 money for board. They could never learn the Ital- 
 ian money, and I used to go shopping with the one 
 who was able to go about. Before I left there the 
 lady who kept the pension told me that I had been 
 a great comfort to her in managing the old ladies. 
 Our landlady was French, and very nice. 
 
 I came back to Paris in the Spring by Turin 
 where I spent about a week, and through the Mont 
 Cenis Tunnel, and stopped at Aix-les-Bains a week 
 or so, and a night and a part of a day at Dijon. We 
 also spent a day and night at Fontainebleau, went 
 all through the palace, and drove through the park, 
 it was most interesting. Then we went to Paris 
 for the Exposition. 
 
 137 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 The Exposition was very interesting, principal- 
 ly French goods. The French crown jewels were 
 exhibited in a large circular glass case, they were 
 the jewels that the Empress Eugenie and Louis 
 Napoleon had worn, and were very magnifincent. 
 
 With two ladies from Ohio I went to see the 
 artist Worth's establishment. He was a designer 
 of ladies' dresses. He was a tall handsome gray 
 haired Englishman. One of the head women show- 
 ed us into a large room or saloon where we were 
 seated on sofas around the wall with many other 
 ladies, and we told the head lady what kind of 
 dresses we wanted for street or evening wear. 
 They had the very handsomest young women to 
 show off the designs which were made of the rich- 
 est materials, and they would come out and walk 
 up and down before us dressed in these beautiful 
 costumes so we could each choose the pattern and 
 material we liked best and have it made there. I 
 thought to myself, if I were only a dressmaker 
 from New York, what an opportunity it would be 
 for me to get the latest and most beautiful designs. 
 
 One excursion I made with friends out to the 
 Sevres China Manufactory, returning by St. Cloud 
 
 138 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 and through the Bois de Boulogne. My cousin, 
 William A. Anderson, was a Commissioner to the 
 Exposition, and his wife and Miss Clara Davidson 
 came with him to Paris. The Exposition was open- 
 ed May 1, 1878. 
 
 We had been trying for weeks to get seats at 
 the Grand Opera, but it was almost impossible to 
 get them on account of the crowds in Paris. When 
 I was about to leave for England my cousin saw 
 one of the managers of the Opera, who told him he 
 could get one seat only for him, so I took it, my 
 cousin accompanying me to the door and putting 
 me in charge of a Frenchman who escorted me to 
 an excellent place. I enjoyed the splendid per- 
 formance, it was the opera of Faust. When the 
 long interlude arrived, the French gentleman came 
 and invited me to come with him and see the Opera 
 House, the grandest in the world. He showed me 
 the magnificent building, pointing out the various 
 stones and marble used in the building, and the 
 statuary, and showed me the large Sevres china 
 vases, worth $60,000 apiece in our money. Then 
 he led me to the balcony in front, showing me the 
 electric lights like full moons, on both sides, and 
 
 139 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 the whole length of the Avenue de I'Opera. The 
 Opera House faces the Avenue de I'Opera. These 
 were the first electric lights I had ever seen. He 
 said they were operated from the basement of the 
 Opera House. There were no automobiles then 
 either. Among all the brilliant audience in the 
 Opera House, I saw in two of the most conspicuous 
 seats a colored man and woman. Brown skinned, 
 they looked like one of our Virginia butlers and his 
 mother, and they were very well dressed. She slept 
 through the performance. They were the only col- 
 ored people in the house. 
 
 I went from Paris to London with a cousin of 
 mine as an escort, on Saturday afternoon. I 
 thought after reaching there I would go out and 
 make some purchases, but everything in England 
 was closed at 12 o'clock on Saturday, including 
 stores, factories, etc. This was a great contrast 
 to the Continent, as in Paris all places stayed open 
 and laborers worked at everything on Sunday. I 
 arrived in London at the height of its season. All 
 the best operas were in full swing. I heard Adelina 
 Patti one night in La Somnambule, it was the 
 first opera she ever appeared in in London, and then 
 
 140 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 I heard her again in Aida with Schalchi and Nico- 
 Hni. I went to see the magicians, Masteline and 
 Cook, with my cousin, the Reverend Henry Alex- 
 ander, he did not go to the opera or theatre. The 
 summer days are so long in London, and ladies are 
 not allowed to wear hats or bonnets in theatres, 
 so they could be seen driving to the theaters, with 
 scarfs over their heads in daylight. And when I 
 attended evening services in the churches, I came 
 out and found the sun shining at 9 p. m. 
 
 I went to Westminster Abbey Sunday afternoon, 
 June 30th, and Dean Stanley preached a sermon, 
 the text from Isaiah, beginning, "I will mention the 
 loving kindnesses of the Lord." The mayor and 
 the sheriffs of the city of London came to the ser- 
 vices in their robes, a man carrying the mace in 
 front of the Mayor. The Dean and other clergy 
 went out to meet them at the door, and they all 
 came back in a procession escorting them to their 
 seats near the pulpit. 
 
 I was very much interested in going through the 
 Tower of London and was much impressed by 
 seeing the long narrow room with only one win- 
 dow, the walls so thick that the window could not 
 
 141 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 be reached without lying down on the wall below 
 the window, and stretching out your arms, where 
 Sir Walter Raleigh was imprisoned for twelve 
 years, and then taken out and executed. I was 
 very much struck at seeing the sentinels of the 
 Horse Guards, magnificent looking men they were, 
 on fine horses, in full uniform, breast plates, and 
 helmets and high boots. They had backed their 
 horses into the arched recesses on either side of the 
 gates, and they stood there, neither horses nor men 
 winking an eye that I could see, nor making any 
 movement whatever. 
 
 We spent a day at Windsor, went through the 
 Palace and drove about the park, and also saw St. 
 George's Chapel and the tombs of the Kings. I 
 was not surprised that Queen Victoria chose to 
 live at Windsor instead of Buckingham Palace. 
 Eaton College is situated right across the river 
 from Windsor. I saw Queen Victoria in an open 
 carriage, she was going to Marlborough House for 
 a garden party given by the Prince and Princess 
 of Wales, Edward and Alexandra. I had a beau- 
 tiful trip up the river to Hampton Court and the 
 Kew Gardens. 
 
 142 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 In London the houses looked black and dingy af- 
 ter Parts, but Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens 
 were beautiful, and it was very interesting to sit 
 in the park on Sundays and see the fashionable 
 people promenading, and every day it was inter- 
 esting to watch the ladies in Rotten Row. Ladies, 
 gentlemen, and children rode every day, rain or 
 sunshine. 
 
 I was in London about six weeks and then in 
 travelling through England I went to Kenilworth 
 Castle, and Stratford-on-the-Avon, and stopped a 
 day or two at York, and spent Sunday at Newcas- 
 tle, and went on to Scotland and visited Abbots- 
 ford which seemed sacred ground to me. I had been 
 brought up on Sir Walter Scott's books and was 
 interested in everything connected with him, and 
 went to Melrose Abbey, and Dryberg Abbey, and 
 then went on to Edinburgh. It is a beautifully 
 situated city, I visited the Castle, Holyrood Pal- 
 ace, and went through the melancholy old build- 
 ing and felt sorry for poor Mary, Queen of Scots, 
 living in that gloomy old building in that miser- 
 able climate, but we had beautiful weather while 
 I was there. We went from there to Stirling 
 
 143 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 Castle and through the Trossachs by Loch Katrine 
 and stopped at a hotel on Loch Lomond. By that 
 time the days had gotten so long that it was broad 
 daylight after lip. m., and I picked wild flowers on 
 the banks of the lake after 11 p. m. The heather 
 was in bloom on the mountains, and the associa- 
 tions made it all very beautiful and interesting to 
 me, but I must say that this scenery was really 
 not as beautiful as the scenery around Lexington, 
 Virginia, my home, and the Trossachs not equal 
 to Goshen Pass. When we were leaving Ayr and 
 all the Burns associations, a man leaned out of a 
 car window and played Bonnie Doone on a clar- 
 ionet just at sunset, one of the sweetest things I 
 ever heard. 
 
 We went from Scotland over to Belfast in Ire- 
 land, and from there went on to the beautiful 
 lakes of Killarney. The heather there was in full 
 bloom and much finer flowers than in Scotland. 
 While going from the northern part of Ireland to 
 the southern part, we saw many troops getting in 
 the cars going north, and my cousin William A. 
 Anderson, asked a man in the cars where they were 
 going, and the man said, "There is to be a walk on 
 
 144 
 
My Husband, John H. Moore 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 the wall at Londonderry." My cousin could not 
 understand what in the world he meant, then I re- 
 membered that Miss Patton, the Scotch-Irish lady 
 at St. Remo, had told me that every year on a cer- 
 tain day the Orangemen had a walk on the wall 
 at Londonderry, (the walk on the wall being a 
 procession), and the Catholics would stone them, 
 then the Catholics and the Protestants would have 
 the most terrible fights, so the soldiers were going 
 up to try to keep order. 
 
 I spent two weeks at Queenstown, resting and 
 waiting to join Dr. Terhune and his family on the 
 boat, the ship Adriatic of the White Star Line, to 
 come back to America. We landed in New York 
 after a very rough voyage. We had a great deal 
 of trouble at the Custom House, because the men 
 all wanted bribes, although I had nothing dutiable. 
 
 I went home to Lexington, Virginia, in Septem- 
 ber, 1878. 
 
 145 
 
WANDERINGS 
 
 I stayed two months in Lexington after my re- 
 turn from abroad. My home being rented out, I 
 went to Richmond for the winter, where I had 
 many friends and relatives. I spent a month in 
 Baltimore in the spring, and then returned to Lex- 
 ington to take possession of my home. Two ladies 
 from Maine, whom I met in Richmond, were trav- 
 elling through the country to the Natural Bridge, 
 and called to see me on their way back. They had 
 returned just a short time before from a three year's 
 trip through Europe, and they said they had never 
 seen a more beautiful country than ours. That 
 summer I spent the month of August at the Green- 
 brier White Sulphur Springs, where I met Dr. 
 and Mrs. Zolikoffer, who had returned to this coun- 
 try. They spent the month of October with me 
 in my home. The following summer I spent in 
 having my old home put in perfect repair and made 
 some alterations and improvements. I built a new 
 conservatory, made a new stairway, two bay win- 
 
 146 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 dows, and some porches, for all of which I drew 
 the designs and directed the workmen. 
 
 The winter of 1880 and 1881 was very cold here 
 the canal froze and we could not get coal, we could 
 get wood though. Three of my young girl cousins 
 came to me in the spring and attended the finals 
 at Washington and Lee and the Virginia Military 
 Institute, and I gave them a large party, and we 
 had dancing; the band played on the lawn which 
 was decorated with lanterns, and the house and 
 grounds looked so pretty all illuminated. 
 
 In the fall of 1881, my husband and myself went 
 out to spend the winter in California; we went out 
 by the northern route and returned by the south- 
 ern. We stopped at Baltimore and at Chicago and 
 had very pleasant travelling companions on the 
 way out. We went to the Palace Hotel in San 
 Francisco, a very fine hotel, and afterwards by the 
 advice of some of our friends, got an apartment at 
 the Trusdale House, kept by a Boston woman, who 
 was a wonderful manager. They had Irish maids 
 and cooks, and Chinese men did the cleaning and 
 made the fires; we had coal fires in an open grate. 
 I never saw so many bay-windows in a city in my 
 
 147 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 life, the Palace Hotel was encrusted with them, all 
 the windows on the outside of the hotel being bay- 
 windows. Most of the houses in the city also had 
 bay-windows. There was a wide beautiful court 
 in the center of the hotel, where carriages could 
 drive in. I was told that fuel was so dear they 
 were anxious to get all the sun they could. 
 
 We spent six weeks there and then went to Los 
 Angeles. The beautiful flowers, paper and eucalyp- 
 tus trees (the latter being the blue gum of Aus- 
 tralia) were so like those of San Remo in Italy, I 
 felt as if I were there. We had a good boarding 
 house kept by a Massachusetts woman, with a 
 Chinese man for cook at $40.00 a month. A lady 
 boarder in the house had a white nurse, who wor- 
 ried the Chinese cook by going into the kitchen, 
 using his pans, etc., and one day he flew into a 
 rage, yelling and hitting her over the head with a 
 dipper, she had him arrested and fined, but she did 
 not go into the kitchen any more. They had a 
 half grown Chinese boy who used to bring up my 
 wood and make my fire and carry the water. I 
 spoke kindly to him and asked him questions 
 about his home in China, he told the maid that I 
 
 148 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 was "Heap high-toned lady." Mrs Helen Hunt 
 Jackson, the authoress, had a room opposit mine, 
 she would call the Chinese boy to bring her hot 
 water, he would put his head in the door and say, 
 "Won't do it, git it yourself." 
 
 We took beautiful excursions, driving through 
 the country. We were told that seven months in 
 the year they had no rain, and then generally a 
 rainy season, but this year 1881 and 1882, the 
 rainy seasons did not come, and the immense flocks 
 of sheep were starving as the grass was all dried 
 up, it was distressing to see them when we were 
 driving. One morning I waked to find it snowing 
 fast. We were told that it was the first snow that 
 they had had in thirty years. Everything was 
 white, but by mid-day it was gone, and the helio- 
 trope trained over the porch was uninjured. The 
 mountains were covered with snow and when we 
 would walk in the sunshine the wind from them 
 would chill us. My husband and myself both took 
 cold, and so did everybody else. The Los Angeles 
 river enabled the people to water their orange 
 groves and gardens. The flowers were a constant 
 delight to us, but I found the California fruit either 
 sour or tasteless. 
 
 149 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 We intended going home through New Mexico 
 and Texas to New Orleans. Fortunately we met a 
 man who had just come from Texas, who told me 
 to be sure to carry provisions for the journey, as 
 there were no eating houses or dining cars, so I 
 had a large basket of lunch put up, got some plates, 
 cups, etc., also some tea and some California wines. 
 After we had gone some distance, there was no one 
 in our pullman sleeping car but a pretty young wo- 
 man with her eight months old baby, going to her 
 mother in Texas, she had brought no provisions, 
 but fortunately we had plenty to give her. The 
 pullman conductor and the colored porter were both 
 from Virginia, and a hunter we saw at one of the 
 stopping places with a pile of buffalo meat was al- 
 so a Virginian. Our conductor bought a tongue 
 and presented it to us. The porter used to boil 
 water on the stove for our tea. We passed through 
 the deserts and saw a most beautiful mirage. Af- 
 ter we reached Texas two men got on the car, a 
 perfect arsenal around their waists — pistols, knives, 
 etc., they said they had come through the Apache 
 country. We saw some Apache Indians at the 
 stations. We passed a town called Togan in New 
 
 150 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 Mexico, where all of the roofs of the town were 
 canvas, and I counted the signs of seven bar rooms 
 from the car window. We stopped at Dallas two 
 days and went on to Houston, where they had had 
 a flood and the streets were impassable, vehicles 
 stuck in the mud, since then I have heard that the 
 streets have been paved). A drummer on the cars 
 showed us a high plank walk where we could get 
 to the hotel, and fortunately we had a full moon to 
 light us on our way. The next morning was Sun- 
 day and I was so tired I stayed in bed, but my 
 husband went to church and heard a sermon by a 
 former gentleman of our town, Lexington, Virgin- 
 ia, and the organist and several of the members 
 of the choir were also from Lexington. 
 
 We were a week on the way from California to 
 New Orleans and the night after we reached there 
 we went to the opera, and I was so tired I could 
 hardly keep awake. It was the opera of Hamlet, 
 the last part of the opera is much better than the 
 first. Anna Louis Gary, the fine contralto, was 
 there. We saw Gilbert's and Sullivan's "Patience," 
 and Haverly's Minstrels, and many other enter- 
 tainments. The whole city was getting ready for 
 
 151 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 the Carnival as if a real king were coming. I had 
 already seen the Roman Carnival which kept up a 
 long time, and the people enjoyed it as a real frolic, 
 throwing confetti, etc. The Carnival at New Or- 
 leans was a grand spectacle with the processions 
 and floats and cars both in daylight and at night, 
 with the reception of king and queen, and many 
 other entertainments. 
 
 The people of the city of New Orleans were sup- 
 plied with water from great tanks or hogsheads put 
 up behind the houses to catch rain water from the 
 roof. The city drainage was very bad, and they 
 could not dig graves because they would fill up 
 with water, so the dead had to be placed above the 
 ground, the rich in vaults and the poor in brick 
 houses holding many. The weather in March be- 
 came so hot that we could not go out until evening. 
 We came home and had very cold weather. The 
 peach trees were in full bloom when we came 
 through Georgia, miles and miles of pink bloom. 
 We spent the summer at home and went to Europe 
 in the fall. 
 
 We sailed from Quebec in November, 1882, to 
 get the shorter ocean voyage. We stopped at 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 Springfield, Massachusetts, and spent a day and 
 night with the Terhunes, stayed several days at 
 Quebec, and sailed on one of the ships of the Al- 
 len line. I found sailing down the St. Lawrence 
 very pleasant. We went through the Straits of 
 Belle Isle and out on the ocean in the night. I 
 awoke very seasick. My husband went on deck in 
 the morning and was overcome, but soon recovered 
 and was not sick any more. We landed in the 
 northern part of Ireland, and went to Londonderry, 
 stayed several days, saw all of our Scotch names 
 in the cemetery there, and drove around the walls 
 where they have their walks and fights. We went 
 on to Larne expecting to cross the Channel to 
 Stranraer, but when we got on the boat the Cap- 
 tain told us there was a terrible storm and advised 
 us to wait until the next afternoon at 4 o'clock, so 
 we went to a very fine hotel nearby, where the rich 
 linen merchants of Belfast come in the summer to 
 enjoy the surf bathing. We were there in Novem- 
 ber, 1882, so there were no guests in the hotel, but 
 proprietor and servants were very nice and atten- 
 tive. We had bright fires to sit by and a farmer 
 came riding over and spent the morning with us. 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 He was very intelligent, well read and most agree- 
 able, large and red-faced, and as soon as he was 
 seated had a large mug or stein of beer brought in, 
 we both declined taking any, but I think he drank 
 three or four mugs of beer while he sat there. We 
 crossed over to Scotland at 4 p. m. and spent the 
 night at Dumfries. 
 
 The next day we went to London and had a 
 very agreeable companion, a gentleman from Glas- 
 gow, in the first class compartment with us. He 
 told us he was on his way to see the review of the 
 British army, just returned from Egypt, by Queen 
 Victoria. When we arrived in London in the even- 
 ing we went with him to the grand hotel St. Pan- 
 cres. We found it very good. Many of the wait- 
 ers in the dining-room were Germans, could not 
 understand English, we would have to call the 
 head-waiter to explain. Many German and Ital- 
 ians used to go to England in the summer to learn 
 the language; they would work without pay, and 
 sometimes they paid for the privilege. When we 
 arose the next morning we saw a London fog. It 
 looked as if a very dirty blanket had been placed 
 over the windows, and even in the breakfast room 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 there was some fog although everything had been 
 done to keep it out. 
 
 After a few hours we could hear troops passing, 
 and could hear the drums, but could see nothing. 
 Very soon a red light seemed to penetrate the fog, 
 and then great banks of fog rolled away with the 
 awful red light streaming through ; it was like a 
 great fire. I asked my husband what he would think 
 of it if he saw it at home, he said, "I would think 
 the Judgment Day had come!" About 11 a. m. 
 the fog began to disperse, and before long had dis- 
 appeared, the sun shining brightly. "Queen's wea- 
 ther" the people called it. We started out to see 
 what we could, telling the young man driving our 
 hansom cab we were Americans just arrived and 
 wanted to see everything. He drove us down to 
 Oxford Street and Pall Mall, all splendidly decor- 
 ated with flags and scarlet cloth, etc. A mounted 
 policeman would order us off the street and our 
 coachman would drive off at one corner and on at 
 another, until we had seen all the decorations on the 
 streets that the procession was to pass through. He 
 then drove up to Carleton House Terrace and said 
 we had better get out and try to see, but I soon saw 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 there was no chance for me with that crowd of tall 
 English people, and I noticed every now and then 
 parties of people handing tickets to guards and go- 
 ing down some steps, so the next party I saw I said, 
 "Come, let's go with them," but J. said, "Oh, no, 
 we have no tickets." But go I would, and he had 
 to come, and we soon found ourselves in St. James' 
 Park near the Horse Guards' Barracks, where the 
 Queen was to review the troops. We were near 
 the driveway which was roped off, and people kindly 
 put me in front and showed us programs they had, 
 and soon we heard the trumpets, and before long 
 saw the Royal Horse Guards come at a trot, splen- 
 did men on splendid horses, the sun glancing on 
 their drawn swords, breast plates, and tall helmets. 
 Queen Victoria was in an open carriage, her eldest 
 daughter, Victoria, Crown Princess Frederick of 
 Prussia, was seated at her side, John Bull and anoth- 
 er footman seated up behind, and Edward, Prince of 
 Wales, on horseback on her right, the Duke of Cam- 
 bridge, her cousin and commander of her armies, 
 riding on the left of the carriage. In the next 
 carriage was Alexandra, Princess of Wales, and 
 other royalties in other carriages. As soon as the 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 Queen and Royal Family and Guards were in place, 
 the army began to move. They were in their red 
 coats, (khaki had not been then introduced). The 
 Cold Stream Guards, with their bear skins on their 
 heads, and other organizations whose names we 
 had heard of, passed on foot. There were the Gor- 
 don Highlanders, their officers on horses, their 
 plaids across their shoulders, and the Indian con- 
 tingent, the officers riding, one of them a grey 
 bearded man who had been in the Queen's service 
 forty years. They had diamonds and other jewels 
 on their turbans and sword hilts. There was every 
 arm of the service in the parade — cavalry, infantry, 
 artillery, ambulances, etc. I saw the Duke of Con- 
 naught, the Queen's third son. Sir Garnet Woolsley, 
 and General Sir. Evelyn Wood. I think we were 
 about four hours standing there to see the proces- 
 sion, and when the troops passed on to the streets, 
 the crowd of people in the park rushed out after 
 them, but we waited. After awhile the Queen and 
 all the Princes and Princesses and Guards passed 
 close by us on their way back to Buckingham Pal- 
 ace. We found our cab awaiting us, and we drove 
 back to our hotel. On the way back the Horse 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 Guards Blue passed on the way to their barracks; 
 they wear blue coats, the other regiment red coats, 
 but they wear the same tall helmets with horse 
 tails down their backs, cuirasses with shining breast 
 plates, white doe skin trousers that fit like their 
 skin, and high top boots, they had white sheep- 
 skin saddle cloths with the wool on. They are 
 all picked men six feet tall. We met our Scotch 
 friend at dinner at the hotel, and he told us that he 
 had secured a window on the street to see the pro- 
 cession and came back to the hotel for us, but we 
 had left. We thanked him and told him of our ex- 
 perience. I never saw anyone so astonished. 
 
 The next day we saw in the papers that Henry 
 Irving and Ellen Terry were acting, so in the even- 
 ing we drove down to the theatre. The man at 
 the office gave us two tickets, we asked if they were 
 good seats, he said they were the best in the house 
 and the only ones he had for sale. We had two 
 chairs in the front row of a box, where we had a 
 fine view of the stage and the brilliant audience. A 
 gentleman sitting on a chair behind me was trying 
 to see and hear, so I moved aside to let him come 
 forward, he was profuse in his thanks, said he had 
 tried for three months to get a ticket. 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 We went from London to Paris, then to Biarritz 
 on the Bay of Biscay, a beautiful place. The Hotel 
 Victoria was on the cliffs. One night we had a 
 magnificent storm, the Bay of Biscay is celebrated 
 for its storms. We stayed at Biarritz about two 
 weeks, and then went on into Spain. We had a 
 disagreeable time at the Custom House, and I had 
 to pay $15.00 on my old clothes. 
 
 We stopped in Burgos, the only thing to see 
 there was the Cathedral. Walking back to the ho- 
 tel, we were mobbed by beggars, surrounded so we 
 couldn't walk. A nice gentleman came along and 
 scolded and cussed them in Spanish and drove 
 them away. At Burgos we met a French naval of- 
 ficer and his wife, and a lady friend, wife of another 
 officer, traveling with them, and we came across 
 them everywhere we went in Spain, We went from 
 Burgos to the Escurial. On the train we met two 
 nice gentlemen, one an Englishman, the other a 
 Hollander who lived in Spanish South America, 
 and spoke the Spanish language well, and we found 
 him of great use to us. The Escurial is most inter- 
 esting, it has a church which is the burial place of 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 the royal family of Spain, a palace, a monastery, 
 and a barracks for soldiers. 
 
 We went from there to Madrid and stayed at the 
 Hotel de Paris. We found it very cold, snow piled 
 up along the streets. I had a little sitting room 
 with an open fire which our Englishman, Mr. Mac- 
 Goran, enjoyed very much when he came in to see 
 us. Our Dutch Spanish-American left us at Ma- 
 drid, and we did not see him any more. The first 
 day at Madrid I was tired and rested, and J. and 
 our English friend walked out and saw the picture 
 galleries, and as they returned through the streets 
 J. gave a beggar a little bit of silver instead of a 
 copper; soon the street was filled with beggars 
 coming in every direction. The two gentlemen con- 
 cluded to run for it, which they did, and raced for 
 the hotel and escaped. Our Englishman wanted a 
 bath and asked for directions to a Russian bath, 
 and he arrived at a convent, where he created a 
 great disturbance among the nuns and their pro- 
 tectors. He gave a very funny account of it. We 
 met the French officer and his wife and their friend 
 in the hotel in Madrid, and all went to the opera 
 together, and saw Regioletto. A fine company and 
 
 160 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 a splendid audience. The whole court was there in 
 full dress, blazing with jewels. 
 
 We saw King Alphonso driving on the street 
 one day attended by many officers all in full uni- 
 forms and plumes. 
 
 One can not see the best paintings of the two 
 greatest Spanish painters, Velasuez and Murillo, 
 until one goes to Spain, although they have some 
 fine ones in Paris and other places. 
 
 We went from Madrid to Cordova. So glad to 
 go south, Madrid is about the same latitude as 
 New York, and colder. We saw the beautiful 
 mosque built by the Moors, now turned into a 
 Catholic church, the beautiful horseshoe arches and 
 hundreds of beautiful columns. When we came 
 out of the cathedral and saw the orange trees laden 
 with oranges the porter said if we would like to 
 have some he would come that night and get them 
 while the Monks were asleep. 
 
 From Cordova we went to Seville. We saw there 
 the beautiful Moorish tower of the Giralda. We 
 drove with our French friends in a carriage to the 
 Moorish palace of the Alcazar, but were told that 
 the king's mother. Queen Isabella, was living there, 
 
 161 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 and there was no admittance, so we returned to our 
 carriage, the French officer leaving his card, and 
 soon a servant came running to tell us to come 
 back, and a major-domo in scarlet coat very much 
 trimmed, with a white stick with a ball on the end 
 of it in his hand, conducted us all through the palace 
 and gardens, except the queen's private apartments. 
 This beautiful Moorish palace is kept in perfect re- 
 pair, and all furnished for a residence. One of the 
 drawing-rooms had lounges all around it, covered 
 with the most beautiful embroidery, that had been 
 sent to Queen Isabella by the Sultan of Turkey. 
 
 We went to see the Spanish women and girls 
 making cigars. 
 
 We spent Christmas at Seville, 1882, and then 
 went to Granada, and stayed at a hotel named 
 Washington Irving on the mountain close by the 
 Alhambra. We found our French friends there. 
 We spent a great deal of time walking through 
 the courts of the Alhambra, and admiring the mag- 
 nificent Moorish architecture, that I think the most 
 beautiful in the world. We spent two weeks there. 
 
 From Granada we went to Valencia. The food in 
 Spain was very trying to me, everything floating 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 in oil, and garlic, so that when I reached Valencia 
 I was quite ill. Fortunately a kind French woman 
 kept the hotel. She had just won thirty thousand 
 dollars at the government lottery there. One day 
 I nearly fainted at the dinner table, and she took 
 me into her nice little sitting-room, laid me on a 
 couch, and gave me a glass of Chartreuse. Then 
 the whole week I was there she would send up to 
 my little sitting room where I had an open fire, 
 the nicest broiled chicken and steak, all cooked in 
 real French style, and quantities of fruit. I had 
 a French boy nineteen years old, badly pock mark- 
 ed, for chambermaid. When I was able to drive 
 about, I saw the Spanish ladies driving in open 
 carriages with black Spanish lace veils over their 
 heads. On coming to Valencia the country was 
 beautiful. We saw men with black jackets and 
 red sashes around their waists, climbing long lad- 
 ders to gather dates from the very tall palm trees, 
 and in many places women and men were gather- 
 ing oranges, and at the stations piles of boxes and 
 crates of oranges were seen ready for shipment. 
 
 Next we went to Barcelona. Our French friends 
 were at the hotel there, and one of the ladies said 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 that the Spanish cooking had made her ill. In 
 Italy one can get French bread and French cook- 
 ing at the hotels and boarding houses, but in Spain 
 there is nothing but the dark bread which is al- 
 ways a little sour, and the Spanish stews with oil 
 and garlic, and sometimes they have the edible 
 snails in the stews, the Spanish men pick them out 
 of the shells with toothpicks. It is needless to say 
 that we did not eat the snails. 
 
 Every train we traveled on in Spain had a guard 
 of soldiers on it on account of the brigands. 
 
 We went from Barcelona to Marseilles, and 
 thence to Nice where we stayed two weeks, and of 
 course while there went over to Monte Carlo to 
 hear the music and watch the gamblers. One of 
 the bankers at Nice told us that a Russian came 
 and deposited a large sum of money in the bank, 
 and every morning he would come and draw out a 
 certain amount and go over to Monte Carlo, and 
 in the evening would bring back his winnings and 
 telegraph them to Russia, never put anything back 
 in the bank he had gained. After some time he 
 had gained a large amount of money, but at last 
 he came back and told the banker his luck had 
 changed and he was going home. 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 From Nice we went to Genoa. The day after we 
 got there they unveiled a statue to Mizzini, great 
 crowds were there, and they were having pro- 
 cessions and speeches. 
 
 From there we went to Pisa and stayed two days. 
 From there to Rome. The whole country from Pisa 
 to Rome down the west coast is very malarious, 
 and we were told all of the people moved out of 
 some of the towns in the summer and go to the 
 mountains. All along the railroad they had plant- 
 ed eucalyptus trees, and at the stations they had 
 planted groves of them, as they were considered 
 a preventive of malaria. Rome used to be very un- 
 healthful, but since they have drained the Pontine 
 Marshes it is as healthful as any city in Europe. 
 
 When we reached Rome we found our friend, 
 Mrs. Amoss, from Maryland. She had her own car- 
 riage and two fine horses, and she would send her 
 English maid every morning to ask where we 
 would like to go that day, and would drive us all 
 around everywhere. Of course, we did a great 
 deal of sightseeing, and had beautiful drives out 
 on the Campania. We met some friends from Rich- 
 mond, Virginia, there — Mrs. W. and her two sons, 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 who had been down to Naples and had stayed two 
 weeks. She said that English people had told 
 her before she went, not to drink the water in 
 Naples, or stay in the lower part of the city, and 
 that they had done both and were perfectly well, 
 which showed that you needn't mind what people 
 told you. The next morning my husband went 
 down to the Hotel de Russie to call on them and 
 found they had gone on to Florence, and that the 
 youngest son was very ill. He was ill at Florence 
 for two or three months with typhus fever con- 
 tracted at Naples. 
 
 We spent some months in Rome and were there 
 for the carnival, and went on to Naples in the 
 Spring. The morning we left for Rome it had 
 turned very cold and the fountains were draped 
 with icicles, and on the way to Naples we had a 
 heavy snow storm. It was very cold when we 
 reached there and as we had nothing but open 
 carriages we suffered driving to our hotel. We 
 found a little fire in the reading room most com- 
 fortable. Of course, the cold weather did not last 
 long, but the people suffered very much. As we 
 drove through the streets from the station all the 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 shops were wide open and had braziers placed out 
 on the streets in front of them filled with charcoal 
 with burning pine cones on the top, and people 
 were crowding around them trying to get warm. 
 In 1883, we were at the Hotel Britanique kept by 
 Madame McPherson, where I had been in 1877. It 
 was situated high up on the Corso Victor Emanuel. 
 The view from there was magnificent. We spent 
 a great deal of time in the wonderful aquarium at 
 Naples, and the museum, and at Pompeii, and J. 
 ascended Vesuvius on the new railroad. We had 
 a beautiful day for the trip to Capri, but some 
 friends of ours, two young ladies from Chicago, 
 went to Capri one day and a storm came down on 
 the bay and everyone was seasick. The boat hands 
 had to come into the saloon to hold the basins for 
 the ladies. When they reached the island no one 
 could land, and our friends said they could not 
 raise their heads to look out. They were sick for 
 several days after they returned to the hotel. 
 
 We returned to Rome in time for Easter, and 
 found every place crowded. We were driving 
 around half the night, trying to get into some 
 good hotel. At last the proprietor of the Hotel de 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 Louvre gave up his own room to us. I was too 
 tired to move the next morning, so J. went alone 
 to St. Peter's for the music. Even St. Peter's was 
 filled with people. He met many acquaintances, 
 people we had met in other cities. The music was 
 splendid of course. When J. wanted to return to 
 the hotel he found he had forgotten its name, and 
 the name of the street, so for hours he was going 
 from one hotel to another, the hotel clerks looking 
 on the registers for our names, and kindly assist- 
 ing him. At last he reached the Louvre in time 
 for dinner. Our friend, Mrs. Amoss had an apart- 
 ment near, and she took us in her carriage to 
 many villas and grounds where cabs were not al- 
 lowed. 
 
 Afterwards we went to Florence and spent some 
 time there. We boarded with good Madame Liotti, 
 No. 1 Piazza Sodireni, where I had been before 
 several times. J. went to Venice with some friends 
 leaving me at Madame Giotti's. 
 
 From Florence we went to Milan for a week, and 
 thence to Balagio on Lake Como, and from there 
 we went through the St. Gothard Tunnel to Lu- 
 cerne, and then to Paris. 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 Paris in May is beautiful and gay. The Champs 
 Elysee — it is like the "Elysian Fields," the horse 
 chestnut trees with their pyramids of white bloom, 
 four rows of them all along the wide avenue, and 
 green grass, bright flowers, and fountains on either 
 side with seats for the weary, all along up the in- 
 cline from the Palace de la Concord to the Arch de 
 Triumph^a mile, handsome buildings for the back- 
 ground. When in Paris in November everything 
 was dark and dismal and raining. 
 
 We reached Paris early Sunday morning and I 
 did not go out, but J. said he would go to church, 
 so I gave him directions as he had never been 
 there, to go up the Champs Elysee and find a 
 side street and turn to the right for the American 
 Church, but he never found that church. He was 
 so delighted with the sunshine and flowers and the 
 gay people that he walked way up to the Arch de 
 Triumphe, and ascended the steps to the top of it — 
 such a view, the beautiful city spread out at his 
 feet, the river winding through it with its many 
 bridges, the great golden dome of the Invalides 
 shining in the sunlight, and many other churches 
 and towers and great buildings could be seen. 
 
 169 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 When he came down from the arch he walked on 
 down the avenue, and sat on a bench in a grove of 
 trees; soon brought refreshments — tea, coffee, ices, 
 and wines and cakes. He was very tired and en- 
 joyed the rest. Soon a curtain was raised from a 
 stage back among the trees, and girls danced and 
 sang, the young men on the benches keeping time 
 with their teaspoons and ladies clapping their hands 
 and applauding, then some acrobats performed. I 
 was getting uneasy about J. when he walked in 
 quite excited, having enjoyed the day immensely. 
 After dinner in the evening he said he was going 
 to write his mother all about his Sunday in Paris, 
 I advised him not to, but he said, "Mother would 
 understand." So he wrote a long letter, and as 
 soon as possible he had an answer from his eldest 
 sister, terribly shocked at his behavior. She said 
 her mother could not trust herself to write. People 
 always say that I find when they are afraid the 
 other person won't be severe enough, but sister 
 F. was severe; she thought wicked Paris had 
 ruined him, so I had to write at once to say that J. 
 was most particular about going to church, and 
 was really a good, pious man in spite of his first 
 Sunday in Pari? 
 
 170 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 We spent the month of May in Paris. The Wises 
 joined us there. The son and mother had both re- 
 covered after months of illness at Florence. The 
 elder son had consumption and they had come to 
 Europe on account of his health, it did him no 
 good and he died soon after his return to America. 
 Mrs. Zolikoffer was in Paris, but the good Doctor 
 was dead. 
 
 We went on to London June 1, 1883. We had 
 an apartment very near Hyde Park. The first day 
 we walked out in the Park we found the east wind 
 blowing and we shivered and shook from the cold. 
 We wore our winter clothes all summer. The 
 Wises soon joined us in London, and one evening 
 B. the younger son, walked in the park with us 
 and we were locked in. We had seen a notice on 
 the gate that it would be locked at 9 p. m., but as 
 the sun was shining brightly we forgot how far 
 north we were and the length of the days in sum- 
 mer in England. Some kind English people told 
 us of another gate that was left open later, so we 
 got out there. J. and B. went to Parliament one 
 day and a gentleman who had been in Virginia 
 took them in and gave them seats and they heard 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 Gladstone speak. We had fine strawberries, and 
 the largest gooseberries, I ever saw, in London for 
 two months, but peaches and grapes only grow un- 
 der glass. I gave a shilling for one small peach. 
 When I was ill my doctor told me one day he ate 
 much fruit because he suffered from liver disease, 
 he said he ate a quart of currants every morning, 
 and a quart of gooseberries every evening. 
 
 When we were about to get a trained nurse (I 
 was very ill), they gave us a paper directing the 
 treatment of the nurse. She must have good meals 
 and two quarts of beer every day. I said if she 
 should drink all of that beer I should be afraid of 
 her, but much to my relief she preferred claret. 
 You never see a drunken man in France, Spain, or 
 Italy, where they drink wine ; but in Great Britain 
 where whiskey and brandy are used you see much 
 drunkenness, and they even have inebriate asylums 
 for ladies. My nurse didn't drink much claret, 
 but she drank tea all day and all night, J. bought 
 pounds of it for her and she made it on a spirit 
 lamp. The nurse and the servants dropped their 
 h's till I thought I should do the same when I was 
 well. I told an English lady that we didn't drop 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 h's in America, and she said, "Well, how would you 
 know uneducated people then?" After I was well 
 enough to go out I went in a bath chair all about 
 Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. J. always 
 went with me. The man who pushed the chair 
 had been a soldier in the Crimean War and was 
 quite entertaining. 
 
 While we were at Liverpool on our way home, 
 J. went to Scotland for a week. We had a stormy 
 voyage of twelve days and twelve nights crossing 
 the ocean. We shipped seas and had to close the 
 hatchways. Such rolling and tumbling, nearly 
 everybody was sick, and there was no cooking on 
 the ship for three days. Our smoke stacks were 
 as white as snow to their tops from the salt on 
 them. This was the last part of September. We 
 landed at New York and went to our home in 
 Lexington, Virginia. A young Englishman ac- 
 companied us. He was delighted with our splendid 
 fruit. We had peaches and grapes, and he said 
 that any nobleman of England would be glad to 
 have the fruit we had. He asked why the young 
 ladies wore ball dresses to church? I told him that 
 ours was a warm climate in summer, and ladies 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 had to wear organdies and other thin goods on ac- 
 count of the heat. Our young Englishman said it 
 was just like one family in our town, men on the 
 street calling my husband John, and everybody 
 coming to see us to welcome us home. We had 
 many relatives in the town. 
 
 We went to Richmond in the spring and the 
 Greenbrier White Sulphur Springs in the summer 
 for my health. 
 
 In 1885 we went to New Orleans to the Expo- 
 sition. When there some time betxore we had 
 found the weather very warm, now we suffered 
 from the cold. Everything at the Exposition had 
 been prepared for warm weather, ice cream stands 
 and soda water, when everybody was shivering 
 and shaking with the cold. The weather ruined the 
 Exposition. The rain had poured for three months, 
 and they had to build a railroad to transport goods 
 from the ships to the grounds. We left there and 
 went to Citronell, a little health resort near Mo- 
 bile, for a rest. We had some relatives there. We 
 then went on to Florida to Jacksonville, and up 
 St. John's River to Sanford, and then to Tampa on 
 the Gulf. We returned home by Charleston, South 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 Carolina, and spent a week with our cousins, Doc- 
 tor William F, Junkin's family. 
 
 One year Mrs. T. J. Jackson visited us during the 
 commencements of our colleges, and I gave her 
 a large reception. At another time she came with 
 her grandchildren to unveil the statue of her hus- 
 band, Stonewall Jackson, at the Cemetery, and 
 stayed with us. She was a lovely, cultivated, re- 
 fined woman, beautiful in her youth. She lived to 
 be eighty years old. 
 
 One summer we spent at Newport, Rhode Is- 
 land, and there we met Professor Bartlett and his 
 family. We returned by Montclair, New Jersey, 
 and visited Doctor Junkin's family, who were then 
 living there. 
 
 We went to the Chicago Exposition in the fall of 
 1893. We went by Clifton Forge and Cincinnati 
 only traveling in daylight. I enjoyed Buffalo Bill's 
 Show more than anything I saw there, I had been 
 to so many expositions. We went to New York 
 and visited a cousin there before returning home. 
 One fall we went to New York and spent several 
 weeks there, and then went to Niagara Falls, and 
 from there to visit some relatives in Louisville 
 and Lexington, Kentucky, 
 
 175 
 
MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 We sometimes went to the Greenbrier White 
 Sulphur Springs. For several years we spent the 
 month of March at Old Point. We were there 
 when the ships were preparing for the Spanish 
 War, and from my windows in the Hygeia Hotel I 
 could see the sailors and marines drilling on the 
 ships. The New York was the nearest in front 
 of my windows. Before they went down to Cuba 
 they were all painted grey. 
 
 We spent a great many winters in Washington. 
 In 1899 and 1900 we spent the winter at 16th and 
 Q Streets; there were some delightful people in 
 the house, one of them, Mrs. Simpson, played so 
 beautifully on the piano, anything you chose to 
 ask for without notes, most difficult or very light. 
 My old friend Mrs. Amoss was in Washington near 
 us. The winter of 1900 and 1901 we were on I 
 Street. McKinley was inaugurated in March of 
 that year for his second term. Rain and sleet kept 
 me in, but I saw much from my bay window. The 
 West Point cadets marched by, their fine band 
 playing. The winter of 1901-1902 I spent at home. 
 Then the three following winters I spent in Wash- 
 ington; 1902-1903 in Bancroft Place; 1903-04 I 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 boarded at Mrs. Delaplanes, 917 Sixteenth Street; 
 and 1904-05 on M Street near Thomas Circle. 
 
 In March of that year Roosevelt was inaugurat- 
 ed for his second term. That winter was very cold, 
 much snow and ice. The snow would melt a great 
 deal in daylight and freeze at night, until the 
 streets were covered with ice and the walking was 
 dangerous, but we wore rubber shoes and I used 
 an umbrella for a cane. When March came Penn- 
 sylvania Avenue was cleaned of snow and ice for 
 the procession, costing $5,000, I heard. The 4th 
 of March was a bright, beautiful day, very cold, but 
 we were fortunate in getting seats nearly opposite 
 the White House and the reviewing stand on La- 
 fayette Square, which were protected from the 
 wind, and we spent most of the day there. The 
 crowd was tremendous. The procession was fine, 
 and I was especially interested in the Carlisle In- 
 dian cadets, who were uniformed and marching 
 beautifully, led by four old chiefs in feathers and 
 regular savage dress, Old Geronimo, the terrible 
 Apache Chief who defied the United States soldiers 
 for so long, at their head. The old chiefs were 
 mounted on ponies. The other organization most 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIR GINIA 
 
 interesting to me was the Richmond Blues, in their 
 Revolutionary uniform of blue and white, their 
 white plumes waving in the wind. The troops of 
 each state came with their governor at their head 
 on horseback, and some of the governors looked as 
 if it was their first attempt at riding, but when the 
 Maryland troops came, their bands playing "My 
 Maryland," with Governor Warfield at their head, 
 riding splendidly, the crowd thought he was Gen- 
 eral Fitz Lee, the resemblance was so great, and 
 they cheered tremendously. 
 
 We went in the fall of 1905 to Florida, and stop- 
 ped at Jacksonville, Palm Beach, and Miami. Af- 
 terwards crossed the waters to Nassau, the capital 
 of the Behamas belonging to the British, and cele- 
 brated during the Civil War as a base for blockade 
 runners to the Southern ports. It is only fifteen 
 hours from Miami. One of the first things I 
 noticed on arriving at Nassau were the policemen, 
 great black giants. They were brought from Hon- 
 duras, and I was told that the negroes in Nassau 
 are dreadfully afraid of them. They have showy 
 uniforms and are drilled like soldiers, and are 
 marched to church on Sunday and seated in the 
 gallery opposite the pulpit. 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 We found Nassau a delightful winter climate, the 
 trade winds keeping it from being too hot. Of 
 course, clothing must be light, and you keep out 
 of the sun. The fruit is delicious and of many va- 
 rieties, the oranges the sweetest I ever tasted. J. 
 thought they were too sweet and preferred grape 
 fruit. 
 
 There is an island near belonging to an Irishman, 
 that has a beautiful bathing beach, the sand is as 
 white as snow, you take a boat and go over to 
 this island covered with cocoanut palms and orange 
 trees, which have benches and tables under them, 
 with attendants pealing oranges and filling large 
 dishes with them, each orange having a little sharp 
 stick in it to hold it by to prevent soiling your 
 hands. The water is bright and beautiful, more 
 beautiful than the Bay of Naples. A man from 
 New York they said stayed in the water at the 
 beach for three hours, swimming each day. He 
 was called the "mahogany man" because he was 
 so sunburned. Bathing was fine and many people 
 enjoyed it. 
 
 There were beautiful sea gardens and we went 
 out to see them in glass bottom boats. The fish 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGIN IA 
 
 brought into Nassau were beautiful, brilliant col- 
 ors, gold with red stripes, or spots of blue, and 
 silver fish striped or spotted red or blue. The oriole 
 fish is orange and black. There are a great many 
 varities of fish there. I saw one dreadful looking 
 one, very large and long like a serpeant, with a 
 head like a dog, and teeth that I was told could 
 bite a man's leg off. Of course there are sharks 
 there too. The flowers were my constant delight, 
 and there are many strange trees and plants there. 
 
 One of Flagler's fine hotels is at Nassau, and they 
 had a very fine orchestra that gave concerts three 
 times a day. We would sit on the porches there 
 every morning to hear the music and see the beau- 
 tiful views of the water, with yachts and other 
 boats riding over it, and see the millionaires pro- 
 menading in their fine gowns and jewels, which 
 they even wore in the morning. 
 
 The winter of 1906-07 I spent at home. In the 
 Spring we went to Richmond to the Reunion of 
 the Confederate Veterans, and the unveiling of 
 President Davis' statue, and then afterwards we 
 went down by boat to the Jamestown Exposition. 
 The next winter, 1907-08, I spent most of the time 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VI RGINIA 
 
 in Richmond, and March at Newport News, where 
 my cousin, Mrs. W. had an apartment at the Hotel 
 Warrick. I spent the summer at home, my last 
 summer there, for I sold my home and twenty 
 acres of land to the Virginia Military Institute. 
 The next five winters I spent in Washington at 
 Mrs. Delaplanes on Sixteenth Street. 
 
 I was in Washington at Mrs. Delaplane's the 
 winter of 1909 when Taft was inaugurated. The 
 day before Mr. Taft was inaugurated we had heavy 
 rains, and the night before I noticed it was turning 
 colder, and sleet was beating against the windows, 
 and I told the ladies seated in Mrs. D.'s parlor the 
 weather would be bad next day, but they exclaim- 
 ed, "Oh no, the Weather Bureau says 'fine weath- 
 er.' " We had a blizzard. When I awoke in the 
 morning the wind was blowing great guns, and 
 sheets of snow were fllying down the street. Our 
 Virginia Military Institute cadets had come to be 
 in the parade, and General Nichols ordered rub- 
 ber overshoes for the whole corps. By noon the 
 snow ceased falling, but the rain the day before and 
 the snow in the morning had covered the streets 
 with slush, and a bitter cold wind chilled one to 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN VIRGINIA 
 
 the bone. The railroads were blocked and many 
 people could not get to Washington. The 7th 
 Regiment of New York was stopped on the way, 
 and Baltimore was filled with people who could 
 not get over. I did not go out, but saw the pro- 
 cession returning on K Street from my window, 
 and the fireworks that night showing above the 
 houses. 
 
 I was also in Washington at Mrs. Delaplane's 
 the winter of 1913 when Wilson was inaugurated 
 for his first term. The 4th was a beautiful, bright 
 day, and we had seats in the stand on Lafayette 
 Park, opposite the reviewing stand. There was a 
 great crowd of on-lookers, and a grand procession. 
 Our V. M. I. cadets were in it, also the Richmond 
 Blues, and West Point cadets. The Woman's Suf- 
 frage Parade was the day before, the 3rd of March, 
 and there was such an enormous crowd of people 
 that is was with difficulty the parade could get 
 through the crowd. I was also in Washington for 
 Wilson's second inauguration in 1917, but the 
 weather was so cold and windy I did not go out. 
 
 In 1913-14 I stayed at 1122 Vermont Avenue. I 
 spent four winters at this place. The many winters 
 
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MEMORIES OF A LONG LIFE IN V IRGINIA 
 
 I spent in Washington were very pleasant. I met 
 many interesting people and very kind ones. 
 
 I spent the month of June at Atlantic City for 
 nine or ten years. 
 
 After we entered the War in 1917, I have since 
 remained in Lexington. 
 
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