Lear's duties were by no means all pedagogical and ultimately he became Washington's private secretary. In Philadelphia he and his family lived in the presidential mansion. Washington had for him "a particular friendship," an almost fatherly affection. His interest in Lear's little son Lincoln was almost as great as he would have bestowed upon his own grandson. Apropos of the recovery of the child from a serious illness he wrote in 1793: "It gave Mrs. Washington, myself, and all who knew him sincere pleasure to hear that our little favourite had arrived safe and was in good health at Portsmouth--we sincerely wish him a long continuance of the latter--that he may be always as charming and promising as he now is--that he may live to be a comfort and blessing to you--and an ornament to his Country. As a token of my affection for him I send him a ticket in the lottery that's now drawing in the Federal City; if it should be his fortune to draw the Hotel, it will add to the pleasure I feel in giving it." Truly a rather singular gift for a child, we would think in these days. Let us see how it turned out. The next May Washington wrote to Lear, then in Europe on business for the Potomac Navigation Company, of which he had become president: "Often, through the medium of Mr. Langdon, we hear of your son Lincoln, and with pleasure, that he continues to be the healthy and sprightly child he formerly was. He declared if his ticket should turn up a prize, he would go and live in the Federal City. He did not consider, poor little fellow, that some of the prizes would hardly build him a baby house nor foresee that one of these small tickets would be his lot, having drawn no more than ten dollars." Lear's first wife had died the year before of yellow fever at the President's house in Philadelphia, and for his second he took the widow of George A. Washington--Fanny--who was a niece of Martha Washington, being a daughter of Anna Dandridge Bassett and Colonel Burwell Bassett. This alliance tended to strengthen the friendly relations between Lear and the General. In Washington's last moments Lear held his dying hand and later penned a noble description of the final scene that reveals a man of high and tender sentiments with a true appreciation of his benefactor's greatness. Washington willed him the use of three hundred sixty acres east of Hunting Creek during life. When Fanny Lear died, Lear married Frances Dandridge Henley, another niece of Mrs. Washington. Lear's descendants still own a quilt made by Martha Washington and given to this niece.