As a young girl Sarah Alexander had not only listened to oft-repeated accounts of the battles and valor of her ancestors but was familiar with the historic sites in the neighborhood of her childhood’s home. She believed her own people the bravest in the world. Well educated, and surrounded with the atmosphere of liberal culture, of high ideas, of the sacredness of duty and the beauty of religion, she had been morally well equipped for the responsibilities of motherhood and mature life. Add to this, the self-reliance naturally inbred by dwelling as an orphan girl among five young men, her cousins; and last and most important, the priceless advantage of a superb physique, and one sees beforehand to what inheritance her sons were to come. One old lady, who remembers her well, enthusiastically declared that “she was wonderfully calculated to form the manners of children.” Another who knew her in later life writes of her as “a Spartan mother,” “a grand old lady.” Another says “Intelligent, lady-like, well educated;” another that “she was all that is said of her in Mackenzie’s Life of O. H. Perry.” Those nearest to her remember her handsome brown eyes, dark hair, rich complexion, fine white teeth, and stately figure. The deeds of the Perry men are matters of history. The province of the women was at home, but it was the mothers, of the Hazard and the Alexander blood who prepared the men for their careers by moulding in them the principles from which noble actions spring. Discipline, sweetened with love, was the system of the mother of the Perry boys, and the foundation of their education. First of all, they must obey. The principles of Christianity, of honor, and of chivalry were instilled in their minds from birth. _Noblesse oblige_ was their motto. It was at home, under their mother’s eye that Oliver learned how to win victory at Lake Erie, and Matthew a treaty with Japan. She fired the minds of her boys with the ineradicable passion of patriotism, the love of duty, and the conquest of self. At the same time, she trained them to the severest virtue, purest motives, faithfulness in details, a love for literature, and a reverence for sacred things. The habit which Matthew C. Perry had of reading his Bible through once during every cruise, his scrupulous regard for the Lord’s day, the American Sunday, his taste for literature, and his love for the English classics were formed at his mother’s knee.