It has been with much persuasion and many difficulties I have succeeded in getting Mr. L's consent to Anne and Margaret Lynn being sent to you. I need not say anything as to Anne's temper and disposition. I know your penetration is sufficient, and in your judgment and tenderness [to improve both] I have entire confidence. You can do more to improve her than I can and I know you will. I have many happy proofs of the great good, both in mind and manners, that have accompanied your exertions towards my family. Heaven bless and prosper you, is the wish of your friend, MARY P. LEWIS. P. S. My respects to Mrs. Crutchfield. I have sent a cot and bedding for Anne and Lynn. Mary Preston Lewis died at an early age, leaving a large family of young children, and it devolved upon the subject of this sketch, as being one of the oldest, to act the part of mother and sister towards them--a duty which she nobly performed, ever extending to them Christian care and true sympathy. The portals of Montgomery Hall were always open to receive them and her younger brothers. In fact it became the home of her sisters, three of whom were subsequently, at different periods, married from it: namely, Margaret Lynn, to John Cochran, of Charlottesville, Va., Sarah, to her cousin, Col. John Lewis, of Kanawha, and Polydora, to John Gosse, of Albemarle. Her two younger brothers, John Benjamin and Thomas Preston, also resided with her several years while attending school in Staunton. Anne Lewis, the third child of Major John Lewis and Mary Preston, and according to contemporaneous accounts, the most favored of them all; was entered in her ninth year at the school--a school in great repute at that day--of Mr. Crutchfield, situated in the Falling Spring Valley near the Peytona Cascades, Alleghany County.[29] [29] The following letter from John Preston, Treasurer of the State of Virginia, gives a brief account of the death of his sister, Mary Preston Lewis. Greenfield, Botetourt County, Va., February 8th, 1824. _Dear Sister_: