The Ladies of the White House; Or, in the Home of the Presidents: Being a Complete History of the Social and Domestic Lives of the Presidents from Washington to the Present Time—1789–1881Holloway, Laura C. (Laura Carter)
History
The Ladies of the White House; Or, in the Home of the Presidents: Being a Complete History of the Social and Domestic Lives of the Presidents from Washington to the Present Time—1789–1881
Holloway, Laura C. (Laura Carter)
Presidents -- United States -- Biography; Presidents' spouses -- United States -- Biography
“The recollection of that parting as a trial for her stirs up, even at
this distance of time, the long dormant feelings which I thought my last
tear had been shed for. You, dear madam, will excuse this revival of
incidents not required for your sketch, and will use such things only as
may have an interest for the public. His first cruise lasted eighteen
months, in the U. S. ship John Adams, which went up the Mediterranean as
far as Constantinople; and one of its incidents was the breaking out of
the cholera on board. He got back to us safely, however, and my mother
was rewarded for her sufferings by the encomiums elicited by his conduct
and character from the officers under whom he had served, and their
predictions as to the useful and honorable career which lay before him.
She continued to hear him highly spoken of, and to learn that he was
respected by all who knew him, and that his leisure hours on board the
ship were devoted to reading and study. In the interval between his
cruises, he was to stay with her in Washington.
“In the second year of her residence there, she had the happiness of
having my brother Lewis, another of her younger children, added to her
family. He obtained a clerkship, which afforded him a post while he was
qualifying himself for the practice of the law, and he remained with us
until his marriage, which took place a few years later. He was highly
gifted, remarkably handsome, and shone in the social circle, but never
formed one of the idle throng always to be found in cities. Very
domestic in his tastes and habits, his leisure hours were divided
between his professional studies and associates belonging to the circle
in which his family moved. He married Miss Martin, a niece of Mrs.
Donelson, with whom he became acquainted at the ‘White House,’ where she
was staying. He then moved to the young State of Arkansas, where a
promising career at the bar was cut short by an early death from
congestive fever, less than a year after his mother’s death.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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