and the earnestness with which he spoke his sentiments had a most happy and conservative influence over the people of the West. The little colony soon began to suffer from the insufficient supply of corn and of powder and lead, and as the family of Colonel Donelson numbered many children and servants, he concluded to remove with them to Kentucky. He had in that State, moreover, land claims which he could more easily attend to and secure by being there. During his residence there, his daughter Rachel was married to Lewis Robards, a man of good family. She had grown up amid the trials and dangers of a frontier life, but the examples that she daily saw of noble fortitude, of calm bravery, and of heroic labor were worth many a tamer and weaker lesson of more civilized life. She grew up accomplished in the higher art of making home attractive and relatives happy. She was at the same time lively and gentle, gifted with patience and prudence, and winning in her simple and unaffected manners. Soon after his daughter’s marriage, Colonel Donelson returned to Tennessee with his family. In the fall of 1785, while surveying in the woods far from home, this brave and gallant gentleman was pierced by bullets from an unseen foe, and died the same night. Judge John Overton, then a young lawyer, in the fall of 1787, went to Mercer County, Kentucky, and became a boarder in the family of Mrs. Robards, where Lewis Robards and his wife were living. Judge Overton was not long in discovering that they lived very unhappily, because Captain Robards was jealous of a gentleman named Short. His disposition was extremely unfortunate, and kept the whole family in uneasiness and distress. This unpleasant state of affairs continued to increase until Captain Robards wrote to his mother-in-law, the widowed Mrs. Donelson, requesting that she would take her daughter home, as he did not intend to live with her any longer. Some time in the latter part of 1788, Samuel Donelson came and started away with his sister. Judge Overton says, “my clear and distinct recollection is, that it was said to be a final separation, at the instance of Captain Robards; for I well recollect the distress of old Mrs. Robards on account of her daughter-in-law Rachel going away, and on account of the separation that was about to take place, together with the circumstance of the old lady’s embracing her affectionately. The old lady always blamed her son Lewis, and took the part of her daughter-in-law.” Judge Overton further remarks that he never heard any of the family censure young Mrs. Robards on account of the unhappy difference between her husband and herself; but that he frequently heard them express the most favorable sentiments regarding her.