Anna Symmes, the wife of the ninth President of the United States, was born the famous year of American Independence, and but a few months after the renowned skirmish at Lexington. Her birth-place was near Morristown, New Jersey, the scene of suffering the following year, where the tracks of the blood-stained feet of the soldiers attested their forlorn condition. Soon after her birth, which occurred the 25th of July, 1775, her mother died. Bereft of her care, she was thrown upon her father’s hands for those attentions necessary for one of such a tender age, which until her fourth year he carefully bestowed. Her maternal grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Tuthill, were residing at Southhold, Long Island, and thither at the age of four years she was taken by her surviving parent. The incidents of her journey from Morristown to Long Island, then in the possession of the British, she remembered through life. Her father, the Hon. John Cleves Symmes, though at the time a Colonel in the Continental army, was so anxious to place his daughter with her grandmother, that he assumed the disguise of a British officer’s uniform and successfully accomplished his perilous undertaking. Leaving her in the home from which he had taken her mother years before, he joined his own troops and served with distinction during the war. Not until after the evacuation of New York, in the fall of 1783, did the father and child meet again, nor did she return to his New Jersey home. Under the care of her excellent grandmother, she became early imbued with a love of religious reading, and learned those early habits of industry which the young under the right influences early attain. Mrs. Tuthill was a godly woman, whose soul had been deeply stirred by the preaching of Whitfield, whom she greatly reverenced and admired. From her lips the little Anna received her first religious instructions, the good impressions of which lasted her through life. She often remarked that “from her earliest childhood, the frivolous amusements of youth had no charms for her. If ever constrained to attend places of fashionable amusement, it was to gratify others and not herself.”, In this early home of quiet and retirement, she acquired habits of order and truthfulness which characterized her conduct in after years. Her hands, even as a child, were never idle, but as a Christian virtue, she was trained to diligence, prudence, and economy. When old enough to attend school, she was placed at a seminary in East Hampton, where she remained some time, and subsequently she was a pupil of Mrs. Isabelle Graham, and an inmate of her family in New York city. Here she readily acquired knowledge, and improved the opportunities afforded her. For her teacher she ever retained the highest regard, and cherished the memory of that pious and exemplary woman through all the changes of her own life.