XII.
ANNA SYMMES HARRISON.
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.
At the age of nineteen she bade adieu to her aged grandparents, and accompanied her father and step-mother to Ohio, in 1794. A year previous to this time, Judge Symmes had located a small colony of settlers who had accompanied him from New Jersey, at a point on the Ohio river, afterward known as North Bend. Returning to the Eastern States, he married Miss Susan Livingston, a daughter of Governor Livingston, of New York, and in the autumn started again, accompanied by his wife and daughter, for his frontier home. The journey was made with great difficulty, and the party did not reach North Bend until the morning of the 1st of January, 1795. Thus was the youthful Anna a pioneer in the land which she lived to see blossoming as the rose under the hands of civilization and material progression.
Judge Symmes was one of the Associate Judges of the Supreme Court of the Northwestern Territory, and was often called to attend court in a distant part of the Territory. During the absence of her father on these journeyings, Anna would spend most of her time with an elder sister, who had previously removed to Lexington, Kentucky. It was while on one of these visits to her sister, Mrs. Peyton Short, that she formed the acquaintance of her future husband, then Captain Harrison,[16] of the United States Army, and in command of Fort Washington, the present site of Cincinnati. The youthful Virginian was much attracted by the gentle, modest manners and the sweet face of Anna Symmes, and he determined on winning her hand. The effort was highly successful, for they were married at her father’s house, North Bend, Ohio, November 22d, 1795.
16. William Henry Harrison, the third and youngest son of Benjamin Harrison, of Virginia, was born the 9th day of February, 1773, at Berkley, on the James river, about twenty-five miles below Richmond, in Charles City county. His father was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a member of the Continental Congress, and afterward Governor of Virginia. Young Harrison was educated at Hampden Sydney College, and afterward studied medicine. After his father’s death, in 1791, he became the ward of Robert Morris, the celebrated financier, whose private fortune so often relieved the sufferings of the Continental Army. When about to graduate as a physician, the reports of troubles in the West decided him to join the frontier troops. The opposition of his excellent guardian was not sufficient to deter him from his purpose, and as his design was approved by Washington, who had also been a warm friend of his father, he received from that noble warrior an ensign’s commission in the first regiment of United States Artillery, then stationed at Fort Washington.
Thus, in less than one year after her removal from her childhood’s home, in the twentieth year of her age, Anna Symmes became the wife of Captain Harrison, subsequently the most popular General of his day and President of the United States.
Soon after their marriage, Captain Harrison resigned his commission in the army, and was elected the first delegate to Congress from the Northwest Territory. Mrs. Harrison accompanied him to Philadelphia, then the seat of the General Government, but spending, however, most of the session in visiting her husband’s relatives in Virginia.
From those who knew Mrs. Harrison at this period of her life, is given the assurance that she was very handsome. Her face was full of animation and kindliness, and her health, which was perfectly robust, added a glow to her features, very pleasing to behold. Her figure was not large, but a happy medium, although rather inclined to become reduced upon the slightest occasion. Later in life, as her health grew more delicate, she looked much smaller than when in youth’s bright morn she became a bride. In a letter received by her in 1840, from a friend who had known her at eighteen years of age, this passage occurs: “I suppose I should not recognize anything of your present countenance, for your early days have made such an impression upon my mind that I cannot realize any countenance for you but that of your youth, on which nature had been so profusely liberal.” In the pictures taken later in life, her face exhibits a very intellectual and animated expression, and there are traces of former beauty in the delicate features and bright black eyes.
When the Indiana Territory which now forms the State of Indiana, was formed out of a portion of the old Northwestern Territory, General Harrison was appointed its first Governor by President Adams.
He removed his family to the old French town of Vincennes, on the Wabash, then the seat of the Territorial Government, where Mrs. Harrison lived for many years a retired but very happy life.
Dispensing with a liberal hand and courteous manner the hospitality of the Governor’s Mansion, she was beloved and admired by all who knew her. General Harrison retained this position during the administrations of Adams, Jefferson and Madison, until the inglorious surrender of Hull in 1812, when he was appointed to the command of the northwestern army. Mrs. Harrison remained in Vincennes during the fall of 1811, while her husband was marching with his small force to disband the tribes of hostile Indians gathering for battle at Prophet’s Town, and was there when the news of the battle of Tippecanoe reached her. But she rejoiced that it was over, and the formidable combinations of Tecumseh and the Prophet were dissipated forever. Henceforth the settlers might work in peace, for the foot of the red man came never again across the Wabash with hostile intent.
The battle-ground of Tippecanoe, the scene of General Harrison’s dearly-bought triumph, after the lapse of three-quarters of a century, is as quiet and green as a village churchyard. A low white paling fence surrounds it, and the trees are tall and carefully pruned of undergrowth. Mounds, so frequently observed in the west, and here and there a quaint wooden headboard marks the spot of some brave soldier’s fall. The train as it rushes from Lafayette, Indiana, through what was formerly a wilderness, to the west, gives the traveller but a moment to look upon this historic spot, where on that fatal 7th of November morning, the Indians rushed unexpectedly upon the weary troops, sleeping after the exhaustive fatigue of travel, and met with a defeat that made the spot famous.
After the battle of Tippecanoe, General Harrison removed his family to Cincinnati, and accepted the position of Major-General in the forces of Kentucky, then about to march to the relief of the Northwestern Territory.
Mrs. Harrison was thus left a comparative stranger in Cincinnati, with the sole charge of her young and large family of children during the greater part of the war of 1812. During this time, several of the children were prostrated by long and severe illness, and to this trial was added the painful anxiety attending the fate of her husband. But under these and all afflictions, Mrs. Harrison bore up with the firmness of a Roman matron, and the humility and resignation of a tried Christian mother.
In 1814, General Harrison resigned his position in the army and went to live at North Bend, fifteen miles below Cincinnati, on the Ohio. In the limits of this sketch it is impossible to give all the interesting details of Mrs. Harrison’s life during her thirty years’ residence at the old homestead. Many, very many of her acts of neighborly kindness and Christian charity will never be known on earth, for she shrank from any display of benevolence.
General Harrison being much from home, engaged in public affairs, she was left in the control of her large family of ten children, and ofttimes the children of her friends and neighbors. Schools in that new and unsettled country were “few and far between,” and Mrs. Harrison always employed a private tutor. The generous hospitality of North Bend being so well known, it was not surprising that many of the children of the neighborhood became inmates of her family for as long as they chose to avail themselves of the privileges of the little school.
Although at this time in delicate health, Mrs. Harrison never wearied or complained in the discharge of domestic duties, and forgot the multiplied cares she assumed in the thought of the benefit the children of others would derive from such an arrangement. She was sustained by her husband, and loved by her children and servants, and the burden was lightened spiritually if not materially.
But here commenced the long series of trials which tested her character and chastened her heart. During her thirty years’ life at North Bend, she buried, one child in infancy, and subsequently followed to the grave three daughters and four sons, all of whom were settled in life, and ten grandchildren. In view of these bereavements she wrote to her pastor, “And now what shall I say to these things; only, ‘Be still and know that I am God.’ You will not fail to pray for me and my dear son and daughter who are left. For I have no wish for my children and grandchildren than to see them the humble followers of the Lord Jesus.”
Her influence over her family was strong and abiding, and all loved to do reverence to her consistent, conscientious life. Her only surviving son wrote in 1848, “That I am a firm believer in the religion of Christ is not a virtue of mine. I imbibed it at my mother’s breast, and can no more divest myself of it than I can of my nature.”
The same was true of all her children, and what errors they might embrace, they could not forget the religion of their mother, nor wander far from the precepts, for “whatever is imbibed with the mother’s milk lasts forever for weal or for woe.” The following incident will show that her precepts and examples as a member of the church were not unappreciated by her husband. In 1840, during the Presidential canvass, a delegation of politicians visited North Bend on the Sabbath. General Harrison met them near his residence and extending his hand, said: “Gentlemen, I should be most happy to welcome you on any other day, but if I have no regard for religion myself, I have too much respect for the religion of my wife to encourage the violation of the Christian Sabbath.”
In 1836, General Harrison was first nominated for the Presidency. Mrs. Harrison was much annoyed by even the remote possibility of his election. There were no less than three candidates of the old federal party in the field, and the triumph of either was almost an impossibility. Yet even this probability of having to break up the retirement of her old home at North Bend and be thrown in the station of fashion and position in Washington, filled the heart of Mrs. Harrison with dismay. When the trio of candidates had defeated themselves and elected the champion of the Democracy, Mrs. Harrison felt heartily glad that her quiet was again restored, and she contemplated with renewed delight the happy contentment of her western home on the banks of the sparkling, flowing river.
In 1840, the Federal party had ceased to exist; the opponents of Jackson and the system which emanated from his administration had taken the name of the Whig party, and Harrison, the sagacious Governor of the Northwestern Territory, the successful General, and later the farmer of North Bend, was the chosen of the people, and the idol of his party.
The canvass, for months before the day of the election, carried the most intense excitement and unbounded enthusiasm throughout the Union. The pecuniary difficulties of the country, during the past administration, left the people an opportunity for political gatherings. Financial prostration and hopeless bankruptcy paralyzed the various trades; and in the workshop, as in the counting-house, in the streets, in the fields, in vacant factories and barns, in the mechanic’s as in the artisan’s room, were heard debates of the pending question. Everywhere long processions with mottoed banners were seen marching to music, and throughout the land was heard the famous old “Tippecanoe and Tyler too,” and “Van is a used-up man,” campaign songs. Never before or since was such interest manifested, and never again will there be the same admiration expressed for any aspirant to public honors. Log-cabins, illustrative of General Harrison’s early days, were “raised” everywhere, and “companies” visited from place to place, equipped in handsome uniforms, and accompanied by bands of music. The whigs struggled manfully to elect their candidate, bringing to their service powerful appeals in the forms of stirring song, executed by youths in the streets, and dwelling continually upon the resumption of specie payment, revival of languishing trade, and public retrenchment and economy. The result was such as every one expected. General Harrison was elected President by a large majority, and John Tyler, of Virginia, was chosen Vice-President. This triumphant victory brought no sense of pride or elation to Mrs. Harrison. She was grateful to her countrymen for this unmistakable appreciation of the civil and military services of her husband, and rejoiced at his vindication over his traducers, but she took no pleasure in contemplating the pomp and circumstance of a life at the Executive Mansion. At no period of her life had she any taste for the gayeties of fashion or the dissipations of society. Her friends were ever welcome to her home, and found there refined pleasures and innocent amusements, but for the life of a woman of the world she had no sympathy.
General Harrison left his home in February, and was received in Washington with every demonstration of respect, and welcomed by Mayor Seaton in a speech delivered at City Hall. It was raining hard when he left the railroad depot, yet he walked with his hat in his hand, accompanied by an immense concourse of people. He went from Washington to his old home in Virginia for a few days, but returned in time for the Inauguration. The morning of the 4th of March, 1841, was ushered in by a salute of twenty-six guns. The day was devoted entirely to pleasure. The city of Washington was thronged with people, many of whom were from the most distant States of the Union. The procession was in keeping with the enthusiasm and interest displayed throughout the campaign. Ladies thronged the windows, and waved their handkerchiefs in token of kind feelings, while the wild huzzas of the opposite sex filled the air with a deafening noise. General Harrison was mounted on a white charger, accompanied by several personal friends, and his immediate escort were the officers and soldiers who had fought under him. Canoes and cabins, covered with appropriate mottoes, were conspicuous, and the scene was one of universal splendor.
Mrs. Harrison’s health, delicate for many years, was particularly frail in February when her husband left home for Washington, and her physicians protested against her crossing the mountains at that season of the year, and urged her remaining in Ohio until the opening of spring. General Harrison was accompanied to Washington by his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Jane F. Harrison, the widow of his namesake son, and her two sons. She was a very refined, accomplished person, and exceedingly popular during her short stay as mistress of ceremonies at the White House. Besides Mrs. Jane F. Harrison, there were several ladies of the President’s family residing temporarily with her until Mrs. Harrison should come on. Mrs. Findlay, the wife of General Findlay and aged aunt of Mrs. Harrison, Miss Ramsay, a cousin, and Miss Lucy S. Taylor, of Richmond, Virginia, a niece of the President’s, these were the occupants of the mansion the few short weeks of the President’s life, for in one month from the day of his inauguration he died. Pneumonia was the avowed cause, but it was the applicants for office who killed him. He was weak and aged, and unaccustomed to the confined life forced upon him in his new position, and the gentle kindness with which he received all who were clamoring for office did but inspire them with renewed ardor. The whig party had been out of power many years, and the greed of the politicians snapped the tendrils of the veteran’s declining years and sent him to the tomb before the glad notes of the inauguration anthem had died over the Virginia hills. President Harrison died the 4th of April, 1841, and on the 7th was laid temporarily to rest in the Congressional burying-grounds. The service was performed in the White House, by Rev. Mr. Hawley, in the presence of President Tyler, ex-President Adams, members of the cabinet, of Congress, and the foreign ministers. The procession was two miles in length, and was marshalled on its way by officers on horseback carrying white batons with black tassels. At the grounds, the liturgy of the Episcopal church was recited by Mr. Hawley. The coffin having been placed in the receiving vault, and the military salute having been fired, the procession resumed its march to the city, and by five o’clock that evening nothing remained but empty streets, and the emblems of mourning upon the houses, and the still deeper gloom which oppressed the general mind with renewed power after all was over; and the sense of the public bereavement alone was left to fill the thoughts. The following touching lines, from the gifted pen of N. P. Willis, remarkable for their pathos and harmony, need no apology for being introduced here. The grandeur and simple beauty of the swelling poem deserve a more lasting record than transitory verses usually receive.
The members of President Harrison’s family immediately vacated the Executive Mansion, and the grief-stricken widow ceased the preparations for her prolonged absence from home. What a shock this death must have been to her! For many months an interested spectator, if not an actor, in the stirring events of the canvass and election, afterward a sharer in the triumphs of her husband, and for weeks anticipating the happy reunion in the mansion of the Presidents, to be rudely torn by fate from his presence for ever, and to see every hope lying crushed around her, would have harrowed a nature of coarsest mould. She was summoned from the busy care of forwarding some matter of interest to be told that he was dead. Dead! she could scarcely believe the evidences of her senses. Dead! or was she mistaken in what was said to her? His last letter was before her, and she had scarcely ceased reading the accounts in the papers of the magnificence of the inaugural ball.
Howsoever cruel the blow, it was borne meekly and humbly by the Christian wife and mother, and she aroused herself from the stupor in which the announcement had thrown her.
In July, the remains of the sincerely regretted President and deeply mourned husband and father were removed to their present resting-place at North Bend.
Had her husband lived, Mrs. Harrison would have gone to Washington and discharged faithfully and conscientiously the duties of her position. But her residence there would not have been in accordance with her wishes or her taste.
She continued to reside at her old home, where the happiest years of her life had been spent, until the autumn of 1855, when she removed from the old homestead to the residence of her only surviving son, Hon. J. Scott Harrison, five miles below North Bend, on the Ohio river. She remained an inmate of his family until her death.
During the latter part of her life, she had many and severe attacks of illness, and perhaps nothing but the skill and devoted medical services of her physicians, and the almost idolatrous attentions of her granddaughters, kept the lamp of her life flickering so long. Her grandsons, too, claimed their share in this labor of love, and when the telegraph bore to their distant homes the tidings of her illness, they came with their wives to wait at her bedside, and whatever of business was suspended or neglected, their attentions to her were not relaxed for a moment. In a recent letter received from a granddaughter of Mrs. Harrison’s, this paragraph occurs: “Of many of the facts of her later life I was an eye-witness, as I was an inmate of my father’s family for three years previous to her death, and had the inestimable privilege of seeing her beautiful Christian resignation and conformity to the will of God as life drew to its close. Indeed, it was upon my breast that she breathed her precious life away.”
Mrs. Harrison was not indifferent to the political events of the age in which she lived, and few were better informed with regard to public men and measures than herself. Much of her time she spent in reading, during the closing years of her life, and she kept herself informed, through the medium of the daily papers, of the transactions of the outside world. Very few persons of even younger years took a greater interest in the movements of the armies during the late civil war, or could give a more succinct and graphic account of the details of a campaign.
She was not radical in her sentiments, and indulged in no preconceived prejudices against the South and its objectionable institution. In regard to the holding of slaves, she was willing that all should be fully persuaded in their own minds as to its propriety, but her own convictions were strongly against it.
Many of her grandsons were officers and soldiers in the Union army, and as occasion would permit, they would visit her to ask her blessing and her prayers. The one was given and the other promised with a patriotic zeal and ardor that many of the sterner sex might well have emulated.
During the war, a grandson and member of the family in which she resided came home on a brief leave of absence. The day of his departure arrived, and he went to the chamber of his grandmother to take what he supposed to be his last farewell in this life, as she was then confined to her bed with a severe illness. She received him with great affection, and in reply to his expressions of regret at leaving her, she said, “O, no, my son, your country needs your services; I do not. Go and discharge your duty faithfully and fearlessly. I feel that my prayers in your behalf will be heard, and that you will be returned in safety. And yet, perhaps, I do not feel as much concerned for you as I should: I have parted so often with your grandfather under similar circumstances, and he was always returned to me in safety, that I feel it will be the same with you.”
The young Captain did return to see his grandmother again in this life after several hard-fought battles, in which he received complimentary notice from his commanding officers. Her granddaughter says: “My husband, Dr. Eaton, one of her physicians being in the house and an invalid, spent much of his time in her room, and would often say to me, ‘I never met a more entertaining person than your grandma. I could sit for hours and listen to her conversation.’ Such is not often said, by a man in the prime of life, of an old lady nearly ninety years of age. Since then he has gone to join her in her heavenly home.”
Mrs. Harrison’s distinguishing characteristics were her Christian humility and total want of selfishness; her modest, retiring manners and generosity and benevolence. She was always anxious to promote the well-being of others at her own expense, and sacrificed herself for the good of others.
Many incidents of generosity are remembered and treasured by her descendants, which, though not of sufficient interest to record, are of priceless value to those who witnessed their exhibition, and were recipients of her beneficence.
Every public and private charity was near her heart, and received liberally from her hand. But those who enjoyed her bounty knew not of its source. To a poor minister she would write: “Accept this trifle from a friend.” To the Bethel Sabbath school, “This is but a widow’s mite.” To the suffering poor of the city, “Please distribute this from one who wishes it was a thousand times more.”
She continued to bear on her praying lips the salvation of her descendants, and as she drew near the closing scene, this was her song:
Her intellectual powers and physical senses were retained to the last, and at the age of eighty-eight she was an agreeable companion for both old and young.
On the evening of the 25th of February, 1864, in the eighty-ninth year of her age, Mrs. Harrison died at the residence of her son.
Her funeral took place at the Presbyterian church at Cleves, on Sunday, February the 28th. The sermon was preached by the Rev. Horace Bushnell, from the text, “Be still and know that I am God.” The selection was made by herself and given several years before to Mr. Bushnell, her pastor and intimate friend for many years. The remains were deposited beside those of her husband, and they together sleep by the banks of the beautiful Ohio at North Bend.