Anna Price Dillon; memoir and memorials

Front matter

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Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Introductory Memoir, 1835-75

Birth, parentage, and early life — Her father's life and public career — Her early life in Pennsylvania and Ohio — Removal to Iowa — Schools, classmates, and education — Marriage — Her different homes — What her own home stood for — Her household — Church relationships and religious views — Work in charitable organizations — Work in the Library Association — Husband's course of life and employments — Her personal appearance, tastes, characteristics, and traits — Her letters — Their general character — Love of nature, art, and country — Letters to Miss Fejervary, 1872-74 1

Prefatory Note

N this preliminary note is set forth the nature and purpose of this volume. Although printed, it is not published, and is intended only for distribution among Mrs. Dillon's family, kindred, and friends.

It is entitled "Memoir and Memorials." The Memoir is a sketch of Mrs. Dillon's life contained in the first chapter and in the subsequent narrative connecting the letters. The Memorials are the letters themselves. The book consists largely of letters written during her six sojourns in Europe, and at other times when she was away from her home. If it had not been for such absences, comparatively little record of her life under her own hand would have existed, for she kept no diary and no copies of her correspondence, and left nothing in any form relating to herself, except in domestic and personal letters, written as occasion offered or required.

The letters begin in 1872, and from that time constitute, with the Introductory Memoir and a slight thread of narrative, a measurably complete autobiographical history, sufficiently complete, at all xv prefatory iRote events, to show her descendants— the main purpose of these pages— the manner of woman she was in her relations to her children, to her family, to her friends, and to society. Unfortunately, letters to various intimate friends— Mrs. Kaufman, Mrs. Gantt, Mrs. Wing, Mrs. Barnard, and some others— are no longer in existence.

As this is distinctively a memoir and memorial of Mrs. Dillon, letters to her have been excluded from the text, but a few, or extracts from them, selected from the mass of those which she received, have been inserted in the Appendix, or in foot-notes, but only to the end that her own letters and her own life, and its surroundings and incidents, and her own character and sentiments, may be more fully understood.

Concerning letters between friends, James Russell Lowell remarks that " the life of a letter depends upon the careless unconsciousness ' ' with which it is written, and that ' ' a letter which is not mainly about the writer of it lacks the prime flavor : the wine must smack a little of the cask and have a taste of the old wood in it." 1 These observations, so just and true, apply most precisely, most exactly, most fitly to the letters contained in this volume. They were written to relatives and friends— written because the writer knew that her correspondents would like to hear from her, written in the entire unreserve of family intercourse or personal friendship, without the slightest self-consciousness or thought that they would be seen by others, much less ever be printed, and touching things which, simply because they interested the writer, she assumed would interest those to whom she wrote. These letters, thus originating, are not only a true mirror of the writer, revealing her real

i "Letters," Vol. I, p. 76.

xvi prefatory mote qualities and characteristics with photographic accuracy, but the expression has a naturalness and simplicity which are never seen in formal letters or those predestined for publication. The difference is the difference between the Hebrides letters of Johnson to Mrs. Thrale, and the letters on the same subject written in Johnsonese for the public. The writer of the letters in this volume never made a special study of style, but whoever reads them may observe that she uses with precision the fit word to express her exact meaning.

Macaulay observes x that there is no purer or more graceful English than that which accomplished women write and speak. Elsewhere it is said the English language can be seen in one of its best phases by rifling the mail-bags and reading the private letters of one educated woman to another; and certain it is that in familiar letter- writing women in general excel men, as, for example, in the Browning- Barrett letters recently published.

Most distinctly is it true of Mrs. Dillon that le style c'est Vhomme, and accordingly, her style, like her character, is plain, simple, direct, unaffected, and her letters have merits and an autobiographical interest that would have been wanting if they had been written with the slightest notion that they would ever come under the observation or scrutiny of others. The charm given to them by their instinctive and delicate adaptation to the several persons to whom they were written, and their general character, are elsewhere i ef erred to, 2 and need not be enlarged upon in this place. Quite apart, however, from any merits of this sort, the value of the letters to her children and de-

i " History of England," Vol. I, Chapter III. 2 Chapter I, pp. 47-55.

xvii prefatory Bote scendants, as a portraiture of their ancestor and a record of her life made by herself, is incalculable, and to them they will on this ground alone always be deeply interesting. In the confidence of family life and of personal friendship the veil which hides one from the world is drawn aside, and things concerning one's self are related which otherwise would never be told at all, or told with an instinctive reserve which necessarily impairs their piquancy and native grace.

There is a peaceful, serene, often unique beauty in a quiet and secluded landscape which affords as much pleasure, though of a less tumultuous and exultant sort, as that given by mountains, precipices, and waterfalls. Something like to this is the difference between private life and public life. Every life, however quiet, would be interesting if adequately portrayed, and the interest depends not at all upon the external magnitude of the events or things described, but essentially upon the relation of the thing or event, however homely or minute, to the person who is the subject of the biography, the object aimed at being to convey a true image of that person's individuality and a true picture of his life and its special environments, And in autobiography especially the interest depends upon the fullness with which the writer's personality is revealed and made to penetrate, interfuse, and animate the details that are given.

In domestic life the birth of a child is of more moment than the birth of an heir apparent, a Christmas festivity around the family hearth than a coronation ceremony in Westminster Hall or the inauguration of a President at Washington. For be it borne in mind that a private life is none the less interesting, and perhaps if it could be viewed with the All-seeing eye none the less important, because it is made up of the

xviii prefatory Bote thousand "little, nameless, unremember'd acts of kindness and of love ' ' of which history takes no account and keeps no record. Therefore it is that Mrs. Dillon's letters recounting the incidents of her own career have been collected, arranged, and set in the present form, as the best means of preserving the memorials of a woman of extraordinary graces, gifts, and qualities of person and character, one whose life was unselfishly devoted to others and consecrated to duty without the slightest admixture of self-interest or ambition.

Portraits of Mrs. Dillon and of the members of her family are given on grounds sufficiently obvious. As home was the center around which her entire life revolved, illustrations of her different homes have also been inserted. 1

To all of the friends who have furnished letters and rendered aid, a special sense of obligation is gratefully acknowledged.

J. F. D.

Knollcrest, Far Hills, New Jersey, April, 1900.

i See Chapter I, pp. 15, 16.

XIX

Chapter I Introductory Memoir

1835-75

Birth, parentage, and early life — Her father's life and public career— Her early life in Pennsylvania and Ohio — Removal to Iowa — Schools, classmates, and education — Marriage — Her different homes— What her own home stood for — Her household — Church relationships and religious views — Work in charitable organizations — Work in the Library Association — Husband's course of life and employments — Her personal appearance, tastes, characteristics, and traits— Her letters — Their general character — Love of nature, art, and country — Letters to Miss Fejervary, 1872-74.

BIRTH, PARENTAGE, AND EARLY LIFE

NNA MARGERY PRICE was born June 19, 1835, in Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, on Shaffer's Creek, a tributary of the Juniata. She was the eldest of the five children of Hiram and Susan Betts Price. These children, in the order of their birth, were Anna Margery (the subject of this memoir, afterward the wife of John F. Dillon) ; Milton M. Price, a lieutenant-colonel of Iowa Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion and sometime United States consul at Marseilles, who is still living;

Hnna price HUllon

Mary, who died in Chicago in 1872, being the wife of the Rev. Robert Laird Collier; Louisa, who died at the house of her sister, Mrs. Dillon, in New York in 1882, having been married to Alfred Sully; and William H. Price, now of Denver, Colorado. Hiram Price, the honored and venerable father of Mrs. Dillon, is at this writing, in 1899, still living at his home in Washington, D. C, in the eighty-sixth year of his age. Her mother died in that city in 1884, and is buried in the family cemetery at Oakdale, Davenport, Iowa.

If any parent ever lived in his child, her father lived in his eldest daughter. His features, complexion, bearing, qualities of mind and heart,— all that makes up that complex result called character, —were reproduced in her. After her mother's death her concentrated filial affection and reverence were fixed upon her father. She maintained with him a constant correspondence until her death. She visited him as often and had him with her and near her as much as was possible . Her last letter, excepting a brief farewell note to her husband, was written to him. He was never out of her mind. She idolized him, and it is enough to say— it is, indeed, much to say— that he was worthy of such devotion.

HER FATHER'S LIFE AND PUBLIC CAREER

As her father's life colored hers to the end, and as these memorials (which consist chiefly of her letters,

PORTRAIT OF MRS. DILLON'S FATHER, HIRAM PRICE, FROM A PHOTOGRAPH, 1889.

/IDemoir ant> /SDemorials written in the course of family, domestic, and social intercourse, without premeditation or the least thought of their being seen by others) cannot be thoroughly appreciated without some reference to her father's life and career, a sketch of it, taken from an official publication, will be found in the Appendix to this volume. In this place it will suffice to say that he was born in Washington County, Pennsylvania, January 10, 1814. His father was a farmer, and after Hiram's birth he removed to a farm in Mifflin County, on the banks of the Juniata Eiver. The son had only the advantages of an education in small private schools. Public schools there were none in those days. His early and marked love of reading largely supplied the want of educational facilities.

Like all so-called self-made men, Mr. Price is justly proud of the fact that unaided he became the architect of his own fortune. In his new home, which he made in Iowa in 1844, he was destined to a distinguished and useful career. He became successively schoolfund commissioner (1847), registrar and treasurer of his county (1848-56), president of the State Bank of Iowa from its organization in 1859 to 1866, when it was superseded by the national banks, paymastergeneral of the State during the Civil War, was five times elected to Congress between 1862 and 1881, and was commissioner of Indian affairs from 1881 to 1885, when, having passed his seventy-first year, he resigned and retired to private life, though urged to continue his public career, and was offered, in 1886, a renomination by his party to Congress, which was equivalent to an election.

Some of the details of this prolonged life have been given in letters to his daughter. Though intended only for her eye and that of her family, they are so characteristic, and so interesting to all his descendants and family, that a few of them are inserted in the Appendix to this volume. The letter of April 9, 1897, written in his eighty-fourth year, graphically describes the incidents of his leaving the family home, April 9, 1833, when only nineteen years of age, and of embarking on his own career. He found employment at the small salary of three hundred dollars per year.

He soon met the woman who became his wife, and the mother of his five children, with whom he lived for more than fifty years. She was a Miss Susan Betts, of Holland extraction and of Quaker parentage, and belonged to an Old and, for that time and place, wealthy family. She was a pronounced brunette, with unusually fine eyes and complexion, and was noticeably comely and handsome to the end of her days. It was a love match. Her family were opposed to it, not unreasonably, from a prudential standpoint, on two grounds : his youth— he was only twenty years of age— and his want of means to support a wife who had been reared in ease, if not luxury. But the woman's instinct was better than the family wisdom. She saw the sterling qualities of the handsome, athletic young man, of English- Welsh extraction, with a slight infiltration of Irish blood, delicate complexion, blue flDemoir an£> /l&emorials eyes, and light hair, who wanted to unite his fortunes with hers. The marriage was at first without her family's consent. In fact, she made a light package of clothes, and continuing one of her accustomed horseback rides, she met, April 27, 1834, her intended husband, by a concerted arrangement, at a place a few miles distant, and they were immediately married. "Our combined capital," he said afterward, "was one hundred and forty-five dollars," and " the union was without any mercenary tinge." But a happier union has rarely, if ever, occurred. The wife of such a man is truly blessed.

Their eldest daughter, Anna Margery, was born June 19, 1835, and, as already stated, had her father's blond and delicate complexion, fair golden hair, blue eyes, and lithe and graceful form, as well as his mental and moral characteristics.

HER EARLY LIFE IN PENNSYLVANIA AND OHIO

Concerning the earlier years of her life, her father, after her death, thus wrote to her husband :

' ' She was a bright and bonny little girl, full of health and spirits, quick and apt to learn, and with a retentive memory. She was a sunburst of joy in our home. She rapidly placed herself in the front rank among the children of her own age and opportunities in the schools which she attended. Such opportunities as were available she eagerly embraced and improved. As a child she had a varied experience. When she was about five years old I removed from Pennsylvania to Ohio, and undertook the task of making a farm in the tall timber on the banks of a stream called the ' Big Darby.' This life in the woods, with the birds and squirrels, my little daughter seemed to enjoy and never to have forgotten in after life. One year of hard work, endeavoring to subdue a forest of heavy timber and make the wilderness blossom as a rose, satisfied my ambition in that respect, and the next spring found me. with my little family, wending my way back to the hills and valleys of Pennsylvania. This journey to and from Ohio, with some of the scenes and associations of our cabin home, my daughter held in vivid remembrance, and seemed to enjoy, contrasting them with those of her later life. u"e had several talks about making a visit to our old Ohio home: but the tune for that visit never came, and now never will. Although her sun of life's little day sank behind the western horizon when only a little past the meridian hour, yet she was the oldest of a family of five children, and she had lived to close the eyes in their last sleep, and to attend to the last sad rites of affection, at the death-bed of her mother and both of her sisters, and then to close her own earthly career in the unexpected and awful calamity of shipwreck on the ocean, where, with hundreds of others, her lamp of life went out. to be relighted only on the other shore, in that bright clime where sickness and sorrow, pain and death, are felt and feared no more." Some further details may be given. 6

PORTRAIT OF MRS. DILLON'S MOTHER, SUSAN BETTS PRICE, FROM A PHOTOGRAPH, 1876.

/iDemoir an& flDemorfate

Four or five years of the hardest work and strictest economy on the part of Mr. Price had resulted in the accumulation of enough money to buy a tract of land in Ohio, on the Big Darby, not many miles from Columbus, the same mentioned above in his letter. To this place, in 1840, Mr. Price removed with his family, then consisting of his wife, his daughter Anna Margery, and his son Milton— the "Buzz" of the family letters. The tract was heavily timbered, and a home had to be made by felling the trees, erecting a house, and clearing the land for cultivation. This Mr. Price did, unaided, with his own hands. More energy, hard work, and privations have rarely been expended and endured by the pioneer, and all, as it chanced, to no advantage. Placing undue confidence in his vendor, Mr. Price incautiously made the purchase without having had the title examined, and the title afterward turned out to be bad. He had built more foolishly than upon the sand, for he had spent all his capital and his labor upon a worthless tax title. Here, on August 20, 1840, was born his daughter Mary, afterward Mrs. Collier.

When the worthlessness of the title was discovered, nothing was left but to abandon the place; and, undismayed, Mr. Price resolved to go back emptyhanded to Pennsylvania and begin anew. He started on the return journey March 2, 1841. The incidents of that journey never faded from his memory, and are more than once vividly described in letters to

Hnna iprtce Billon his daughter. One of these, dated March 2, 1886, is reproduced in the Appendix, in the belief that it will be read by his descendants with interest, as exemplifying his own dauntless courage and energy, as well as for its tribute to his wife's unmurmuring and cheerful devotion to him and their children.

He settled himself, on his return, in Hollidaysburg, a nourishing town in Blair County, situated on the Juniata River and the Pennsylvania Canal, near the eastern base of the Alleghany Mountains, and separated from the town of Gaysport by a small branch of the Juniata. Here, in the employment of Bingham & Co. in their large warehouse and transportation business, and as lessee of the Jackson farm, he remained until his removal to Iowa hi the fall of 1844. The rear portion of the premises occupied by the family in Hollidaysburg bordered upon the small creek which ran between that place and Gaysport. The brick house, the stream which she often waded across barefoot, the pastimes upon its banks, the Jackson farm and the life there, Mrs. Dillon remembered in all their detail.

In the spring of 1889 she had the pleasure, in company with her husband, of visiting these scenes of her early childhood. On that occasion, in going through the house in which she had lived, or through the communicating adjoining house, she related an incident in her early life which shows her abounding animal spirits and her innate love of fun. She said: "On a bed in this very room a young lady had displayed, fully spread out to view, a bridal or party dress. I, a little girl of eight years, was looking at it all alone with wonder and delight, when I heard her footsteps approaching. Quick as a flash I crept under the bed, screened from sight by the hanging drapery which surrounded it. The young lady, unconscious of my presence, approached the bed to survey and admire her gown, the point of her slippers projecting beneath the valance to within a few inches of where I lay concealed. I could not resist the temptation to pinch one of her toes. With a scream of surprise, she fled from the room, and I quickly made my escape undiscovered, and heard her soon afterward recount the mysterious circumstance, which she was never able to solve. This happened more than forty years ago, in the very place where we now stand. I see now that I was very naughty ; but I meant no harm." She pointed out, on that visit to the Jackson farm, the room in which she slept, the grounds whereon she played, and the fields where she was accustomed to carry to her father and the reapers their afternoon repast, known as the "evening piece," in harvest-time.

She had such educational advantages as Hollidaysburg afforded ; and it is evident from her letters that she made good progress in her studies, since she describes herself at this early period of her life, when she was between seven and nine years of age, as a reader of the Bible, committing its verses to memory.

REMOVAL TO IOWA

On October 10, 1844, the family started for the West, via the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and arrived at Davenport, Iowa, November 6 of the same year. These dates are taken from the letter of her father to his daughter, November 6, 1892 (given in the Appendix), in which he portrays his advent to that town, and the discouraging reception he met. It was then a new place in the new Territory of Iowa, Iowa having been separately organized as a Territory as recently as 1838. The first white child had been born in the county in 1834, only ten years before their arrival. The town had been laid out in 1837. It contained in 1844 about eight hundred inhabitants.

As Davenport was the home of Mrs. Dillon from her coming thither with her father, in 1844, to her removal with her own family to New York in 1879,— a period of thirty-five years,— and the place wherein the larger part of her active life was spent, a brief space may be given to a description of it. It is the county- seat of Scott County, situated on the west bank of the Mississippi River, at the foot of the upper rapids. The river at this point and in front of the main part of the city is fully three quarters of a mile in width, and free of islands ; but opposite the upper part of the city is the high and rock-bound, finely wooded island called Rock Island, and opposite the lower part of the city is a group of islands. On the oppoflDemoir ant) /IDemoriais site bank, in Illinois, stands the city of Rock Island. High bluffs on both sides rise gradually from the level plateau skirting the river, on which and on the bluffs the two cities are built. The scenery, combining a majestic stretch of water, islands, wooded bluffs, and the two cities vis-a-vis, is of acknowledged and indisputable beauty. From the windows and terraces of the two homes in which Mrs. Dillon lived from 1857 to 1879 this lovely scene was in her constant view, and is the subject of frequent mention in her letters.

SCHOOLS, CLASSMATES, AND EDUCATION

There are comparatively few written data relating to Mrs. Dillon's school life. The schools in Davenport in 1844 and for some time after the organization of the State government were all private schools; some were boys' schools, some girls' schools, and some mixed. Mrs. Dillon attended the girls' school taught by Mrs. Prescott (1845-47), that taught by Miss Bergen (1847-48), and the one taught by the Misses Jones (1849-50); and at one time she went to a school for both boys and girls, kept by Mr. James Thorington, at the southeast corner of Main and Fourth streets, at which the boy destined to become her future husband was also a pupil. Mr. Thorington, among other public stations held by him, was afterward a member of Congress from that district, and United States consul to one of the South American states; and Mrs. Dillon and her husband had the

Hnna price BUlon satisfaction of a brief visit from their former teacher after their removal to New York. In these schools the usual branches of an English education were taught. But in 1850, when Mrs. Dillon was fifteen years of age, the Misses Gilruth established a school of a higher order, called a seminary, for the education of young women. Here she was taught, in addition to English studies, Latin, music, and French. She continued at this seminary until a short time before her marriage. Some interesting memories of Mrs. Dillon's school- days and the names of some of her school companions are given by her classmate, Mrs. Anna Heed Wilkinson, in her letter of October 21, 1899, inserted in the Appendix.

Among Mrs. Dillon's more intimate friends during her earlier life were Julia Burrows, Augusta Woodward, Ellen and Fanny McManus, Mary and Maria Owens, Mattie Cleland, Lizzie and Maggie Donaldson, Elvira Brown, Carrie Harris, Anna and Mary Reed, Eugenie Forrest, Mattie Lyter, Maria Higgins, and Amanda Cowperthwaite. She enjoyed the special regard of her teachers, Harriet and Matilda Gilruth, both excellent and accomplished women, and who, outside the school-room, treated her as a companion. Among the few papers connected with this period of her life, Mrs. Dillon, by accident or design, preserved the following, in the handwriting of Augusta Woodward :

" Be it enacted this 23d of May, a. d. 1851, that we the undersigned do meet to celebrate a chicken din-

PORTRAIT OF ANNA MARGERY PRICE, TAKEN BY JOHN M. DILLON, FROM A DAGUERREOTYPE, 1852.

flfeemoir ant) /iDemorials ner to be given by Anna , now Anna Price, ten

years from the above date, viz., the 23d of May, a. d.

1861. In testimony whereof we hereby affix our mark.

Julia Burrows, Carrie Harris,

hattie grilruth, anna price,

Mattie Cleland, G-us Woodward,

TlLLA GrILRUTH."

This was at best a girlish vision. The meeting thus solemnly arranged never took place. Before the day fixed some had died and others were scattered. Indeed, comparatively few of those named above survived her, and there remain of them only an echo and a memory.

Mrs. Dillon received as good an education as the place at that time offered, but it was always a source of regret to her that her educational facilities had not been greater and her course of instruction more extended and thorough. She afterward held very decided views on the subject of the inadequacy of the usual provisions for the education of her sex, and it was her opinion that the education of girls should be, in range and thoroughness, if not the same as that of boys, at least equal to it. It was these convictions that led her, after her coming to New York, to interest herself in Barnard College, and to give to it all the active support that her other duties, left within her power. Her services in this respect were, after her death, fittingly recognized by a minute on the records of the college.

Hnna price HHlion

As an illustration of her character and of her love of learning, it may be recounted that when she sojourned in Paris, with her children, in the winter of 1875-76, she resumed with characteristic energy the systematic study of the French language, so as to be able both to speak and to read it. To this end she went to reside in a family where French only was spoken, and for a time (al though she was forty years of age) attended regularly a French school, " and was," she says, in one of her letters, "at first in a class with a dozen or more ten-year-olds. Was n't that funny for an old woman? "

MARRIAGE

She was married in the Methodist Episcopal Church of Davenport, November 10, 1853, being at that time in her nineteenth year, to John F. Dillon, who was in his twenty-second year, and who had been admitted to the bar, as an attorney-at-law, the year before. The ceremony was performed by the Rev. Landon Taylor, who had previously been stationed for two years as the resident minister of that church. He was highly reverenced by the family, and at Mr. Price's request came specially from a distant place to solemnize the marriage. Years afterward this pious and devout minister published, in the seventieth year of his age, a biographical account of his long ministry, which, drawing upon the martial imagery with which the New Testament abounds,

/iDemofr anb flDemorials he called " The Battle-Field Eeviewed." In this volume he gives a page to this marriage. His relation is substantially correct, but his somewhat awkward statement that the daughter ' ' Anna had engaged his services to perform the ceremony when the time came, and that he was now here to honor his pledge," often amused her by its implication that she was the active agent in all the marriage arrangements. He gave them his book, in which he states that from 1853 to 1881 he " has numbered them with his warmest friends," and that " true friendship never dies " ; and Mrs. Dillon, when in Los Angeles, California, in 1884, speaks in one of her letters of a visit— the last —from this excellent and venerable man, then over seventy-two years of age, and who has since passed to his immortal reward and inheritance.