r
Mary Cyrene Breckinridge
BY
MARY BRECKINRIDGE MAL TBY
Illustrated with a
Photogravure Portrait
Privately Printed
L imited Christmastide Edition
December 1910
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Foreword
I have been asked to write a sketch of my
Mother's life for the Georgetown Chapter of
the Daughters of the Confederacy, and as the
request comes from one whom I find it hard to
refuse, I will try to comply.
There are still those living among you who
know more of the surroundings of her early life
than I do, however, because I was separated
from her so much of the time. As a result, I can
give very little accurate information regarding
the circumstances of her life till later years,
though she spoke often and lovingly of the scenes
and friends of her childhood. It is chiefly of
what she was, therefore, rather than of what she
did, that I feel qualified to speak.
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Mary Cyrene Breckinridge
Mary Cyrene Breckinridge was born in Scott
County, Ky., over eighty years ago. Her father,
Clifton Rodes Burch, and her mother, Althea
Viley, died when she was yet a child, leaving her
to the care of relatives, though with means suffi-
cient for an ample support. Sts
Of her father, Gen. Gust DOW. Smith said
that he was one of the mosl respected men in
his community. He died when she was quite
young, but her mother's influence survived
through life.
She was! brought up in the home of her uncle
and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Milton Burch, of whom
she always spoke with grateful love. When she
grew older, she was sent to a boarding school
in Georgetown, where her life seems to have been
a very happy one.
While still under twenty years of age, she was
married to John C. Breckinridge, and the first
part of their married life was spent in George-
town, in a house now occupied by one of the
members of the Georgetown Chapter of the
Daughters of the Confederacy.
Later, they moved to Lexington, and bought a
pretty home in the suburbs of the town, where
perhaps the happiest years of my Mother's life
were spent. I think not more than ten years
were spent there when, my Father's political
duties calling him so much to Washington, the
sale of the place resulted, thus breaking up for-
ever our family life. Never, to the end of her
long life, did she cease to mourn over the loss of
her home, though at the time it must have been
difficult to decide on an alternative. She was
so distinctly a home-maker and a home-lover,
that I doubt if the life in Washington suited her
much,-young and lovely as she was during
the years she spent there. During her last years,
when I saw most of her, she seldom referred to
that time.
After those years came the War, and then the
years of exile and they were the ones that left
a lasting impress on her soul.
I never knew any human love more devoted
and loyal than that of my Mother for my Father.
To be near him was all she asked, and to secure
that end she would face any peril, or endure any
hardship with the utmost cheerfulness, and I do
not believe anyone ever heard her complain of
her lot during the years of War and exile,-
although she literally "suffered the loss of all
things" for his sake, and did it gladly.
During the years she was in the Confederacy,
it was her custom to remain as near as possible
to the battlefield where her husband and sons
were engaged, to do all that human love could
do after the battle was over. At the Battle of
Murfreesboro she remained near the army, in
the face of positive orders to the contrary. Poor
Mrs. Hanson obeyed those orders, so it was my
Mother who received General Hanson when he
was brought mortally wounded out of the battle,
tearing up the clothing she had on for bandages
for him, and remaining with him till Mrs. Han-
son could come.
She nursed Major Graves, General Breckin-
ridge's young chief of artillery when he was first
wounded, and when he was wounded a second
time and lay dying, he said he thought he would
recover if he could be taken to Mrs. Breckinridge.
At the close of her life she would review those
days, and tell me how she had given my Father
and General Hanson coffee just before they went
into battle, and how she gave up her "last pair
of good scissors" to cut the boots off General
Hanson when he was brought to her in a dying
condition.
She was mercifully spared the loss of husband
or sons in battle, though before the War was
over her husband was wounded and her oldest
son taken prisoner.
There was one time during the War when it
looked as though her ministrations were over.
She was staying on a plantation near Tuskegee,
Alabama, with Mrs. GilvJohnson, when she
became so desperately ill with malarial fever
that her life was despaired of. Quinine was
scarce, and nothing fit for an invalid (except
goat's milk) to be had, till her doctor brought
her a little package of tea, which she treasured
like gold. As she lay there, worn out with fever
and starving for want of what in her condition
were the necessities of life, she said she could
hear the trains rolling by, carrying the Confeder-
ate wounded into Tuskegee. "And I couldn't
complain," she told me long years afterward,
"when I thought of the greater sufferings of our
men."
When she seemed to be failing fast, Mrs. John-
son begged to be allowed to send for my Father,
but she refused, saying, "Not yet-if he left
the army at this time General Bragg might use
it as an occasion to injure him."
Nothing ever appealed to her more than the
sufferings of the soldiers, and when taking soup
to the sick ones, she would share with the North-
ern soldiers, too, (if she had it to spare!) which
it seems to me is all that even the Golden Rule
demanded under such circumstances. One could
hardly say that in doing what she did she sacri-
ficed as much as a selfish person would have done,
because it gave her such happiness to minister
to the necessities of others.
On one occasion when travelling with one of
her sons, she had to stop over at a town where
some Confederate soldiers were quartered. It
was bitterly cold, and she was installed in a room
with an open fire, probably on the ground floor,
while her son went to look after the baggage.
On his return he found the room full of soldiers,
wrapped in their blankets, stretched on the floor
around the fire "like spokes in a wheel" to use
his own words, while our Mother sat off in a cor-
ner of the room beaming with happiness. This
state of things had not been brought about with-
out difficulty. The landlord had remonstrated
at the influx of soldiers, and she had threatened
to give up her room if he interfered with her
hospitality.
No one ever brought comfort and the home
feeling out of bare surroundings more success-
fully than she did. Having had her home broken
up, once and for all, she went on, making every
place where her lot was cast, homelike, for the
rest of her days, the instinct of home-making
being too strong to be overcome by any outward
circumstances.
She has often told me of a little cottage of
two rooms and a gallery which she occupied
somewhere in Tennessee, where the army was
encamped. I never heard her say that it was
inconveniently small, but always that "the roses
about the porch were lovely," and that "there
was a fine well of water," which she shared with
the soldiers who would come and ask for it. My
Father warned her that they wourd cause her
great annoyance if she let them form the habit
of coming into the yard for water, but she con-
tinued to do so, and in telling of it, would add
that not one of them ever abused the privilege.
Sitting on the little gallery, she would greet
them as they passed in and out of the yard t
where the roses grew so beautifully, and I can
imagine what a picture of peace and home she
must have made in the midst of War.
The account of that episode in her life would
be incomplete if I left out the ending she added
to it, which was, "And I took such care of the
place that the lady to whom it belonged would
take no rent for it "-a beautiful, but not unusual
act of kindness in those days.
Perfect strangers would receive her into their
homes as she travelled about, following the army,
and treat her with the utmost kindness. On one
occasion only, and that in a time of great stress,
when falling back from the army, she, with my
brother Clifton, and a sick soldier, were refused
shelter one stormy night, and had to drive away
in the darkness till they reached a house where
door