motherhood | ETERNALLY PLANTED

MATERNAL HEROISM

September 11, 2024April 4, 2024Tammy M CardwellLeave a comment

Is there a man, into the lion’s den
Who dares intrude to snatch his young away?
Thomson

During the campaign of 1777, a soldier of the Fifty-fifth regiment was sitting with his wife at breakfast, when a bomb entered the tent, and fell between the table and a bed where their infant was sleeping. The mother urged her husband to go round the bomb and seize the child, his dress being, from the position of things, more favorable than hers for the prosecution of the dangerous task: but he refused, and running out of the tent, begged his wife to follow, saying that the fusee was just ready to communicate with the deadly combustibles. The fond mother, instead of obeying, hastily tucked up her garments to prevent their coming in contact with the bomb; leaped past it; caught the child, and in a moment was out of danger.

In December, 1850, the house of Peter Knight, of Bath, Maine, caught fire, and a small child, asleep in the room where the flames burst out, would have perished but for the self-possession and daring of its mother. One or two unsuccessful attempts had been made by others to rescue it, when the mother, alway the last to despair, made a desperate effort, and secured the prize. When the two were taken from the window of the second story, the dress of Mrs. Knight was in flames!

______

Excerpted from Noble Deeds of American Women
(Patriotic Series for Boys and Girls)
Edited by J. Clement
——
With an Introduction by Mrs. L. H. Sigourney
Illustrated
BOSTON: Lee and Shepard, Publishers
Entered by Act of Congress, in the year of 1851,
by E. H. Derby and Co., in the Clerk’s Office of the Northern District of New York
______

HEROIC ENDURANCE.

September 4, 2024April 4, 2024Tammy M CardwellLeave a comment

‘Tis not now who is stout and bold,
But who bears hunger best and cold.
Butler

On the twenty-seventh of July, 1755, Mrs. Howe, of Hinsdale, New Hampshire, with seven children and two other women and their children, was taken captive by the Indians, and marched through the wilderness to Crown Point. There Mrs. Howe, with some of the other prisoners, remained several days. The rest were conducted to Montreal to be sold, but the French refusing to buy them, they were all brought back, except Mrs. Howe’s youngest daughter, who was presented to Governor De Vaudreuil.

Ere long the whole party started for St. Johns by water. Night soon came on; a storm arose; the darkness became intense; the canoes separated, and just before day Mrs. Howe was landed on the beach, ignorant of the destiny of her children. Raising a pillow of earth with her hands, she laid herself down to rest with her infant on her bosom. A toilsome day’s journey brought her and her captors to St. Johns, and pressing onward they soon reached St. Francis, the home of the latter. A council having been called and the customary ceremonies performed, Mrs. Howe, with her infant left to her care, was put in the charge of a squaw, whom she was ordered to call mother.

” At the approach of winter, the squaw, yielding to her earnest solicitations, set out with Mrs. Howe and her child, for Montreal, to sell them to the French. On the journey both she and her infant were in danger of perishing from hunger and cold; the lips of the child being at times so benumbed, as to be incapable of imbibing its proper nourishment. After her arrival in the city, she was offered to a French lady; who, seeing the child in her arms, exclaimed, ‘I will not buy a woman, who has a child to look after.’ I shall not attempt to describe the feelings with which this rebuff was received by a person who had no higher ambition than to become a slave. Few of our race have hearts made of such unyielding materials, as not to be broken by long-continued abuse; and Mrs. Howe was not one of this number. Chilled with cold, and pinched with hunger, she saw in the kitchen of this inhospitable house some small pieces of bread, floating in a pail amid other fragments, destined to feed swine; and eagerly skimmed them for henelf. When her Indian mother found that she could not dispose of her, she returned by water to St, Francis, where she soon died of small pox, which she had caught at Montreal. Speedily after, the Indians commenced their winter hunting. Mrs. Hows was then ordered to return her child to the captors. The babe clung to her bosom; and she was obliged to force it away. They carried it to a place called ‘Messiskow,’ on the borders of the river Missiscoui, near the north end of lake Champlain upon the eastern shore. The mother soon followed, and found it neglected, lean, and almost perishing with hunger. As she pressed its face to her cheek, the eager, half-starved infant bit her with violence. For three nights she was permitted to cherish it in her bosom; but in the day-time she was confined to a neighboring wigwam, where she was compelled to hear its unceasing cries of distress, without a possibility of contributing to its relief.

“The third day the Indians carried her several miles up the lake. The following night she was alarmed by what is usually called the great earth-quake, which shook the region around her with violent concussions. Here, also, she was deserted for two nights in an absolute wilderness; and, when her Indian connections returned, was told by them that two of her children were dead. Very soon after, she received certain information of the death of her infant. Amid the anguish awakened by these melancholy tidings, she saw a distant volume of smoke; and was strongly inclined to make her way to the wigwam from which it ascended. As she entered the door, she met one of the children, reported to be dead; and to her great consolation found that he was in comfortable circumstances. A good-natured Indian soon after informed her, that the other was alive on the opposite side of the lake, at the distance of a few miles only. Upon this information she obtained leave to be absent for a single day; and, with the necessary directions from her informant, set out for the place. On her way she found her child, lean and hungry, and proceeded with it to the wigwam. A small piece of bread, presented to her by the Indian family in which she lived, she had carefully preserved for this unfortunate boy; but, to avoid offending the family in which he lived, was obliged to distribute it in equal shares to all the children. The little creature had been transported at the sight of his mother; and, when she announced her departure, fell at her feet, as if he had been dead. Yet she was compelled to leave him; and satisfied herself, as far as she was able, by commending him to the protection of God. The family in which she lived, passed the following summer at St. Johns. It was composed of the daughter and son-in-law of her late mother. The son-in-law went out early in the season on an expedition against the English settlements. At their return, the party had a drinking frolic, their usual festival after excursions of this nature. Drunkenness regularly enhances the bodily strength of a savage, and stimulates his mind to madness. In this situation he will insult, abuse, and not unfrequently murder, his nearest friends. The wife of this man had often been a sufferer by his intemperance. She therefore proposed to Mrs. Howe that they should withdraw themselves from the wigwam until the effects of his present intoxication were over. They accordingly withdrew. Mrs. Howe returned first, and found him surly and ill-natured, because his wife was absent. In the violence of his resentment he took Mrs. Howe, hurried her to St. Johns, and sold her for a trifling sum to a French gentleman, named Saccapee.

“Upon a little reflection, however, the Indian perceived that he had made a foolish bargain. In a spirit of resentment he threatened to assassinate Mrs. Howe; and declared that if he could not accomplish his design, he would set fire to the fort. She was therefore carefully secreted, and the fort watchfully guarded, until the violence of his passion was over. When her alarm was ended, she found her situation as happy in the family, as a state of servitude would permit. Her new master and mistress were kind, liberal, and so indulgent as rarely to refuse anything that she requested. In this manner they enabled her frequently to befriend other English prisoners, who, from time to time, were brought to St. Johns.

“Yet even in this humane family she met with new trials. Monsieur Saccapee, and his son, an officer in the French army, became at the same time passionately attached to her. This singular fact is a forcible proof that her person, mind, and manners, were unusually agreeable. Nor was her situation less perplexing than singular. The good will of the whole family was indispensable to her comfort, if not to her safety; and her purity she was determined to preserve at the hazard of her life. In the house where both her lovers resided, conversed with her every day, and, together with herself, were continually under the eye of her mistress, the lovers a father and a son, herself a slave, and one of them her master, it will be easily believed that she met with very serious embarrassments in accomplishing her determination. In this situation she made known her misfortunes to Colonel Peter Schuyler of Albany, then a prisoner at St. Johns. As soon as he had learned her situation he represented it to the Governor De Vaudreuil. The Governor immediately ordered young Saccapee into the army; and enjoined on his father a just and kind treatment of Mrs. Howe. His humanity did not stop here. Being informed that one of her daughters was in danger of being married to an Indian of St. Francis, he rescued her from this miserable destiny, and placed her in a nunnery with her sister. Here they were both educated as his adopted children.

“By the good offices of Colonel Schuyler, also, who advanced twenty-seven hundred livres for that purpose, and by the assistance of several other gentlemen, she was enabled to ransom herself, and her four sons. With these children she set out for New England in the autumn of 1758, under the protection of Colonel Schuyler, leaving her two daughters behind.* As she was crossing lake Champlain, young Saccapee came on board the boat, in which she was conveyed; gave her a handsome present; and bade her adieu. Colonel Schuyler being obliged to proceed to Albany with more expedition than was convenient for his fellow travelers, left them in the care of Major Putnam, afterwards Major-General Putnam. From this gentleman she received every kind office, which his well known humanity could furnish; and arrived without any considerable misfortune at the place of their destination.” *

*After the treaty of peace at Paris, Mrs. Howe went to Canada and brought home the younger daughter, who left the nunnery with a great deal of reluctance. The older went to France with Monsieur De Vaudreuil, and was there married to a man named Louis.

* Dwight’s Travels

THE MOTHER OF WEST.

August 28, 2024April 4, 2024Tammy M CardwellLeave a comment

O wondrous power! how little understood –
Entrusted to the mother’s mind alone-
To fashion genius, form the soul for good,
Inspire a West, or train a Washington.
Mrs. Hale

When Benjamin West was seven years old, he was left, one summer day, with the charge of an infant niece. As it lay in the cradle and he was engaged in fanning away the flies, the motion of the fan pleased the child, and caused it to smile. Attracted by the charms thus created, young West felt his instinctive passion aroused; and seeing paper, pen and some red and black ink on a table, he eagerly seized them and made his first attempt at portrait painting. Just as he had finished his maiden task, his mother and sister entered. He tried to conceal what he had done, but his confusion arrested his mother’s attention, and she asked him what he had been doing. With reluctance and timidity, he handed her the paper, begging, at the same time, that she would not be offended. Examining the drawing for a short time, she turned to her daughter and, with a smile, said, “I declare, he has made a likeness of Sally.” She then gave him a fond kiss, which so encouraged him that he promised her some drawings of the flowers which she was then holding, if she wished to have them.

The next year a cousin sent him a box of colors and pencils, with large quantities of canvas prepared for the easel, and half a dozen engravings. Early in the morning after their reception, he took all his materials into the garret, and for several days forgot all about school. His mother suspected that the box was the cause of his neglect of his books, and going into the garret and finding him busy at a picture, she was about to reprimand him; but her eye fell on some of his compositions, and her anger cooled at once. She was so pleased with them that she loaded him with kisses and promised to secure his father’s pardon for his neglect of school.

How much the world is indebted to Mrs. West for her early and constant encouragement of the immortal artist. He often used to say, after his reputation was established, “My mother’s kiss made me a painter!”

THE MOTHER OF RANDOLPH

August 14, 2024April 4, 2024Tammy M CardwellLeave a comment

     She led me first to God;
Her words and prayers were my young spirit’s dew;
     For when she used to leave
     The fireside every eve,
I knew it was for prayer that she withdrew.
                                                                        Pierpont

The biographers of John Randolph mention the interesting fact that his mother taught him to pray. This all-important maternal duty made an impression on his heart. He lived at a period when skepticism was popular, particularly in some political circles in which he had occasion to mingle; and he has left on record his testimony in regard to the influence of his mother’s religious instruction. Speaking of the subject of infidelity to an intimate friend, he once made the following acknowledgment:

“I believe I should have been swept away by the flood of French infidelity if it had not been for one thing- the remembrance of the time when my sainted mother used to make me kneel by her side, taking my little hands folded in hers, and cause me to repeat the Lord’s Prayer.”

ANECDOTE OF MRS. SPAULDING OF NEW HAMPSHIRE.*

July 10, 2024April 4, 2024Tammy M CardwellLeave a comment

Through the deep wilderness, where scarce the sun
Can cast his darts, along the winding path
The pioneer is treading.
Street

An energy
A spirit that will not be shaken.
Willis

One of the first two settlers of Northumberland, New Hampshire, was Daniel Spaulding, who removed thither in the summer of 1767. On the way to his new home, with his wife and child, the last burnt himself so badly at Plymouth that the mother was obliged to remain and take care of him, while Mr. Spaulding proceeded to the end of the journey. She soon became uneasy, and, anxious to join her husband, started off with her child, twenty-one months old, to travel twenty-six miles through the wilderness. A friend who had agreed to accompany her the whole distance with a horse, returned after traveling about one third of the way. Undaunted and persevering, she pushed on, alone and on foot; waded through Baker’s river with her child in her arms; was overtaken by a heavy “thunder gust” in the afternoon, and thoroughly drenched; seated herself beside a tree when darkness appeared, and held her child in her lap through a long and sleepless night; resumed her journey early the next morning; waded through a small pond, with the water waist-high; pushed on to another river, which, though swollen by the rain of the preceding day and looking rapid and terrifying, she forded in safety; and at eleven o’clock that day, the second of her journey, she met her husband, who was on his way back with a horse for her accommodation.*

*The substance of this anecdote we find in the second number of the first volume of a periodical called “Historical Collections,” published nearly thirty years ago at Concord, New Hampshire, and edited by J. Farmer and J. B. Moore. The anecdote was communicated by Adino N. Brackett, Esq. of Lancaster, and appeared in the June number for 1822.

*This pioneer matron of northern New Hampshire, was living at Lancaster, in 1822, then in her eighty second year. She was a descendant, “in the third degree,” of Mrs. Dustin, the heroine of Penacook.

A FAITHFUL MOTHER.

July 3, 2024April 4, 2024Tammy M CardwellLeave a comment

-Her pure and holy spirit now
Doth intercede at the eternal throne.
Miss Landon.

The following anecdote strikingly illustrates the strength of maternal love, the beauty of faith, and the efficacy of prayer. It was related by a blind preacher:

“When I was about eighteen years of age, there was a dancing party in Middleboro, Massachusetts, which I was solicited to attend, and act, as usual, in the capacity of musician. I was fond of such scenes of amusements then, and I readily assented to the request. I had a pious mother; and she earnestly remonstrated against my going. But, at length, when all her expostulations and entreaties failed in changing my purpose, she said: ‘Well, my son, I shall not forbid your going, but remember, that all the time you spend in that gay company, I shall spend in praying for you at home.’ I went to the ball, but I was like the stricken deer, carrying an arrow in his side. I began to play; but my convictions sank deeper and deeper, and I felt miserable indeed. I thought I would have given the world to have been rid of that mother’s prayers. At one time I felt so wretched and so overwhelmed with my feelings, that I ceased playing and dropped my musical instrument from my hand. There was another young person there who refused to dance; and, as I learned, her refusal was owing to feelings similar to my own, and perhaps they arose from a similar cause. My mother’s prayers were not lost. That was the last ball I ever attended, except one, where I was invited to play again, but went and prayed and preached instead, till the place was converted into a Bochim, a place of weeping. The convictions of that wretched night never wholly left me, till they left me at the feet of Christ, and several of my young companions in sin ere long were led to believe and obey the gospel also.”

AN INCIDENT IN MISSIONARY LIFE.

May 8, 2024April 4, 2024Tammy M CardwellLeave a comment

Love’s holy flame for ever burneth;
From heaven it came, to heaven returneth;
Too oft on earth a troubled guest,
. . . at times oppressed.
It here is tried and purified,
Then hath in heaven its perfect rest.
It soweth here with toil and care,
But the harvest time of love is there.
Southey

No class of laborers in the broad harvest field of the world endure so many sacrifices of comfort and of home felicities as the missionaries to foreign countries. Of the trials peculiar to mothers who go forth on such an errand of humanity, the keenest must be their separation from their children. The pernicious habits and influences of a pagan community, often render it absolutely necessary that their offspring should be sent to a civilized land to be educated. This duty, however painful, is imperative, and they who accuse the mother of hardness because she does it, are either grossly ignorant, or haters of truth. Many instances of heroic firmness and almost superhuman calmness under such trials, are on record, but one may stand as a type of the whole.

Mrs. Comstock * of the Burmah Baptist mission felt called upon to part with her two children, whom God had given her while on the field of labor. The hour for separation came, and taking them by the hand, she led them down to the ship that was to bear them for ever from her sight. Having invoked the blessing of Heaven upon them, she gave each the parting kiss and, with streaming eyes, lifted her hands towards heaven and exclaimed: ” My Saviour! I do this for thee.”

Amid the jungles of the East,
Where gloomiest forms of sin are rife,
Like flowerets in a desert drear,
Her treasured ones had sprung to life.

And smiling round her, day by day,
Though cares unnumbered weigh her heart,
Their prattle, full of music tones,
Unceasing joy and hope impart.

Their little minds, like tender buds
In vernal hours, she sees unfold,
And young affection in their eyes
Is gleaming like a gem of gold.

But ‘mid the toils that press her sore –
The spirit-wants of ‘wildered ones –
These buds must often miss the dew,
And plead in vain for constant suns.

She sees their smiles, their music hears,
And feels affection’s holy thrall;
But duty’s voice, from out the skies,
In sweeter tones, is heard o’er all.

To Western climes, illumed by truth,
And blest with learning’s sacred flowers,
These blossoms of her heart must go,
To bloom henceforth in stranger bowers.

She leads them to the waiting ship;
She kneels in anguish on the deck,
And while she breathes a silent prayer,
Their arms like tendrils twine her neck.

She tears her from the loved away,
Whom she on earth no more may see,

And looking up to heaven, exclaims,
“My Saviour, I do this for thee!”

Then hastens to her task again,
The pleasant task her Saviour’s given,
That, finished all, she may ascend,
And lure the distant ones to heaven.

• Sarah Davis Comstock was the wife of the Rev. Grover § Comstock, who was stationed at Kyouk Phyoo in the province of Arracan, Burmah. She was born at Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1812 and died at Ramree, April twenty-eighth, 1843.

THE MOTHER OF PRESIDENT POLK.

April 17, 2024April 4, 2024Tammy M CardwellLeave a comment

Holy as heaven a mother’s tender love!
The love of many prayers, and many tears,
Which changes not with dim, declining years.
Mrs. Norton.

The late President Polk’s mother, who died at Columbia, Tennessee, in the winter of 1851-2, was a member of the Presbyterian church, a highly exemplary Christian, and a faithful mother. The lessons which she taught her son in youth, were not forgotten when he had arrived at manhood, and risen to the highest office in the gift of a free and sovereign people. A single anecdote will show the abiding recollection and influence of her teachings.

A gentleman, who once visited Mr. Polk at the White House, remarked to him that his respect for the Sabbath was highly gratifying to the religious sentiment of the country; whereupon he made the following reply: “I was taught by a pious mother to fear God, and keep his commandments, and I trust that no cares of a government of my own, will ever tempt me to forget what I owe to the government if God.”