Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. II.djvu/254

 200 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS His wife, JANE MEANS APPLETON, born in Hampton, N. H., March 12, 1806; died in Andover, Mass., December 2, 1863, was a daughter of the Rev. Jesse Appleton, D.D., president of Bowdoin college. She was brought up in an atmosphere of cultivated and refined Christian influences, was thoroughly educated, and grew to womanhood surrounded by most congenial circum stances. She was married in 1834. Public ob servation was extremely painful to her, and she always preferred the quiet of her New England home to the glare and glitter of fashionable life in Washington. A friend said of her: &quot;How well she filled her station as wife, mother, daughter, sister, and friend, those only can tell who knew her in these private relations. In this quiet sphere she found her joy, and here her gentle but powerful influence was deeply and constantly felt, through wise counsels and delicate suggestions, the purest, finest tastes, and a devoted life.&quot; She was the mother of three children, all boys, but none sur vived her. Two died in early youth, and the youngest, Benjamin, was killed in an accident on the Boston and Maine railroad while travelling from Andover to Lawrence, Mass., on January 6, 1853, only two months before his father s inaugura tion as president. Mr. and Mrs. Pierce were with him at the time, and the boy, a bright lad of thir teen years, had been amusing them with his con-