Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/179

152 The brilliant Sallie Franklin was born on the nth of September, 1744. It was on the 29th of October, 1767, that she was married to Richard Bache, a merchant of Philadelphia, and a native of Seattle, in Yorkshire, England; 1807 marks the sad date when the still charming woman was attacked by cancer and removed to the city once more for the benefit of medical attendance. Her disease proved incurable, and on the 5th of October, 1808, she died in the historic house in Franklin Square, where Dr. Franklin had spent his last years.

In person Mrs. Bache was rather above the middle height, and in the latter years of her life she became very stout. Her complexion was uncommonly fair, with much color ; her hair brown and her eyes blue like those of her father. Strong good sense, and a ready flow of wit, were among the most striking features of her mind. Her benevolence was very great and her generosity and liberality were apparently limitless. Her friends ever cherished a warm affection for her. It has been related that her father, with a view to accustoming her to bear disappointments with patience, was given to requesting her to remain at home and spend the evening over the chess-board, when she was on the point of going out to some meeting of her young friends. The cheerfulness which she displayed in every turn of fortune proves that this discipline was not without its good effect—also that Benjamin Franklin could teach his own family as well as the public, which has not always been demonstrated in the lives of statesmen.

A vivid picture of the part borne by many women through Revolutionary trials and privations may be found in the letters of a young and beautiful widow living in the city of Charleston at the time of its occupation by the British under Prevost and the approach of Lincoln to its relief. The period was one of almost continual skirmishing and of harrowing the inhabitants by the British, and the young woman's graphic description of the occurrences makes one no less interested in her personality than in the stirring events of which she writes.

This was Eliza Wilkinson. Her father was an emigrant to America from Wales named Francis Yonge. He took possession of an island some thirty miles south of Charleston, calling it Yonge's Island. Mrs. Wilkinson was his only daughter. She had been married only six months when her husband died, and when the Revolutionary warfare swept down into her section of the country, exciting days came to her in protecting her property and escaping before British invasion and aiding our own wretched soldiers. At one time, when she had taken refuge in an inland plantation, she writes of the distressing condition of refugees passing that way. A large boatload of women and children hurrying for safety to Charleston stayed with them for a day or two and presented a sad spectacle of the miseries brought in the train of war. One woman with seven children, the youngest but two weeks old, preferred venturing her own life and that of her tender infant to captivity at the hands of a merciless foe.

"The poorest soldier," says another letter, "who would call at any time for a drink of water, I would take pleasure in giving it to him myself; and many a dirty, ragged fellow have I attended with a bowl of milk, for they really merit