Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/210

Rh Brilliant Elizabeth Fergusson reaped a harvest of censure and humiliation. In a letter to General Reed, she says: "I own I find it hard, knowing the uncorruptness of my heart to hold out to the public as a tool of the commissioners. But the impression is now made, and it is too late to recall it." And again from her now impoverished estate she writes: "Among the many mortifying insinuations that have been hinted on the subject none has so sensibly affected me as an intimation that some thought I acted a part in consequence of certain expectations of a post or some preferment from Mr. Johnstone to be conferred on the person dearest to me on earth."

And so, a careless political transaction deprived this woman of world-wide knowledge, of marked poetical talent and of a beautiful and benevolent spirit, of all the influence she once wielded so royally. She died at the house of a friend near Graeme Park, on the twenty-third of February, 1801.

Elizabeth Smith, better known as Mrs. Stephen Peabody, was the sister of Abigail Adams, and was also remarkable in character and influence. She was born in 1750 and married the Reverend John Shaw, of Haverhill. Her second husband was the Reverend Stephen Peabody, at Atkinson. Like her distinguished sister, she possessed superior powers of conversation, combined with a fine person and polished and courtly manners. Her house at Haverhill was the center of an elegant little circle of society for many years after the Revolution, and the most cultivated and learned from Boston and its vicinity gathered there.

Her correspondence shows her to have been an ardent patriot and advocate for her country. "Lost to virtue, lost to humanity must that person be," she writes to her brother-in-law, John Adams, "who can view without emotion the complicated distress of this injured land. Evil tidings molest our habitations and wound our peace. Oh, my brother! Oppression is enough to make a wise people mad."

Mrs. Peabody's very useful life terminated at the age of sixty-three.

It is in wild and stirring times that such spirits as Jane Thomas are matured and rise in their strength. She was a native of Chester County, Pennsylvania, and the sister of the Rev. John Black of Carlisle, the first president of Dickinson College. She was married about 1740 to John Thomas, supposed to be a native of Wales, who had been brought up in the same county. Some ten or fifteen years after their marriage Mr. Thomas removed to South Carolina. Their residence for some time was upon Fishing Creek in Chester District. About the year 1762 he removed to what is now called Spartanburg District and built a home upon Fair-forest Creek, a few miles above the spot where the line dividing that district from Union crossed the stream. From being adjutant and captain of the militia, Colonel Thomas was elected to lead the regiment raised in this district. In an engagement with the British early in the Revolution he was taken prisoner and