Page:Women of Ohio; a record of their achievements in the history of the state (Vol. I).djvu/61

Rh She used to go riding around the island and to Marietta and Belpre. The Blennerhassetts had plenty of boats and plenty of slaves (since Virginia claimed sovereignty over the Island) to row them. Margaret used to wear a crimson velvet habit and being an exceptionally handsome young woman, she must have made an eye-filling picture. Burr found his task of selling her his racket pleasant as well as profitable. As for Burr himself, it was the day of polished villiany, if any. Racketeers could not then have succeeded as diamonds in the rough.

So Margaret sang and Aaron Burr sighed audibly and Harman Blennerhassett took to sighing too, when he began to realize the path of treachery as well as the depths of poverty, into which Burr was leading him. He wanted to quit but his wife would not let him. She had planned to be at least a duchess and saw no reason to change her mind. Perhaps Emperor “Aaron the First,” would make Harman ambassador to England. Burr would mention such things when the poor man wavered. Burr made the island his headquarters and assembled supplies, for which Blennerhassett paid.

Then the Big Shot had to go on to recruit his forces if possible, at Chillicothe and other places, among them Cincinnati. To this city as a background for part two of the story, we will shortly follow him.

So it may as well be told now that, after seeing their lovely home wrecked and their island devastated by Virginia soldiers, who had gotten wind of Burr’s plans, the Blennerhassetts left hurriedly to join their Master Mind at Lexington.

Blennerhassett and Burr were later arrested in Mississippi Territory. Margaret, with her two sons, awaited them at Natchez. Both the No. 1 conspirator and the dupe were imprisoned. The outcome of Burr’s trial never cleared from his name the dark stain of treason although he finally obtained liberty of body.

There seems to have been general sympathy for the Blennerhassetts and when Harman too, was freed, various people at various times tried to help them. Their lack of good horse sense seems to have really been their greatest difficulty. Anyhow, they went through a great variety of vicissitudes before Harman died in 1828 on the Island of Guernsey, England. Margaret, broken in health and spirit, came back to this country only to witness close up the physical and economic incompetency of two of her sons. She died in New York in 1842.

Now we must flash back to Cincinnati, where, in pursuit of his then thriving scheme, Burr visited the home of the Hon. John Smith, one of the two first senators that represented Ohio in Congress. Smith was not only a senator. He was “Elder Smith” a preacher. He was Merchant Smith, with a fine store at Columbia, where he sold among other commodities, the whisky he made, as Distiller Smith, in a building adjoining the farm-house on the Little Miami River.