• General Notes

  AT CUMBERLAND, MARYLAND
  
       We have but little more to add to the pages which have  gone before. Of this last phase of Mr. Cary's life, only one  contribution from his pen has come down to the present  writer. This is a printed copy of his lecture delivered in  the Lutheran Church of Cumberland, February 27, 1849  and printed that year at the office of his paper, the Civilia
      In this address, Mr. Cary reviews the stirring events of  the recent revolution in Europe, which emptied or shook  thrones right and left and marked the end of the old order. He remarks: 
     "The spirit of liberalism was awakened throughout Europe. Men roused themselves from the lethargy of political servitude.... Subjects, hitherto forbidden, became  the fruitful themes for investigation and harangue. The  press, too, long muzzled, began once more to illuminate  the popular mind.... It was evident that the masses  were beginning to understand their rights, and to compre-  hend the sources of their wrongs.... We have witnessed  the agonies of great nations, and seen governments over-  thrown which bid fair to endure for ages. We have seen  all the evil passions of man let loose upon the world to  stalk abroad reckless of restraint, human or divine. We  have listened to the promulgation of doctrines, which, if  carried into effect, would overthrow the settled order of  things throughout the world. We have watched the struggles of the oppressed against their oppressor.... We  have watched with painful anxiety the progress of liberal  principles, and seen them at one time in the ascendant and 
  then crushed to earth.... A new order of political relations has sprung up." 
     "During the past year, the relative importance of our  country has been greatly enhanced by the course of European events. Since the establishment of our government,  it has been evident that we were destined to exercise a potent influence upon the future history of the world. Never  until now has our country loomed up before the nations in  all the magnitude of its true importance." 
      Next, describing our new West on the Pacific Ocean, and  the proposed transcontinental railroads, the speaker concludes with a touch of prophecy: 
     "Then will our country become not only the central point  of the civilization and refinement of the world, but in actual truth, the heart through which will circulate the lifeblood of nations." 
       In the great moments of history one seldom finds an ac count by a contemporary observer showing a more complete understanding both of the importance and the meaning of current events. 
     All the other papers left by Mr. Cary in Cumberland at  the time of his death were destroyed--including a collection of his editorial writings for the Miners Journal and  the Cumberland Civilian. 
      Fortunately we can fill this gap, in part at least, by a  few notes on his last years published sixty years afterwards, by his daughter Constance, then Mrs. Burton Harrison, in her "Recollections Grave and Gay." Constance  was eleven years of age at the time of her father's death. 
  She writes of him: 
    "My father, an old-line Whig of the enthusiastic type,  yet had a great personal admiration for and loved to talk  about his "Uncle Jefferson" the "Father of American Democracy." Certainly he induced all of us, and our children  after us, to look with appreciation upon Jefferson's splendid originality of thought, and fearless expression of opinion; still more upon the breadth of his interest in the whole 
  human field of intellectual endeavor, which made him a  pharos in his time.' 
  She then continues: 
    "My father was at the time of his death just entering  upon his fortieth year (a period traditionally dreaded by  Cary men as likely to cut short their mortal span), living  in the beautiful mountain town of Cumberland, in Maryland, where he was editor of its leading newspaper, The  Cumberland Civilian. Bred in the practice of literary  study, well equipped in history, a classic by descent from  men educated at English universities and owners of the  best libraries in the State, he was also an ardent Whig politician and has left printed pamphlets, speeches, and editorials without number, breathing the fiery spirit of his  creed. One of my earliest recollections just before Christmas 1847 was being taken to a hotel in Cumberland to  visit his idol, Henry Clay, then an aged man, who lifted me  in his arms and kissed me, to my secret discomfiture as I  thought him dreadfully old and ugly. A gentleman pres-  ent remarked: "Little girl, you must never forget that you  started in life with a kiss and a blessing from the immortal Henry Clay."  "Of that interview I ought to have retained a silver pencil-case, which I promptly lost.  "My father, very indulgent to his only girl, used to delight me with endless stories. Particularly did I relish  those of the French-Indian campaign in that very neighborhood and of youngColonel
  Washington's return from  the disastrous venture, to Mount Vernon where our mother's  grandfather, Col. William Fairfax of Belvoir, his son,  George the Tory (Washington's old comrade in surveying), 
  and George's fascinating wife, Sally, our father's great-aunt, had hastened to console the young Achilles sulking  in his tent, by kind notes and visits.   "I loved all the gossip about the Mount Vernon and Belvoir families, and felt as if they still lived in my day. Then  there were Indian massacres of the most exciting sort, the  scenes of occurrence in the mountain fastnesses around us;  and often was I bid to travel over sea and hear about the  motherland and the people we sprang from there. But, affectionate to England, my father believed with all his heart  in the ideal of our own republic and its institutions. He 
  used to describe how its borders would go on broadening  till it compassed the whole mighty continent; and once  pointed out to me suddenly, in the red glow of sunset, the  splendid cleft in the Alleghanies through which a river and  a railway ran, westward of the town. "That, my daughter, is the gateway for the future greatness of our land,"  he said, so impressively that I looked to see some actual titanic form with trailing garments sweep outward through  the gorge. 
  "I did not enjoy that school, nor yet the lessons in Latin  imposed upon me by my father, at the hands of the amiable  and learned Rev. Hillhouse Buel, in his study at the rectory. 
  "The rule of our house was firm if loving. There was no  weak yielding by either parent to our whims. Our pleasures were of a simple sort, long walks on the hills, flower- picking, skating in winter, and sledding over "jumps" on  the steep snow-clad heights above our home; excursio
  Flintstone, Frostburg, and the Mines, tea-parties with our  little friends, and, at rare intervals, a show at some town-hall, into which we walked proudly with free tickets as  children of the editor. I think we heard Mme. Anna  Bishop sing. My brothers sled bore her name in crimson  letters. 
    "A vivid memory of my father is of an occasion when, my  busy mother going off for one of her rare holiday jaunts   to Berkeley Springs, and leaving her children and their  nurse in his care, I awoke in the night crying for her and   would not be consoled. No one heard me, no one answered,  and I sprang out of bed and ran barefooted down the  stairs. There, in the little study where he was accustomed  to sit half the night (in an arm-chair I still possess) and  make clippings from exchange journals for The Civilian  I beheld the editor buried in reading, snowed in with news-papers. At my timid note of alarm, he looked up, frowned  a little, then smiled tenderly, and bounding up the steps,  caught me in his arms, pressed me to his breast, carried me  down to his den, and after a brief delicious time of cosset-  ing and soothing, carried me back to bed, and stayed by  me, tender as any mother, till I slept. 
    "With his death, our Cumberland home was broken up  forever." 
  He died, as did his son Falkland a few years after him,  of typhoid fever. This plague, due to lack of sanitation  and polluted food and water, was epidemic in America until the turn of the present century. 
    As he died, a young man in Kentucky with longish hair  and yet longer knee-boots was getting ready to set forth  for Yale College, and in later life was to marry Archibald  Cary's daughter. The two men never me
  As Mr. Cary's grandchildren grew up in New York, they  knew almost nothing of the man who had died so long ago.  His name, it is true, was given to his daughter's youngest  son, but when that youngster, in turn reached man's estate,  he dropped the "Cary' from his signature. The only personal touch of this grandfather which survived was his  arm chair, in which the present writer best remembers  his own father seated after breakfast every morning, reading the New York Sun. New York, from the age of President Grant to that of President McKinley was chiefly devoted to thoughts of making money, and at that hazardous  pastime Archibald Cary, in his time, had never been a success. Indeed, except for the necessity of providing for his  growing family and for his yearning to buy more books,  lack of money seems to have caused him little concern. 
  This account of his life and character shall end with a  leaf from the diary of his elder sister Jane: 
    "Two years and a half had elapsed since our mother's  death, when tidings came of the illness of Archibald our  youngest brother, he had been seriously ill from the first,  three weeks had elapsed with increasing suffering and danger, and now the letter said there was but little hope, the  disease was dysentery, the weather very unfavorable being the hottest and most trying part of our summer, the 
    first weeks of Sep. The day after, just at twilight came a  telegram from Alexandria, "A. Cary died Sep. 20th." This  was sudden indeed. He was cut off in the prime of life,  being only thirty-seven. [nine] His talents were of a  high order, his scholarship considerable, while in knowl-  edge of belles lettres, and varied powers as a writer and  converser, few could be found to surpass him. At the University of Va. where he graduated with the highest honors,  he was one of the first in deportment as well as scholar-  ship. He practiced law for some years, and subsequently  edited a paper in Cumberland, Md. In society, of which  he was very fond, he shone. His reading was, as I have  said, almost universal, his appreciation, his sympathy were  infectious. Where he appeared in a genial circle, the hours  went by unheeded. He was the first called of our house-hold band. My youngest brother! While I make this brief  record, with a heart brimful of memories of home, of your  boyhood, the high hopes of your youth, the many disappointments of your manhood, your untimely death, bitter  and unavailing grief checks the current of my thoughts,  and I lay down the pen unable longer to pursue a subject  so fraught with sadness. 
  J.C.S."
      Through the misty years of nearly a century which has  passed since Archibald Cary lived, moved and had his being, his grandson has followed with growing sympathy  and understanding this figure of a past age. The fragmentary records of his career have brought him close to  one, at least, of his descendants. When the present writer's own time comes to join the ever-growing family circle at Ivy Hill Cemetery, near Alexandria, he takes vast comfort in the knowledge that he will lie forever close to this  Virginia gentleman. 
  To those others of his descendants who have the patience  to read these pages, may the memory of Archibald Cary of  Carysbrook always 
  "Smell sweet and blossom in the silent dust." 
  ----------------------------------------------
  Virginia's Decendants
  Family of Constance Fairfax Cary  
    CONSTANCE FAIRFAX3 CARY (ARCHIBALD2, WILSON JEFFERSON1)1 was born April 25, 1846 in Fairfax County, Virginia2, and died November 21, 19203. She married BURTON NORVELL HARRISON November 26, 18674. He was born July 14, 1838 in New Orleans, Louisiana4,5, and died March 29, 1904 in 1712 N Street, Washington, D C6,7.
  
  
  More About CONSTANCE FAIRFAX CARY:
  Fact 1: Arranged the poem of 'My Maryland' to the music of a German air7
  Occupation: Author8
  
  
  More About BURTON NORVELL HARRISON:
  Burial: 1904, Ivy Hill, Fairfax County, Virginia9
  Graduation: 1859, Yale University10
  Occupation: Professor of mathematics and astronomy at University of Missouri; Attorney; Secretary to Mayor Wickham of New York; Private secretary to President Jefferson Davis11,12
  
  
  Children of CONSTANCE CARY and BURTON HARRISON are:
  i. FAIRFAX4 HARRISON13, b. March 13, 1869, New York City, New York14,15; d. Unknown; m. HETTY CARR CARY16,17, June 06, 189417,18; b. August 06, 1871, Baltimore County, Maryland19,20; d. Unknown.
  
  
  More About FAIRFAX HARRISON:
  Education: Yale University: Columbia University20
  Occupation: Attorney; President of the Southern Railway Company20
  Residence: Washington, D C; "Belvoir," Fauquier County, Virginia21,22
  
  
  ii. FRANCIS BURTON HARRISON, SR22, b. December 18, 1873, New York, New York23,24,25; d. Unknown; m. (1) MABEL JUDSON26; d. Unknown; m. (2) DORIA LEE27; b. , London, England27; d. Unknown; m. (3) MARY CROCKER28, June 07, 190029; b. , San Francisco, California29; d. November 25, 1905, Long Island, New York30.
  
  
  More About FRANCIS BURTON HARRISON, SR:
  Graduation: Yale University, 1895; New York Law School, 1897; University of Philippines31,32
  Military service: Served in the Spanish-American War33
  Occupation: Attorney; vice president of the McVickar Realty Company34
  Public Office: Governor General of the Philippine Islands; Represented the 13th district of New York in congress34,35
  Residence: New York City, New York; Baguio, Philippine Islands35,36
  
  
  Notes for MARY CROCKER:
  
  
  "KILLED UNDER AUTO. NEW YORK, November 25th, 1905.---Mrs Francis Burton Harrison,
  wife of former Congressman Francis Burton Harrison, of New York, was killed to-day
  by the overturning of an automobile, in which she was riding with a party of friends
  from San Francisco. The car was running down a steep hill in Long Island City, when
  a break in the steering gear caused the accident.
  Mr and Mrs Laurence I Scott, of San Francisco, and Charles T Crocker, also of San
  Francisco, a Yale student and brother of Mrs Harrison, were injured. Mr Scott suffered
  a fractured rib and is in a serious condition. His wife was shocked senseless, but
  later revived. Mr Crocker was bruised and the chauffeur slightly hurt. Mrs. Harrison's
  neck was broken.
  Mrs Harrison was Miss Mary Crocker, daughter of the late C F Crocker, of San Francisco.
  She was one of the three children who divided a fortune of $12,000,000 and $15,000,000
  left by her father.
  To-day's automobile ride was part of Mrs Harrison's program in entertaining Mr and Mrs
  Scott, who were intimate friends of the Crocker family, and who came here recently on a
  visit. The party was riding from New York to Hempstead Colony, Long Island, and it was
  about noon when the accident occurred.
  LAUGHTER TURNED TO GRIEF Mrs Scott told the details of how the merry party
  in the midst of laughter from Mrs Harrison were without warning hurled sharply from the
  road and thrown into a ditch, two of them rendered unconscious and pinned under the
  heavy machine. The automobile had just started down what is known as Thompson's Hill.
  This place is a favorite speedway for automobiles.
  As the car began to glide swiftly down, Mr Scott and Mr Crocker were examining a road
  map, while Mrs Harrison and Mrs Scott were talking together and laughing. The chauffeur,
  Mrs Scott said afterward, turned about in his seat and remarked that something was wrong
  with the steering gear.
  PLUNGED INTO A DITCH The next instant the machine swerved sharply. The chauffer's
  frantic efforts to guide it back into the road were fruitless and the car plunged toward a ditch
  at the side of the road, with a telegraph pole looming directly in its course. It struck the pole a
  glancing blow and then toppled into the ditch.
  Mrs Harrison was thrown under the machine, her head being pinned down by the heavy
  vehicle. She was unconscious, and it was afterwards found that her neck had been broken.
  Beside her, also pinned down by the car, was her brother, but he was not severely
  injured and was able to free himself from the car.
  The other three--Mrs. Scott, Mr Scott and the chauffeur--had been thrown clear of the
  machine. Mrs Scott was hurled across the ditch, although still conscious, was unable to
  move for some time. The chauffeur also, like the other members of the party, was
  stunned.
  No one was near the point when the accident occurred, the road being almost deserted at
  the time.
  The first persons to realize the terrible situation were Mr Crocker and the chauffeur,
  who tried to free Mrs Harrison and found that they could not lift the machine. Mr Scott,
  with a broken rib, also joined them, but still the machine pressed upon the unconscious
  woman. Mrs. Scott had by this time been restored to her senses, and it was decided
  to send for help.
  DIES ON THE WAY TO HOSPITAL Assistance, however, was already at hand, two farm
  hands having seen the accident and run across the fields. Another automobile came along
  about the same time, and the men were able to raise the machine. Mrs Harrison was dying
  when her friends lifted her up. She was hurried to St John's Hospital in Long Island City; but
  she expired before reaching the institution. Later an ambulance was sent for Mr and Mrs
  Scott, who after treatment at the same hospital were able to return to New York in a carriage.
  Mr Harrison was at his office in New York when first informed of the accident, and was
  told that his wife was seriously injured. He did not know of her death until he called
  at St John's Hospital.
  Mr and Mrs Harrison were married in 1900. At the last gubernatorial election in New York
  Mr Harrison was candidate for the office of Lieutenant-Governor.
  Mr and Mrs Scott had been staying at the Arlington Hotel. Mr Crocker left New Haven
  yesterday to come to New York for the automobile party.
  Constant Ravert is the name of the chauffeur. To-night it was reported that his shoulder
  had been dislocated.
  Mrs Harrison's body will be sent to San Francisco and placed in the Crocker vault.
  Former Congressman Harrison was grief sticken to-night, remaining at the hospital with
  the body of his wife.
  CAUSE OF THE ACCIDENT In explanation of the cause of the accident, it is said
  that the chauffeur threw off the clutch and allowed the automobile to run under its own
  momentum, which carried it along very rapidly. In some manner the thrumbscrew worked
  loose on the steering-gear handle, releasing a knuckle joint which allowed the driver to
  control the gear underneath the machine with the wheel. As soon as the steering gear was
  released from the wheel grip the front wheels swerved around. Then the car turned over.
  This is the second accident in which Crocker has been hurt. Several years ago, while
  speeding an automobile in California, he collided with a bridge support and was taken out
  of the wreck with both legs fractured.
  Mrs Harrison was regarded as one of the best automobilists among women of her set.
  Frequently she drove her brother's 40-horsepower car at high speed, acting as her own
  chauffeur."
  [Du Bellet, Louise Pecquet, Some Prominent Virginia Families, Volume II, J P Bell Company Publishers, Lynchburg, Virginia, 1907, 96-98.]
  
  
  More About MARY CROCKER:
  Burial: 1905, Crocker vault, San Francisco, California37
  Cause of Death: Broken neck received in an automobile accident37
  
  
  iii. ARCHIBALD CARY HARRISON, b. October 21, 187638; d. Unknown; m. HELEN BATES WALLEY38; d. Unknown.
  
  
  More About ARCHIBALD CARY HARRISON:
  Residence: New York39
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
   
  
  
   

Details of Constance's family with Burton Harrison