Immediately after the dreadful massacre of Virginia colonists, on the twenty-second of March, 1622, Governor Wyat issued an order for the remainder of the people to "draw together" into a "narrow compass;"[91] and most of the eighty plantations were forthwith abandoned. Among the persons who remained at their homes, was Mrs. Proctor, whom Dr. Belknap calls "a gentlewoman of an heroic spirit."[92] She defended her plantation against the Indians a full month, and would not have abandoned it even then, had not the officers of the colony obliged her to do so.

One of the best women of her times was Experience West, wife of the Rev. Dr. West, who was pastor of a church in New Bedford, Massachusetts, for nearly half a century. Her life abounded in praiseworthy, though unrecorded, deeds. The Doctor was aware of the worth of his "help-meet," and had a punning way of praising her which must have sounded odd in a Puritan divine a hundred years ago. She was unusually tall, and he sometimes remarked to intimate friends, that he had found, by long Experience, that it is good to be married.

The Rev. Dr. Mather Byles, of Boston, a tory of considerable notoriety, paid unsuccessful addresses to a young lady who subsequently gave her hand to a gentleman of the name of Quincy. Meeting her one day, the Doctor remarked: "So, madam, it appears that you prefer a Quincy to Byles." "Yes," she replied, "for if there had been any thing worse than biles, God would have afflicted Job with them."[93]

A married Shawnee woman was once asked by a man who met her in the woods, to look upon and love him: "Oulman, my husband, who is forever before my eyes, hinders me from seeing you or any other person."

While the husband of Mrs. Dissosway, of Staten island, was in the hands of the British, her brother Nathaniel Randolph, a Captain in the American army, repeatedly and greatly annoyed the tories; and they were anxious to be freed from his incursions. Accordingly, one of their colonels promised Mrs. Dissosway to procure her husband's release, if she would prevail upon her brother to leave the army. She scornfully replied: "And if I could act so dastardly a part, think you that General Washington has but one Captain Randolph in his army?"

When, by permission of the British authorities, the wife of Daniel Hall was once going to John's island, near Charleston, to see her mother, one of the king's officers stopped her and ordered her to surrender the key of her trunk. On her asking him what he wished to look for, he replied, "For treason, madam." "Then," said she, "you may be saved the trouble of search, for you may find enough of it at my tongue's end."[94]

When a party of Revolutionary patriots left Pleasant River settlement, in Maine, on an expedition, one of the number forgot his powder horn, and his wife, knowing he would greatly need it, ran twenty miles through the woods before she overtook him.

When the village of Buffalo was burnt during the last war, only one dwelling-house was suffered to stand. Its owner, Mrs. St. John, was a woman of wonderful courage and self-possession; and when the Indians came to fire it, and destroy its inmates, she ordered them away in such a dignified, resolute and commanding, yet conciliatory, manner, that they seemed to be awed in her presence, and were kept at bay until some British officers rode up and ordered them to desist from the work of destruction. Saved by her presence of mind and heroic bravery, she who saw her neighbors butchered at their doors and the young village laid in ashes, lived to see a new village spring up, phoenix-like, and expand into a city of thirty-five thousand inhabitants.

Mrs. Beckham, who resided in the neighborhood of Pacolet river, South Carolina, was a true friend of freedom, and a great sufferer on that account. Tarleton, after sharing in her hospitality, pillaged her house, and then ordered its destruction. Her eloquent remonstrance, however, caused him to recall the order. Concealing a guinea in her braided hair, she once went eighty miles to Granby, purchased a bag of salt, and safely returned with it on the saddle under her.[95]

The house of Captain Charles Sims, who resided on Tyger river, South Carolina, was often plundered by tories; and on one of these occasions, when his wife was alone and all the robbers had departed but one, she ordered him away, and he disobeying, she broke his arm with a stick, and drove him from the house.Several years ago, a family, residing on the Colorado, in Texas, were attacked by a party of Camanche Indians, who first fell upon two workmen in the fields and slew them. Seeing one of them fall, the proprietor of the establishment, who was standing near his house, caught two guns and ran towards the field. A daughter hastily put on her brother's hat and surtout, and followed her father. She soon overtook him, and persuaded him to return to the house. She bravely assisted in guarding it until the Indians, tired of the assault, departed.

In the year 1777, when General Burgoyne entered the valley of the Hudson, the wife of General Schuyler hastened to Saratoga, her husband's country seat, to secure her furniture. "Her carriage," writes the biographer of Brant, "was attended by only a single armed man on horseback. When within two miles of her house, she encountered a crowd of panic-stricken people, who recited to her the tragic fate of Miss M'Crea,[96] and, representing to her the danger of proceeding farther in the face of the enemy, urged her to return. She had yet to pass through a dense forest within which even then some of the savage troops might be lurking for prey. But to these prudential counsels she would not listen. 'The General's wife,' said she, 'must not be afraid!' and, pushing forward, she accomplished her purpose."

While Thomas Crittenden, the first Governor of Vermont, was discharging the functions of an executive, he was waited upon one day, in an official capacity, by several gentlemen from Albany. The visitors were of the higher class, and accompanied by their aristocratic wives. At noon the hostess summoned the workmen from the fields, and seated them at the table with her fashionable visitors. When the females had retired from the dinner table to an apartment by themselves, one of the visitors said to the lady of the house, "You do not usually have your hired laborers sit down at the first table do you?" "Why yes, madam," Mrs. Crittenden replied, "we have thus far done so, but are now thinking of making a different arrangement. The Governor and myself have been talking the matter over a little, lately, and come to the conclusion that the men, who do nearly all the hard work, ought to have the first table,—and that he and I, who do so little, should be content with the second. But, in compliment to you, I thought I would have you sit down with them, to-day, at the first table."[97]

At the Fair held in Castle Garden, in the autumn of 1850, was exhibited a large Gothic arm-chair, backed and cushioned with beautifully wrought needle work in worsted. The needle work was from the hands of Mrs. Millard Fillmore. It was setting a noble example for the wife of a President to present her handiwork at an industrial exhibition; and, if the decision of the three Roman banqueters in regard to their wives, was correct—they preferring the one who was found with her maidens preparing loom-work,—Mrs. Fillmore must be ranked among the best of wives.

During the last war, Major Kennedy of South Carolina, wished to raise recruits for his troop of horse; and accordingly went to Mrs. Jane White, who had several hardy sons, and made known his wants. She was a true patriot, like her husband, who was an active "liberty man" in the war of '76: hence she was ready and anxious to further the Major's plans. Her sons being at work in the field, excepting the youngest, she called the lad, and ordered him, in her broad Scotch-Irish dialect, to "rin awa' ta the fiel' an' tell his brithers ta cum in an' gang an' fight for their counthry, like their father afore them."[98]

Among the fine sentiments quaintly uttered by the old dramatic poet, Webster, are these:

One of the models in activity and virtue, and one who doubtless secured thereby the prize of healthy and extreme old age, was Mrs. Lydia Gustin, a native of Lyme, Connecticut. She had five children, all of whom were at home to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of her birth day. She died in New Hampshire, on the twentieth of July, 1847, in the hundred and second year of her age. A part of the labor performed during her hundredth year, was the knitting of twenty-four pairs of stockings. Mrs. Elizabeth Ferguson, who resided near Philadelphia, was one of the number who assisted the American prisoners taken at the battle of Germantown. She spun linen and sent it into the city, with orders that it be made into shirts. She was noted for humanity and benevolence. Learning, one time, while visiting her friends in Philadelphia, that a reduced merchant had been imprisoned for debt, and was suffering from destitution, she sent him a bed and other articles of comfort, and, though far from wealthy, put twenty dollars in money into his hands. She refused to give him her name, but was at length identified by a description of her person.

At the battle of the Cowpens, Colonel Washington wounded Colonel Tarleton; and when the latter afterwards, in conversation with Mrs. Wiley Jones, observed to her: "You appear to think very highly of Colonel Washington; and yet I have been told that he is so ignorant a fellow that he can hardly write his own name;" she replied, "It may be the case, but no man better than yourself, Colonel, can testify that he knows how to make his mark."