REMINISCENCES OF PAULINA WRIGHT DAVIS.
by e. c. s.
Hearing that my friend had returned from Europe too ill to leave her room, I hastened to her charming home in the suburbs of Providence, Rhode Island. There in her pleasant chamber, bright with the sunshine of a clear December day,[1] surrounded with her books and pictures of her own painting, looking out on an extensive lawn, grand old trees, and the busy city in the distance, we passed three happy days together reviewing our own lives, the progress of the reforms we advocated, and in speculations of the unknown world. In my brief sketch of the "Woman's Rights Movement" and its leaders for the "Eminent Women of the Age," I made no mention of Mrs. Davis, being ignorant of the main facts of her life. I waited for her return from Florida, until it was too late, as the work was hurried to press. Hence I was glad of this opportunity to dot down fresh from her own lips some of the incidents and personal experiences of her life.
Paulina Kellogg was born in Bloomfield, New York, the very day Capt. Hall delivered up the fort at Detroit. Her father, Capt. Kellogg, being a volunteer in the army at that time, would often jocosely refer to those two great events on the 7th of August, 1813. Her grandfather Saxton was a colonel in the Revolution, and on Lafayette's staff. Both her father and mother possessed great personal beauty, and were devotedly attached to each other, and were alike conservative in their opinions and associations. When Paulina was four years old her grandfather bought a large tract of land at Cambria, near Niagara Falls, where all his children settled. That trip was the first memory of her childhood. A cavalcade of six army Wagons, men, women, children, horses, cattle, dogs, hens, pushed their weary way eleven days through wild woods, cutting their own roads, and fording creeks and rivers. Crossing the Genesee in a scow, one immense cow walked off into the water, others followed and swam ashore. The little girl thinking that everything was going overboard, trembled like an aspen leaf until she felt herself safe on land. The picnics under the trees, the beds in the wagons drawn up in a circle to keep the cattle in, the friendly meetings with the Indians, all charmed her childish fancies. The summer the first bridge was built to Goat Island, her uncle caught her in his arms, tan across the beams, and set her down, saying: "There, you are probably the first white child that ever set foot on Goat Island."
- ↑ In the year 1875.
