... [my grandmother] Margaret Marshall and her sister Janet lived with their stepfather, John Ramsay, sometimes in New York or Philadelphia, and sometimes in Elizabeth Town, as Elizabeth was called in the days when it "contained an unusual number of polite families." And wherever the Ramsays and Marshalls happened to be living they had a remarkably good time, judging from their lively letters and all the pretty little visiting-cards and invitations they left behind them. ...
... Margaret Marshall was a belle, so it is not surprising that she had a romance before meeting my grandfather. As a young girl she became engaged to a Spanish gentleman, Senor Rendon, secretary of the Spanish Legation. They never married. I gather from his letters — both voluminous and passionate — that the King would not allow him to form an alliance with an American. Don Gardoqui, the first Spanish minister to this country, gave Miss Marshall two little marble busts of Caesar and Scantilla, which now stand on my parlor mantelpiece in New York, and I also have an interesting pastel of Madame Van Berckel, wife of the first Dutch minister, given to my grandmother by Van Berckel's daughter. (She went to
the West Indies and never returned. I believe the ship was lost.)
My old friend Judge Kent knew Colonel Armstrong when his daughters were young and much admired. My grandfather was a peppery old gentleman, and when young Judge Kent — though I suppose he was not a judge then — went to the Armstrongs' house one night with some other young men to serenade the young ladies, the colonel appeared at an upper window with a gun and threatened to shoot if they did not desist. ...
