p 27 - Mrs. Agnes Agnew, the mother of Dr. D. Hayes Agnew, was born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, January 30, 1781, this making her four years older than her second husband. ... Her father, James Noble ... while her grandfather, William Nobel ... As has been said, Mrs. Agnew was wife first of a minister and then of a physician. She was well fitted to occupy these two prominent positions in American society, for she was a woman of the most extraordinary force of character, possessing a powerful mind and an indomitable energy. From her descent and her associations she was deeply religious in nature, which tendency increased as she grew older. As a young woman, possessing a magnificent physique and tireless energy, she had lived a life of greatest hardship as the wife of a frontier minister. The hardships of such a life, which would always fall harder on the wife and mother of the family, did not affect her health and spirits in the least, although her husband, the Rev. Ebenezer Henderson, succumbed to them early in his career.
As the wife of the active country practitioner, Mrs. Agnew brought into use the energies and faculties which, by long training, were suited pre-eminently for such work. Always serene, contented, and cheerful, perfectly guileless, and ingenuous in character, she reached her old age with a mind unusually clear and full of the knowledge of Diving truth. Undoubtedly, to her training and influence her distinguished son owed many of his characteristic traits. She walked daily with God, and ripened for glory until she reached her ninety-first year, dying, February 25, 1871, of a paralytic stroke. Although she was 37 years of age when her famous son was born, she lived to see him reach a foremost position in his professional work.
To the last she was employed in the reading of her favorite books. Her study of the Bible occupied the principal portion of her time, but she was also devoted to the standard religious treatises of her youth: "Boston's Fourfold State," "Owen on Forgiveness and on the Spirit," "Edward's History of Redemption," "Baxter's Saints' Rest," and "Henry's Commentaries." To her son, when he was summoned to her dying bed, she said, "You have come to see the broken frame of your old mother, but in my feebleness I have still great cause for thankfulness - God has kept my mind untouched." And, as if to assure him of the fact, she commenced to repeat her favorite chapter, beginning "Let not your heart be troubled."
