It is but a few years since she passed from the stage of human life. The career to which her patriotism urged her, cannot be commended as an example; but her exemplary conduct after the first step will go far to plead her excuse.
XXXIV. MARGARET GASTON.
The name of Mrs. Gaston is associated with that of her distinguished son, to whose education she devoted herself with assiduous care, and whose eminent character was most appropriately praised when described as "the maturity of his mother's efforts." He himself always esteemed the possession of such a parent the greatest blessing of his existence, and attributes the part he acted in life to her watchful tenderness and judicious training. No honors are too high to be accorded to matrons who, like her, have formed the characters which shed lustre on the nation.
Margaret Sharpe was born in the county of Cumberland, England, about 1755. * Her parents desiring her to have every advantage of education in the Catholic faith to which they were attached, she was sent to France when young, and brought up in a convent. She often recurred in after life to the happy days passed there.
* See Life of Judge Gaston. I am indebted for these particulars respecting Mrs. Gaston to her accomplished granddaughter, Mrs. Susan G. Donaldson.
Her two brothers were extensively engaged in commerce in this country, and she came out to visit them. It was during her sojourn in North Carolina that she met Dr. Alexander Gaston, a native of Ireland, of Huguenot ancestry, to whom she was married at Newbern, in the twentieth year of her age. He had attended the expedition which captured the Havana, as surgeon in the British army; but being attacked by the epidemic, and suffering from the exhaustion of a warm climate, had resigned his post, to make his home in the North American provinces.
The happy married life of these two young persons was destined to be of brief duration. Dr. Gaston was one of the most zealous patriots in North Carolina—being a member of the committee of safety for the district where he resided, and serving in the army at various periods of the war; and his devotion to the cause of freedom, while it secured the confidence of the whigs, gained him the implacable enmity of the opposite party. On the 20th of August, 1781, a body of tories entered Newbern, being some miles in advance of the regular troops, who had marched with a view of taking possession of the town. The Americans, taken by surprise, were forced to give way after an ineffectual resistance. Gaston, unwilling to surrender to the foe, hurried his wife and children from their home, hoping to escape across the river, and thus retire to a plantation eight or ten miles distant. He reached the wharf with his family, and seized a light scow for the purpose of crossing the river. But before his wife and children had stepped on board, the tories, eager for his blood, came galloping in pursuit. There was no resource but to push off from the shore, where his wife and little ones stood—the wife alarmed only for him against whom the rage of their enemies was directed. Throwing herself in agony at their feet, she implored his life, but in vain! Their cruelty sacrificed him in the midst of her cries for mercy—and the musket which found his heart was levelled over her shoulder!
Even the indulgence of grief was denied to the bereaved wife; for she was compelled to exert her self to protect the remains of her murdered husband. Loud were the threats of the inhuman tories that the "rebel should not have even, the rest of the grave;" and she kept watch in her lonely dwelling beside the beloved and lifeless form, till it was deposited in the earth. She was now left alone in a foreign land—both her brothers and her eldest son having died before the event. Her son William, three years of age, and an infant daughter, remained the sole objects of her care and love. Many women possessing her acute sensibility would have been overwhelmed in such a situation; but severe trials served only to develop the admirable energy of her character. Every movement of her being guided by religion, she was strong in its support, and devoted herself to the duties that devolved upon her, with a firmness and constancy by which all who knew her saw that she lived above time and above the world.