She sought the low, the humble shed,
Where gaunt disease and famine tread;
And from that time, in youthful pride,
She stood Van Ness’s blooming bride,
No day her blameless head o’erpast,
But saw her dearer than the last.”
The return of the only child and heiress of David Burns, in the first beauty of young womanhood, soon filled the paternal cottage with illustrious society, and with many suitors for her hand and heart. The Keys, the Lloyds, the Peters, the Lows, the Tayloes, the Calverts, the Carrols, all visited here. Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Burr, with many other famous then, not forgotten now, were guests at the Burns cottage. Thomas Moore was entertained beneath its roof, and slept in one of the little rooms “off” the large one on the ground floor.
The favored suitor was John P. Van Ness, the son of Judge Peter Van Ness of New York, celebrated as an anti-Federalist, a Revolutionary officer, and a supporter of Aaron Burr against the Clinton and Livingston feud.
When John Van Ness wooed and won Marcia Burns, he was thirty years of age, a Member of Congress from New York, “well-fed, well-bred, well-read,” elegant, popular and handsome enough to win his way to any maiden’s heart, unassisted by the accessories of fortune, which, in addition, were bountifully his. In Gilbert Stuart’s picture we see him with powdered wig and toupee, light-brown hair and side whiskers, perceptive forehead, aquiline nose, finely-curved lips and chin, a small mouth, with clear, hazel eyes, which could look their way straight to many hearts.
The portrait of the heiress of David Burns may be seen to-day in Washington, not in any hall of wealth or fashion, but in the Orphan Asylum, which she founded and endowed, to whose children she was a mother. It looks down upon us, a Madonna face, with intellectual, spiritual brow, dewy eyes, and a tender mouth.