Marcia Burns married John P. Van Ness at the age of twenty. Her only brother dying in early youth, she inherited the whole of her father’s vast estate. For a few years after her marriage she lived at the old cottage. Her husband then built a two-story house on the corner of Twelfth and D streets. Later, he began the house, which, still standing in the centre of Mansion Square, is one of the most unique of all the historic houses of Washington. It was designed, as were so many famous Washington houses, by Latrobe, and cost between $50,000 and $60,000 more than half a century ago. Its marble mantel-pieces, wrought in Italy, with their sculptured Loves and Vestas, still remain, models of exquisite art. It is finished with costly woods, and about its door-knobs are set tiles inlaid with Mosaics. Its great portico, facing north, is modelled after that of the President’s house. This stately brick mansion, amid the trees, standing a few rods back from the Burns’ cottage, presents to it an absolute contrast.
This costly home was ready for the family when the only daughter and child of General and Mrs. Van Ness returned, in 1820, from school in Philadelphia. Thither Marcia Burns brought her daughter. The bond between the two is said to have been more intimate and profound than that of simply mother and daughter. The daughter was the cherished companion of the mother, who cultivated an intelligent interest in public affairs, who loved poetry, and wrote it, and who, amid all the pomp of wealth and state, never forgot, or allowed her child to forget, that the fashion of this world passeth away.
Ann Elbertina Van Ness married Arthur Middleton of South Carolina, son of a signer of the Declaration of Independence. But, in November, 1822, in less than two years from her return from school, this only child, this youthful bride, this heiress of untold wealth, with her babe in her arms, was carried to the grave.
From that hour, her mother, Marcia Burns, who, in the world, had never been of it, renounced its vanities entirely. The cottage in which she was born, in which her parents lived and died, nestling under the patriarchal trees, just outside the windows of her stately home, had ever remained the object of her veneration and affection. In this humble dwelling, over whose venerable roof waved the branches of trees planted by her dear parents, she selected a secluded apartment, with appropriate arrangements for solemn meditation, to which she often retired, and spent hours in quiet solitude and holy communion.
The offering to God which she made beside the grave of her daughter, was the City Orphan Asylum of Washington. She became a mother to the children, saved, sheltered, and trained for heaven beneath its roof. She did not wait for these orphans to come to her door. Night and day she sought them out. In her portrait, still hanging in this asylum, she is sitting with three little girls, clinging to her for protection, one with its head in her lap.
Her last sickness was long and painful. A few days before her death, with a few Christian friends gathered about her bed, she celebrated the holy Sacrament; then, with perfect serenity, awaited the final call. Her last words to her husband, placing her hand upon his head, were: “Heaven bless and protect you. Never mind me.” She died September 9, 1832, aged fifty years.
She was the first American woman buried with public honors. At the time of her death, General Van Ness was Mayor of Washington. Meetings of condolence were held by citizens in different places. As the funeral procession began to move, a committee of citizens placed a second silver plate upon her coffin, inscribed:—
“The Citizens of Washington, in testimony of their veneration for departed worth, dedicate this plate to the memory of Marcia Van Ness, the excellent consort of D. P. Van Ness. If piety, charity, high principle and exalted worth could have averted the shafts of fate, she would still have remained among us, a bright example of every virtue. The hand of death has removed her to a purer and happier state of existence; and, while we lament her loss, let us endeavor to emulate her virtues.”
The procession passed between the little girls of the Orphan Asylum, who stood in lines, till the coffin was placed at the door of the vault, when they came forward, strewing the bier with branches of weeping-willows, and singing a farewell hymn.
The last earthly house which received the body of Marcia Burns was more magnificent than any she had ever inhabited. Years before, General Van Ness had reared a Mausoleum, which still remains, one of the purest examples of monumental art on this continent. It is a copy of the Temple of Vesta, and could not be built at the present time for a sum less than thirty-four or thirty-five thousand dollars. In the vault, beneath its open dome, Marcia Burns was laid beside her child. This magnificent temple of the dead was recently removed and rebuilt, precisely as it was in the Oak Hill Cemetery, Georgetown. The cells of its deep vault now hold nearly all of the dust left of the Burns and Van Ness alliance.