# Memoirs of a Huguenot Family/Letters of Mary Ann Maury

LETTERS OF MARY ANN MAURY.
September 2d, 1745.
Dear, Sister:—I received your most cordial and affectionate letter, which I assure you was a sensible pleasure to me, though so far distant, that I have the opportunity of conversing with one who has been from infancy till now so dear to me.
I thank you for your kind wishes for my son James, and I hope they will be accomplished. He is now in his turn very edifying to us, please God he continues as he has begun. He and his wife are not gone to housekeeping yet, but their house will be ready for them at Christmas. The Lord send his blessing upon them. I dare say she will prove an industrious woman, for she hath been brought up to it. They have a son, with which she spares no pains that a loving mother is capable of My son and she love each other tenderly, so I have great hopes of their being happy, which is a great pleasure to us. Thank God, my dear partner continues in good health, but dear Molly is always sickly. Aby is, thank God, very well.
As I believe you wish to know the state of all our families here, I shall begin with my brother James. His first wife is ​dead, and left four daughters and two sons. The youngest daughter, named Ann, has lived several years with my niece Mary Anne Winston, and I hope will turn out well. My brother is married again, but to who or what sort of a woman I cannot say. They live so far from us that we receive more intelligence from you than from him.
My brother Peter's first wife Lizzy was one of the loveliest creatures I ever saw. God had endowed her with all the virtues of a good Christian, a good wife, and a watchful mother. She never let the least thing pass in her children that had any appearance of evil in it, and was very tender of them. She was an obliging neighbor, charitable to the poor, beloved of all them that knew her, and most dear to us. The girl she left I brought up, named Mary Ann, and to my great comfort she inherits the character of her mother, as also does her brother Peter, so that they are loved and respected of all.
As to my niece, she is well provided for, she is married to a young gentleman named Isaac Winston, who hath a very good fortune, and a spotless reputation. They live very happily together, and have two sons.
My brother Peter's present wife is a lovely, sweet-tempered woman, and she, Mary Ann, and Peter have an unusual tenderness for one another; and I believe if they were her own children, she could not show more tenderness to them. My brother hath two children by her, a boy and girl. The boy is named Moses. I hope God will spare my brother's life to raise them, as he hath the other two, who are examples of piety and wisdom, and a great comfort to their parents and to us.
I wish it lay in my power to give you as pleasing a description of brother Francis, but to my great grief I cannot ​express the dismal state of his family. As for his first wife she was, I believe, a good Christian, and very careful to instil good principles in her children: but she was not a fit wife for this country, so by that means, and by her ignorance of country business, my brother was almost ruined in his estate. She left one girl and three boys, and if it had pleased God to have taken them with her, it would have been a great blessing; for this woman he has married is a mighty housewife, but a cruel woman, and she has the entire dominion over her husband, so he has been induced to cast off all paternal duty to his first children. His eldest son Francis that was a boy of good parts, and was in the College, he bound to a carpenter, and when he was sick and in necessity he had no bowels of compassion for him. They are going to bind John to a carpenter. God in his great mercy hath lately taken the youngest son, named Thomas, from under her tyranny. As for poor Molly, the negro women she brought with her are more indulgently used than she is.
My brother has a boy and girl by her, and he spares no pains with the boy, who is about seven years old, who is a wonder for his age, while the others are castaways.
I did my best to get the poor girl away from her, but she was too serviceable.
I assure you, dear sister, it has been a great grief to me to see one I loved so well, one in his station, a shepherd to guide his flock, that he should be so inhuman to his own flesh and blood. He is grown an enemy to all our families here, to ours especially, because I reminded him of his duty to his children, for which good will of mine we are quite rejected, as are all others that do not like of her doings. She is his only lawgiver, a terrible exchange for that of his Maker. ​This is the melancholy state of his family, which I pray God in his own good time to rectify. I desire you will show this relation to my brother John. The Lord preserve us all in a due sense of our duty in our several stations, so that no considerations whatsoever may induce us to offend our Maker, but that we may work out our salvation with fear and trembling, which is the hearty prayer of her who remains with all sincerity, dear sister.
Your most loving and affectionate sister,
Mary Ann Maury.
Mr. Maury tells me that my brother John knows my brother Francis's wife very well, if he can remember. She is the daughter of one Brush, who was a gunsmith to Col. Spotswood. He used to clean the magazines and the Governor's arms at the same time my brother John was at the Governor's.
July the 17th, 1750.
Dear Brother Moses:— I cannot express the pleasure your pious and affectionate letter gave me, for by sister Torin's letter, I expected to hear I had lost a most dear and affectionate brother. The Lord be praised, who hath so graciously heard my prayers in your behalf. I may cry out with holy David on this, as well as on many other occasions, "What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits."
I thank you, my dear brother, for your good wishes for the restoration of my health: nothing is impossible to our great Creator, who hath but to will it, and I shall be whole. But why should I be so presumptuous, at the age of sixty years, as to ​expect a much longer continuance here? I ought rather to prepare for eternity, for I am persuaded that these light afflictions, which are but for a moment, work out for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. I still continue in the same weakly condition; but thanks be to God, who enables me to bear it with patience and submission. His blessed will be done, and give me grace to make a right use of my suffering, looking beyond this corruptible to that glorious and incorruptible state of glory, which God hath reserved for them that love him, to which I hope, through the merits of my Saviour, to come, and to which happy state I pray God we may all arrive, where, of his infinite mercy, we shall enjoy each other to all eternity. Dear brother, your Christian sentiments and exhortations are always most delightful to me. I would have writ you a longer epistle if my weakness had permitted me. It is a trouble to me that I cannot entertain you as usual with the state of our families here, but Mr. Maury will inform you of it. All I can add at present is, to assure you, dear brother, that I remain, unalterably till death.
Your loving and affectionate sister and servant to command,
Mary Ann Maury.
April the 15th, 1752.
Dear Brothers:—I have received your dear and affectionate letters, and am thankful to God that he hath in some measure restored you to your healths again; may he be pleased to continue it to you and yours whilst it is his good pleasure, who knows what is best for us.
I suppose, dear brothers, my son James hath informed you of the irreparable loss both to me and my children. I have ​been deprived of the dearest partner of my joys and affections, and they of the most affectionate father. He made the most uneasy things tolerable to me, and though I knew we were mortal, and that we must soon part, yet by my continual indispositions, I thought my labors were the nearest at an end, and that God in his mercy would have hearkened to my prayers, and let me pass first out of this vale of misery, and that I should never feel the loss of such a dear and worthy partner, which was endowed with all the virtues of a good Christian, without ostentation, loved by all, and envied by none. If it were not that I soon expect a change, my life would seem intolerable; for I can say with holy Job, I would not live always.
Cruel self-love, that I should lament the happiness of that good soul which is gone before me, to attain the immortal crown of glory which God hath promised through the merits of our blessed Saviour, to them that trust in him. God's will be done! May he, in his great mercy, support and relieve me in this my weak and low condition, both of body and mind, and make me have a true sense of all his former blessings bestowed so undeservedly on me and mine, and also make me grateful for those he has in his mercy left me, which cannot be numbered. That he hath promised to be the protector of the fatherless and widow is my chief comfort, and it will be to my life's end, for I know that God will never forsake me, though my children may leave me; for, if it please God that I sojourn much longer in this state of trial, I must be deprived of their sweet company and assistance.
My dear James hath left me already, in hopes to advance his fortune, to the great regret of his flock. My dear Molly and her husband are going on the same account, which are ​great additions to my sorrows; first, to be deprived of the dutiful behavior and godly exhortations of James, and then of Molly, who is the most dutiful child as ever was, of the same happy way of thinking and behavior as her dear father, and beloved by all. Thank God, she is very happy in her husband.
As to my dear Aby, I may, in all probability, expect to have comfort in him while I remain on this side the grave; for, thank God, he is a youth of a happy temper, very dutiful, sober, chaste, honest, and sincere, hearkening to good counsel. He was, the 18th of last March, twenty-one years old. He hath left off the thoughts of following the Law, and doth intend, God willing, to follow merchandising, of which he has had a little insight. The Lord direct them all, and give them grace to walk in the steps of their dear father, who was charitable and just, one whose heart never coveted more than a moderate portion of worldly goods, the which God granted him by his industry to attain. He hath left to each of his children a moderate living; the Lord grant they may make a good use of it.
My dear brother Peter is very often attacked with the gout, and could not possibly be with me in my affliction. His son Peter is such a worthy youth, that he hath attracted the love and attention of all considerate men.
The Lord preserve you and yours, and reward all your Christian offices to me and mine, and shower his most precious blessings on you in this world, and at the last crown you with heavenly joys, is the prayer of her who with sincerity styles herself, dear brothers,
Your most afflicted and affectionate sister, and servant to command,
Mary Ann Maury.