The Prince George's enquirer and southern Maryland advertiser. (Upper Marlborough, Md.) 1882-1925, 1902-02-28
The Late Mrs. NOurse.

EDITOR OF ENquIRER:-May | not ask
YOU to correct an error, not OF great mo-
ment. perhaps, Tut which may be annoy
ing to some relatives, into which your
correspondent has fallen in the mention
of the death of Mrs. Isabella Lucretia
Nourse, at THE Vineyard in surratts
district, February 18th, 1909?
Mrs. Nourse was the daughter of
wealthy planter of Hartford county in the
early part of the last century, Thomas
Bond, ESQ and of his wife, Miss Scott,
both of prominent families in that day;
step sister also of the wife of Jay Cooke,
the disting uished financier. In her girl
hood she was of remarkable beauty, the
admitted belle of her county. At the age
of eighteen she became the wife of Will
liam Nourse, Esq, a son OF Colonel
Michael Nourse, for many years promi-
rnr' in the T. S. Treasury, who came, in
d.el, flvm Philadelphia on the same yes
sci that bore the archives of the Govern
ment thence down the Delaware and to
the new Capital of the Nation. He was
also the grandson of that James Nourse
who began life as merchant in London
and closed it at the city of Annapolis as
one of the Commissioners appointed to
settle the boundaries of tie State of Mary
land.
In the early part of her married life, at
her lovely home in Washington, which
comprised the entire square between NJ
and N, Tenth and Eleventh streets, she
delighted to dispense hospitality and
moved in the best social circles of the city.
For many years her husband was en-
gagged successfully as a banker, and apart
from that his private fortune was more
than a hundred thousand dollars in value.
Rut. in his absence in the far West shortly
before the Civil War, his partner was led
to make a general assignment, and, on his
return, Mr. Nourse, with spirit of honor
and self sacrifice almost unparalleled,
threw all his individual property into the
vortex in which the banking house had
gone down.
Such was the esteem Of all who knew
him. such their estimate of his probity and
business abilities, that later on, his credi-
tors placed all the assets in his sole charge
and it was only when he held the receipts
of every one in full that he began again
to Law in store for himself or even to take
his legal fees for such service. To this
result his wife also contributed many
thousands of dollars by her relinquish
ment of her dover rights in thousands oil
acres of land before held by her husband
in MANY of the western States and terri
tories, and it WAS only from fragment
of these that she recovered after his death
the few thousands she left behind.
Mr.. Nourse died in March, 1892. She
followed him almost ten years to day
thereafter IL consequence of slip on the
icy ground, producing interna! injury re
sulting in death after just four weeks Of
terrible suffering.
On the afternoon of the Goth inst, by
the hands of six of her grandsons, William
Nj. Steuart, Alexander S. Steuart, Guy S
Meloy, Hugh Brian Meloy, Arthur n
Meloy and Ralph Meloy, her pail bearers
she was borne out to her grave in thu
Confessional Cemetery and laid beside
the remains of her lifes partner Of half ;
century. ""