University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER V.

On the 4th of July, 1830, Cadet Pendleton graduated fifth in
his class at West Point, and was recommended to the President
for promotion in the artillery. On his return to Virginia, for the
customary furlough of several months, he found his family circle
much changed. His sister Mildred had married one of her Pendleton
cousins, and Judith had become Mrs. Robert T. Harrison.
Both of them were living not far from their parents. Walker had
graduated as a physician in Baltimore, and settled in Richmond
County, where he resided for many years as a successful doctor,
beloved and honored by all who knew him. Hugh, the oldest

of the family, had married Lucy Nelson, the cousin and intimate
friend of Miss Anzolette E. Page, whose charms had made so
deep an impression on Cadet Pendleton in the summer of 1828.
This connection afforded increased opportunity for intercourse
between the young people, and the attachment begun two years
before became strong and lasting. The ardent lover soon made
offer of his hand and heart to his lady-love, and was accepted by
her, subject to the approval of her parents.

Miss Page was the eldest child of Captain Francis Page, third
son of Governor John Page, of Rosewell, distinguished in Revolutionary
times. Captain Page was a man of excellent mind and
affectionate heart, though of an impatient and somewhat irascible
disposition. His education had been good, and he was so accomplished
as a classical scholar that he was accustomed to carry in
his pocket volumes of Homer, Virgil, and Horace, and read them
from time to time with ever-fresh delight. Strikingly handsome,
and as courteous as Sir Charles Grandison, his excessive constitutional
diffidence prevented his taking the place in life for which
his powers of mind and body eminently fitted him. Educated
for the bar, he shrank from practice, and gave himself up to the
life of a gentleman farmer. Indolent as well as diffident, he gradually
relinquished all active pursuits, and for the last twenty-five
years of his life spent his time in reading, in the discharge of his
duties as magistrate,—more responsible than they now are,—and
in making long, annual journeys in his carriage to visit his own
and his wife's kinsfolk in different parts of the State.

Mrs. Page was the fourth daughter of General Thomas Nelson,[1]
and was a woman of much beauty, of great force of character,
brilliant intellect, and charming vivacity. The fortunes of her
father's house had been so impaired by his aid to the impoverished
treasury of Virginia that his younger children experienced
many privations. Want of education they were not permitted to
endure. A tutor cousin taught them English and French. Susan,
afterwards Mrs. Francis Page, became very intimate with some of

the refugees from St. Domingo, who fled to Yorktown in 1791.
Association with them gave her fluent use of French conversation.
Italian she learned from a female friend, and her acquaintance
with English literature was cultivated by her brothers in her
youth and her husband later on. She kept up her use of French
so constantly that her children and the young servants around
her became familiar enough with the sound to obey an order
given in French as readily as in English. She also frequently
read aloud in good English any Italian or French book which
struck her fancy.

Loss of wealth never lessened the social distinction of the
Nelsons, and Mrs. Page used to relate with great sprightliness
some of the shifts to which she and her younger sister had been
put in order to dress in a manner suitable to their society and
her own prestige as the belle of Yorktown. On one occasion a
grand ball was to be given at the "Raleigh Tavern," in Williamsburg.
Neither of the young ladies had a pair of dancing slippers,
and the family purse was empty. Long and anxious consultation
failed to suggest any means to supply the deficiency. Affection
and contrivance at last proved excellent handmaidens to necessity.
"Mammy Nurse," the white housekeeper, had a sheep
killed. The skin was tanned by "Uncle Cupid," the butler, dyed
black by "mammy," and made into the coveted slippers by
"Uncle Paul," the plantation shoemaker. Mrs. Commodore
Decatur and Miss Dolly Paine—afterwards the wife of President
Madison—were among Miss Susan Nelson's intimate friends.
At a season of unusual festivity, Mrs. Decatur complimented her
on being always so well dressed,—her wardrobe at the time being
limited to two white gowns. One of these, freshly washed and
ironed, was put on every day, and the toilet completed by either
a blue or a pink sash,—said sashes having been provided by
"Jim Possum," the negro fisherman, who devoted two whole
days to the catching of fish and selling them for the purpose of
buying his "young mistis" her ribbons.

A sorrowful romance had attended the early life of Francis
Page and Susan Nelson. She was engaged at the age of eighteen
to her cousin, Dr. William Nelson. All preparations were made
for the marriage, when he fell ill with measles. He made his will
in favor of his betrothed, and expressed a wish to see her in her

bridal dress. This request gratified, he sank rapidly and expired on
the wedding-day. Francis Page was also, engaged to marry Mary
Grymes, daughter of John Grymes, of Brandon, Middlesex County,
Virginia, who fell a victim to consumption. So much attached were
her parents to her lover that Mr. Grymes left him her portion of
his estates. Four years after Dr. Nelson's death the two, thus similarly
bereaved, were married, both being twenty-two years old.

In 1812, when York was threatened by the British, Mr. and
Mrs. Page went" up the country" to Hanover County with their
little ones, and settled on a tract of land known as the "Rugged
Swamp," afterwards contracted into "Rugswamp." There was
no house but a small log building for the overseer. This they
moved into, intending at a convenient time to build a better one.
The years went on and the family increased, but the new house
was never built. A room was added here and a shed there; a
basement dining-room fitted up and a good-sized porch put to the
front; and in this contracted abode of six rooms they lived for
thirty years. Neither the small size of their house nor its remote
situation—five miles from the nearest genteel neighbor—prevented
them, however, from exercising a boundless and elegant hospitality,
for which their proximity to the "mountain road" from
Richmond to the Valley of Virginia gave frequent opportunity.

When Lieutenant Pendleton became a suitor to Captain Page
for his daughter's hand, the embarrassed father gave a quick consent,
"provided my wife has no objection," and only seemed
anxious to cut the interview short. Mrs. Page was not so complaisant.
A lieutenant's pay was small,—only eight hundred
dollars,—and though quarters were provided, their locality was
changeable and doubtful. The danger of Indian wars was an
ever-pressing one; and the frontier posts, at Council Bluffs, opposite
Omaha, at Fort Snelling in Iowa, or Fort Smith in Arkansas,
were more exposed and farther off in point of time than the State
of Washington or Mexico is now. Orders to Mackinaw were as
much a sentence of banishment as they would be to Alaska to-day.

Miss Page was not very robust, and her mother considered her
too delicate to encounter the possible hardships of an army
officer's wife. She therefore promptly and decidedly refused to
sanction the engagement, and the young people parted with no
consolation save the hope that something might occur to mitigate

her opposition. Her feelings were changed in an improbable
and romantic way. Thomas Haynes Bailey's sentimental
song, "We met, 'twas in a crowd," had just become fashionable.
Mrs. Page heard it sung, and was so touched by the pathetic
refrain,

that she was moved to tears. She sent for Mr. Pendleton, withdrew
her refusal, and permitted an unconditional engagement
between her daughter and himself.

Anzolette Elizabeth Page inherited good looks from both her
parents, as well as a quick understanding, an ardent love of
knowledge, and an all-retentive memory, with much of her
mother's conversational power and her father's diffidence. Her fairness
of complexion, delicacy of features, and slender figure made her
appear more fragile than she proved to be, but combined with soft
blue eyes, a wealth of golden-brown hair,—just escaping the ugliness
of being red,—and a most perfect set of teeth, endowed her
with personal attractions well fitted to match those of the handsome
lieutenant. Educated entirely by her mother, she was without
accomplishments, but was widely acquainted with English literature,
was well read in history, and a thorough French scholar.

Shortly after Mr. Page removed to Hanover began the period
of spiritual awakening in the Episcopal Church in Virginia, and
its renewed activity under Bishop Moore, who had been consecrated
in 1813. In 1815 the Rev. Mr. Phillips became the rector
of St. Martin's Parish, Hanover, in which "Rugswamp" was
situated. He was well fitted to aid in the revival of evangelical
Christianity. Bishop Meade says of him,"He was an Englishman
of the Wesleyan school, . . . a faithful, conscientious man, and
urged to repentance and faith and the new spiritual birth in the
most earnest and affecting manner, on Sunday, and from house
to house. . . . The old and young in Hanover felt the power
of his ministry. They who embraced religion as presented by
him embraced it as the power of God to the salvation of their
souls. His converts were genuine, faithful, true-hearted ones."[2]

Mrs. Page was one of these converts, and after going through

a long period of conviction and sorrow for sin, she experienced,
as she believed, a sudden and "sensible conversion;" having the
love of Christ and the pardon of her sins revealed to her as by a
flash of lightning. From that hour until her death she possessed
the most confident, adoring, rejoicing faith, and lived in
constant and devout communion with her Lord and Saviour. Not
a little devotion and zeal were required to attend Mr. Phillips's
services. The three churches at which he preached, Allen's
Creek, Hollowing Creek, and Fork Church, were distant from
"Rugswamp," the first two ten miles each, and the third—built
in colonial times by the Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel—fifteen miles. To these was added, some ten years later,
Trinity Church, also ten miles away, and the two old "Creek"
churches were gradually disused and dropped into decay.

Like her mother, Miss Page was an earnest Christian, though
she had not attained her glad cheerfulness of faith.