Autobiography of Seventy Years | Page 7

which the people have not delegated either to the National
Government or to the States, and upon which no legislative power may
rightfully enter.
I surely am not mistaken in thinking that even without the other
services of a life devoted to the public, these four contributions to the
Constitutional history of the country entitle Mr. Sherman to an
honorable place in the grateful memory of his countrymen, and
vindicate the tributes which I have cited from his illustrious

contemporaries.
My grandmother, the daughter of Benjamin Prescott of Salem, was a
woman of great intelligence and a great beauty in her time. She was
once taken out to dinner by General Washington when he was President.
Madam Hancock, whose husband had been President of the Continental
Congress and Governor of Massachusetts, complained to General
Washington's Secretary, Mr. Lear, that that honor belonged to her. The
Secretary told General Washington, the next day, what she said. The
General answered that it was his privilege to give his arm to the
handsomest woman in the room. Whether the reply was communicated
to Mrs. Hancock, or whether she was comforted by it, does not appear.
General Washington had been a guest at my grandfather's house in my
mother's childhood, and she had sat on his knee. She was then six years
old. But she always remembered the occasion very vividly.
My grandfather was a friend of Lafayette, who mentions him in one of
his letters, the original of which is in my possession. One of my
mother's brothers, Lt. Colonel Isaac Sherman, led the advance at
Princeton, and was himself intimate with Washington and Lafayette.
He was a very brave officer and commanded a Connecticut regiment at
the storming of Stony Point. He is honorably mentioned in Gen.
Wayne's report of the action. Washington alludes to him in one of his
letters to Lafayette, as one of his friends whom Lafayette will be glad
to see if he will visit this country once more. There is, in the State
Department, an amusing correspondence between Col. Sherman and
Gen. Wayne, in which he complains that Mad Anthony does great
injustice in his report to the soldiers from other States than
Pennsylvania. Mad Anthony was mad at the letter. But after a rather
significant request from Gen. Washington, he repaired the wrong.
Another of her brothers who died at the age of eighty-eight, when I was
thirty years old, and at whose house I was often a visitor, spent three
weeks as Washington's guest at Mount Vernon. Old Deacon Beers of
New Haven, whom I knew in his old age, was one of the guard who
had Andre in custody. During his captivity, Andre made a pen-and-ink
likeness of himself, which he gave to Deacon Beers. It is now in the

possession of Yale College.
I had from my mother the story of General Washington taking Chief
Justice Ellsworth's twin children, one on each knee, and reciting to
them the ballad of the Derbyshire Ram. This tradition has remained in
the Ellsworth family. I have confirmed it by inquiry of the Rev. Mr.
Wood, a grandson of Oliver Ellsworth, who died in Washington a few
years ago.
Besides the uncle to whom I allude, who died in 1856, Judge Simeon
Baldwin, who married two of my aunts, died in 1851, aged ninety. He
was a Member of Congress in 1803-5, and was an intimate friend of
Chancellor Kent, who was his classmate and chum in Yale, and was
intimate with the Federalist leaders of the Hamilton party. I several
times made visits in his household before his death. President Jeremiah
Day, another uncle by marriage, was at the head of Yale for thirty years.
He died in 1867, at the age of 94.
My mother's sister, Mrs. Jeremiah Evarts, was born January 28, 1774,
and died in 1851, at the age of seventy-seven. She knew intimately
many famous men and women of the Revolutionary period. Her
husband was an intimate friend of John Jay. She had a great deal of the
sprightly wit for which her son, William, was so famous. She was at
home at the time of Washington's visit, then a child eleven years old,
and opened the door for him when he took his leave. The General, who
was very fond of children, put his hand on her head and said, "My little
lady, I wish you a better office." She dropped a courtesy and answered,
quick as lightning, "Yes, sir; to let you in."
Mrs. Evarts was a woman not only of sprightly wit, but of great beauty.
She liked to tell in her old age of a dinner which John Hancock gave for
her father and her, in Boston, when she was a girl. She described her
dress with great minuteness, and