Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 35.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

[147] contemporaries now long dead I believe that this marriage and the mysterious separation that followed are easily explained by a single analysis of the physical and spiritual natures of Houston and his bride, rather than the wild rumors and exaggerations current at the time it occurred.

General Houston, as I remember him, was a man powerfully built, wonderful in animal strength and vitality and of an ardent and romantic temperament, revelling in the ideal. He idolized his wife extravagantly; to him she was the fairest woman that ever the sun shone on. He gave her admiration and devotion and expected the same from her.

Their courtship reads like an old romance. There was a stately house three miles from Gallatin, Tenn., on the bluffs of the Cumberland River. Here lived John Allen, an old fashioned country gentleman, whose daughter was at once the delight and despair of the young cavaliers. Beautiful and queenly, the lily was not purer nor marble colder than this stately lady. She was a Greek in her repose, perfect in feature and figure, but with a spiritual something that the Greeks never possessed.