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a fond and pious mother; when her son needed chastisement, she would pray over him so long that he would cry out, “Mother, it is time to begin whipping!”
If Julia Ward was part Ward and Greene, she was quite as much Cutler and Marion; it is to this descent that we must turn for the best explanation of her many-sided character.
When she said of any relation, however distant, “He is a Cutler!”
it meant that she recognized in that person certain qualities — a warmth of temperament, a personality glowing, sparkling, effervescent — akin to her own. If in addition to these qualities the person had red hair, she took him to her heart, and he could do no wrong.
All this, and a host of tender associations beside, the name of Cutler meant to her; yet it may be questioned whether any of these characteristics would have appeared in the descendants of Johannes Demesmaker, worthy citizen of Holland, who, coming to this country in 1674, changed his name to Cutler for conveniencea sake, had not one of these descendants, Benjamin Clarke Cutler, married Sarah (Mitchell) Hyrne, daughter of Thomas Mitchell'and Esther (or Hester) Marion.
To most people, the name of Marion suggests one person only,--General Francis Marion of Revolutionary fame; yet it was the grandfather of the General, Benjamin Marion, of La Rochelle, who was the first of the name to settle in this country, coming hither when the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes drove the Huguenots into exile.
Brigadier-General Peter Horry,1
1 See Horry and Weems, Life of Marion. General Horry was a most zealous and devoted friend; as a biographer his accuracy is questionable, his picturesqueness never.
Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York. 1916.
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