George Meade, The Life and Letters of George Gordon Meade, Major-General United States Army
George Gordon Meade, Ed.

[5] became necessary for him, in order to attend to certain transactions growing out of his own affairs, to visit Spain, where he was detained much longer than he had anticipated. Seeing an excellent opportunity of forming advantageous commercial connections in that country, in which a man of capital and energy could greatly benefit himself, and never satisfied unless actively employed, he established a house in the city of Cadiz, and in 1804 was joined there by his wife and their two children.

During this absence in Spain his father's health completely gave way, and after a lingering illness he died in Philadelphia in 1808, and was buried in the family vault in the church-yard of Saint Mary's.

The widow of George Meade, accompanied by her only surviving daughter, a few years after her husband's death visited England. She was a woman of education and high breeding, of strong religious convictions, a devoted wife and affectionate mother. The death of so many of her children, just as they were growing up, was a severe sorrow; but that and the loss of her husband's fortune, and his consequent broken health, were borne by her with exemplary Christian fortitude. The religious principles of her husband, and his active partisanship with the colonies in their early differences with Great Britain, were, it is surmised, the cause of opposition on the part of her father to their earlier marriage; but, although she would, in forming that connection, be compelled to live in America, widely separated from her own immediate family, she was resolute in her decision.

Her letters from England during this visit, which was undertaken with the object of visiting her only surviving sister, whom she had not seen for very many years, are full of the warmest affection for the many friends she had made in America and of pleasant memories of her life in that country. She looked forward with pleasure to her return to Philadelphia; but this, from many causes, was delayed until increasing age and infirmity rendered it impossible, and she died near Edgebarton, Berkshire, England, about 1822, nearly eighty years old.

Richard Worsam Meade remained in Spain for seventeen years, a stay far beyond his original expectations. He was, in 1806, appointed naval agent of the United States for the port of Cadiz. His residence in the country covering the whole period of the Peninsular War, he entered, during the invasion of Spain by the French, into numerous contracts with the Spanish Government involving