Here is the truth about Liberty Hall's Gray Lady... she was a very real person and beloved member of the Brown Family. An Aunt to Margaretta Brown, Margaretta Varick lived in the New York area until she came westward for a visit. Stopping at Liberty Hall to see her favorite niece, no one expected Aunt Varick to pass away just three days into her trip, but that's what happened, and over the course of the next 200 years, Aunt Varick became the legend of the famous Gray Lady. In an effort to share as much about her life as we do her afterlife, of course we look to the incredibly intact Liberty Hall collection to learn more. In our archives, we have ONE piece Aunt Varick left behind - a handwritten letter to Margaretta Brown in August of 1799.
At this time, Aunt Varick was in Hackensack New Jersey and Margaretta Brown was in Philadelphia, waiting to move west into their new home called Liberty Hall, nearly finished in Frankfort Kentucky. As we read this letter, a few things stand out. Instantly, we take note of her handwriting - a very personal marker of someone, especially for the time period when handwriting was well-known by family, friends, and community members. Her handwriting is small with tight curves, and she used space wisely when she put ink to parchment upon three sides of paper.
She began the letter calling her niece "my beloved girl," which is eerily similar to how generations of the Brown family referred to Aunt Varick's spirit after her death - "Our Beloved Ghost." We also notice the nickname she uses for Margaretta Brown - Peggy. Nicknames are also a personal connection between people, and knowing the matriarch of the great Brown family legacy had such a moniker is sweet and endearing indeed.
Aunt Varick wrote of the awful yellow-fever epidemic that ravaged through New York, which is possibly why she wrote from New Jersey. By that time, nearly 6% of the population died from the terrible disease. Adding to the misery is a drought, and Aunt Varick detailed the tribulations:
"We have been threatened with a drought - so that many of the farmers have been obliged to pull up their corn for fodder for the Cattle - but the compassion of our God is great - this morning we have had a fine rain so that the parched earth will be revived and I hope vegetation will again shoot forward."
But as we read on, we notice Aunt Varick imparted deep wisdom upon her niece - a wisdom only a mother could know. As we read the following passage, it became apparent that Aunt Varick is giving Peggy advice about her situation, which we realized was her pregnancy with Mason, born just 3 months later.
"The enjoyment of your health and the many mercies which you are in possession of give us sweet delight. Prize them Peggy - but not as your chief good - the nearer we are allied to the Creature, the keener the separating pang. May you my dear not only long enjoy your present happiness, but find it every day increasing - the sweet tie which you are in expectation of, which will add to your happiness and bind your heart nearer to your husband, will also raise new feelings and new affections. The sensations of a Mother's Bosom are unknown to all but those to have themselves experienced them - delightful emotions, but mixed with a thousand anxious cares. But all this is widely ordered - those different feelings keep the mind active and teach us our gratitude and our dependence on Him, who alone can preserve us."
Wise words from a wise woman. We send our highest respect to the memory of Margaretta Varick and the maternal relationship she held with Margaretta Brown at a time when life was most fearful. Terrified of yellow fever and pregnant with her first child, Peggy was about to embark on a dangerous, unknown journey into the frontier with a US Senator. She would need her aunt's reminder to rely on faith to see her through and to remember the beauty in what they believed were the natural order of things, both good and bad. While Aunt Varick would take her last breath here at Liberty Hall, we like to think Margaretta would go back to the words written in this letter long after she was gone, just as we do today. But we cannot deny the powerful connection held between generations of women in this household, and the wisdom of life each carried between them.