Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 August 1885 — A RACE ROMANCE. [ARTICLE]

A RACE ROMANCE.

Descended in Three Generations from the Five Great Race Divisions. Smith Dandridge, who is one of the best-known and most highly respected colored citizens of Akron, Ohio, was born in slavery at Martinsburg, Va., in 1841. Mrs. Dandridge, whose maiden name was Margaret Kaponia Maquet, was born in the Village of Mowe, on one of the Sandwich or Hawaiian Islands, in the year 1848. The history of each prior to their meeting and marriage partakes of the nature of a romance. Mrs. Dandridge’s father, Charles Maquet, was a native of the Island of St. Helena, and during his childhood days had often seen Napoleon Bonaparte during the closing days of that celebrated Corsican’s banishment. Early in life Maquet grew weary of his native island, and on board a whaling vessel that touched at St. Helena he sailed away. He left the ship at Mowe, the Sandwich Islands port already named. Soon after his arrival there he married the daughter of a native mother and a Chinese father. Their only child was Margaret, and the Malay-Mongolian mother died when she was yet an infant. She was given by her father to an American lady. Mrs. Lewers, wife of a wealthy lumberman and sugar planter then residing there. Mrs. Lewers returned to the United States in 1865 and brought her Sandwich Islands protege—then almost a woman—with her. Meanwhile Dandridge, in whose veins coursed some Caucasian blood, had worn the galling bonds of slavery until he •was 21. Then, in 1862, he ran away from his master to join the Union army while it was passing Martinsburg. In that section of the Union forces was the regiment of Col. Buckley, and to it the colored fugitive attached himself. The same year the Colonel paid a visit to his home in Akron, and brought Dandridge with him. Here he worked two years upon the farm of A. B. Matthews, who also owned another farm at West Middleton, Pa., and is now a wealthy Western cattle owner. In 1865 Dandridge was sent by Matthews to act as overseer on the Pennsylvania farm, where Mrs. Lewers, sister to Matthews, together with Margaret Kaponia Maquet, the Sandwich Islands girl, was then stopping for a time. The friendship which naturally followed the meeting of Dandridge and the latter soon ripened into love, though born at points almost antipodal upon the earth’s geography. They were wedded in 18b6 and soon after went to Akron. They have three children, who may justly claim to have within their veins the blood from four of the five great race divisions of mankind. Dandridge combines by the relation of consanguinity the essential element of descendancy from both Caucasian and African races—a thing not uncommon before the war—while Mrs. Dandridge has but to trace her lineage back to grandparents on her mother’s side to introduce, as already stated, Malay and Mongolian stock. Could it be established—as is believed by some —that the natives of St. Helena had their origin in the Indian race, the children of Smith Dandridge and Margaret Kaponia Ma juet might claim direct descent, within three generations, from the five great race divisions.— Chicago Herald.