Rensselaer Republican, Volume 14, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 January 1882 — Does Blood Count. [ARTICLE]

Does Blood Count.

Collated from Gath’s Special. Mrs. Mackay, the Parisian lady whose husband is an honest miner in Nevada, was an infatuating widow. Stepnen Decatur, probably the most hightoned man the American Navy ever knew, nad a singular marriage. His wife was illegitimate, though he did not know it till after he had married her. Don Cameron, whose wife is considered to be one ofhhe brightest ladies in Washington, if not the leader of the administration society, was the poor daughter of Judge Sherman, of Cleveland. Colonel Forney, who died the other day, married, while a young printer, a lady in the town where he sprang up; George Riggs, who recently died in Washington, leaving a fortune of about $5,000,000, had a daughter married in the family of- Arundel, the same lord who married a daughter to Cecil, Lord 1 Baltimore.

Mr. Corgoran, the neighbor and partner of Mr. Riggs, was the son of a shoemaker at Georgetown, born in Ireland, but who became Mayor of Georgetown. Corcoran had the social passion strong, and he pressed to marry the daughter of Commodore Morris, of the navy. ,* fv.i' t ->1 Thomas A. Scott, having mar/ftet early in life and become* widower with children, married; considerably later a daughter of a respectable editor in Pittsburg, who was very well bred, but liad, I think, earned her living fdr a while as an amateur artist. Jay Gould has a plain, sensible family, to which he gives all the attention compatible with his vast schemes and speculations, xio soemeu tu\ iutvo i

adapted the policy of bringing hi children upeimply and naturally, instead of flaunting their names in the newspapers as bridesmaids, beet men, party queens, etc. Stephen Girard, the rich Philadelphian, who was a curious compound of the miser and the philanthropist, the infidel and the Quaker, married unhappily, and according to general tradition was very unkind to his wife. Yet he left the best-handled estate ever given in this country, or perhaps in anv other, to a charitable need. Commodore Garrison’s marriage in New York attracted great attention. He was quite an old man, but a splendid looking one, and meeting at Saratoga a young lady of St. Louis w® Was considerably younger than either of the Commodore’s children, he proposed to her and was accepted. Yet, notwithstanding the disproportion of age, the Commodore is in probably as robust health as his wife to-day. Old Commodore Vanderbilt married his cousin when he was a rough cat-boat sailor in the creeks and coves about New York. His wife was devotedly attached to him and bore him many children, but his treatment of her was very variable. Generally be took her with him, and paid attention to her, but he was not a man -of much refinement of feeling, nor particularly chaste. / You may have forgotten that Smithson, who left half a million dollars to found the Institute at Washington bearing his name, was an illegitimated son, so snubbed thereabout in England that he made the United States his almoner. Thereupon the Virginia snobs of that day undertook to have the legacy rejected by Congress. The money, however, was taken and lent to the State of Arkansas, which kept every ecu of it, aud has never paid it lac*. v Senator Gwm, who is still living, is said to have discovered his wife in Kentucky, at the wash-tub, as he rode up to the house to get his dinner, on his way to Tennessee and Mississippi. She had a splendid pair of arms, and other bodily charms se exasperating to Gwin that, after he had ridden a whole day on the way toward home, he drove back again,' introduced himself, and proposed to marry her then and there.