Death & Remembrance
The people of Portland, Oregon, upon learning the size of the pension that a general's widow could expect ($30 a month, which was increased to $50 by a special act of Congress a year later), raised and presented to her $5,000. Although this was meant as a gift, Mrs. Canby treated it as an interest-free loan, instead. She supplemented her income with the interest from the $5,000 but willed that the principal be returned to the people of Portland upon her death.
Louisa Hawkins Canby was buried beside her husband June 27, 1889. Nearly four years later, R. O. Fairs, a Confederate veteran organizing a reunion of the Sibley Brigade, wrote to the War Department asking for help in locating Louisa Canby. Not realizing that she was deceased, Fairs explained: "I wish to show her we still entertain kind remembrance and esteem for her, by inviting her to our reunion."
Read more about this topic: Louisa Hawkins Canby
Famous quotes containing the words death and/or remembrance:
“All good biography, as all good fiction, comes down to the study of original sin, of our inherent disposition to choose death when we ought to choose life.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“Then I said to myself, “What happens to the fool will happen to me also; why then have I been so very wise?” And I said to myself that this also is vanity. For there is no enduring remembrance of the wise or of fools, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How can the wise die just like fools?”
—Bible: Hebrew, Ecclesiastes 2:15-16.