Later Years
In 1792 McHenry purchased a 95-acre tract from Ridgely's Delight and named it Fayetteville in honor of his friend Lafayette; he spent his remaining years there. During that time, McHenry continued frequent correspondence with his friends and associates, in particular Timothy Pickering and Benjamin Tallmadge, with whom he maintained Federalist ideals and exchanged progress of the war.
In 1814 an attack of paralysis left him with severe pain and complete loss of the use of his legs. He died two years later. Upon the death of her beloved husband, Mrs. McHenry wrote:
"Here we come to the end of a life of a courteous, high-minded, keen-spirited, Christian gentleman. He was not a great man, but participated in great events and great men loved him, while all men appreciated his goodness and purity of soul. His highest titles to remembrance are that he was faithful to every duty and that he was the intimate and trusted friend of Lafayette, of Hamilton, and of Washington)."
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Famous quotes containing the word years:
“Thirty years ago I said, “But how can one be sick?” But now I say, “If only one could find the secret of not being sick, I would not exchange it for all the secrets in the world.””
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“The years seemed to stretch before her like the land: spring, summer, autumn, winter, spring; always the same patient fields, the patient little trees, the patient lives; always the same yearning; the same pulling at the chain—until the instinct to live had torn itself and bled and weakened for the last time, until the chain secured a dead woman, who might cautiously be released.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)