Days when Mrs. Patterson was not up around she used to lay on a couch which had a head board that could be raised or lowered. When she was laying down she used [to] tell us to take the string and pull her up. The string would slip out of our hands and she would fall back. Then she would lie and laugh at us and tell us to try it again. . . . Days when she was able to sit up she would take my sister on her lap and I would stand beside her and she would talk to us. I don’t remember what she told us but I guess that it must have been good. We always wanted to come back.21
Of special interest is the concern she took in the education and welfare of young Daniel Kidder, who lived on the nearest farm and was in his middle teens. She spent many hours tutoring him, and as late as 1921 his eyes filled with tears when, along with two other old men who had known and loved her, he talked of her to Elbert S. Barlow.22 Earlier he had written:
She was a fine looking woman. Intellectual and stately in appearance. She kept her house in the most perfect order. She wrote for the magazines of the day, mostly Poetry. This was a source of much interest and pleasure to me[.] Mrs. Patterson took a great interest in the Education of the young than living near her[.] She was a great help to me in my studies at that time[.] I remember her as a sincere friend[.]23
The “stateliness” suggests again the reserve that kept some people at a distance from her. But breaking through it is the evident desire to help a young boy face the world successfully—a young boy she may have reached out to with special warmth because her own son, unlettered and unready for life, had been taken out of her hands and thrown into a wilderness where she was powerless to help him.
21 Sarah Grace Chard, “Reminiscences of Mrs. Grace Chard,” 22 July 1930, Reminiscence, MBEL. Mrs. Chard’s reminiscences probably refer to the Rumney period (1860–1862) immediately following the Groton years, though she herself was living in North Groton when her early memories were recorded.
22 [Daniel Kidder recorded in Elbert S. Barlow, affidavit, 9 July 1921, 1921.017.0001, LMC.]
23 Daniel Kidder, n.d., Reminiscence, pp. 1–2, MBEL.