TNGenWeb Project/TNGenNet, Inc., (a Tennessee nonprofit public benefit corporation). "The Howard-Smith Collection" Transcription copyright: 1998, by Mrs. F. A. Augsbury; all rights reserved. The originals are at the McClung Library in Knoxville. This file is in text format. Please use your browser's "back" button to return to the previous page. ******************************************************************************** To: Lida M. K. Howard-Smith, Pulaski Ave. & Logan St., (Germantown), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania From: John B. Brownlow, 1411 Corcoran St., Washington, D. C. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1411 Corcoran St., Washington, D.C. March 31, /95 Dear Lide: Your letter received yesterday and I was glad to hear from you. The letter you inclosed is very interesting to me and the modesty it discloses is equal to the gallantry of the writer. Just as the battle, it describes, was terminated the writer was severely wounded but yet he says not a word of that as 99 out of every 100 Generals would have done. This letter won't bear much handling. You ought to do this. Have a skilled penman trace (that is, re-write) it with India which is an indelible ink. In every large city there are penmen who make, with pen and India ink, pictures of people & birds which pass for engravings. Such a person can trace or rewrite it, his steady hand going over every line so it could not be noticed as having been re-written. This done you should have it neatly framed with a heading similar to that I inclose. It is a fact that Gen. G's victory at Fort Erie (not Lake Erie as you say in your letter by, I doubt not a slip of the pen) was by far the most brilliant of that war, except Jackson's at New Orleans. The victory of Lake Erie was won by Commodore Perry. In the houses of people here I find such relics as this re-written and framed as I suggest. The cost of it would be trifling & is the only way in which you can preserve it. I do not know what the conditions of membership are in the Colonial Dames but I doubt not you are entitled to membership because of the very conspicuous position of your collateral ancestor in Va. Colonial affairs-Edmund Pendleton. I know you are entitled to membership in the Daughters of the Revolution, and doubly entitled to it. Many people entitled to it can't make the proof; you can from various Histories and official documents which you can cite giving page, chapter, vol. You are entitled by virtue of descent from any one who aided, in either a civil or military capacity, in establishing American Independence. Your great-grand father, Jas. Gaines, aided in both a military and civil capacity. He gallantly commanded a militia company at the battle of Guilford Court House, in the Revolutionary war, and after that war was a member of the Convention of the Colony of North Carolina, from Clatham County, which ratified the Constitution of the United States, thus bringing into the Union North Carolina. I could fix your papers for admission as I did for my sister Annie. But you would have no more right to admission to the Daughters of the Revolution by virtue of descent from Gen. Gaines than you would by virtue of descent from the lamented Mr. And Mrs. Adam whose dust, presumably, has mingled with the soil of Judea, for Gen. Gaines like Mr. Adam took no part in the Revolutionary war, but Capt. James Gaines, who died at Kingsport in 1836, and Judge Edmund Pendleton as well as others of your ancestors did and some of them a very distinguished part. There ought to be a Life of Gen. Gaines published. The only place where the materials for it can be had is in Washington. He was both a great General and an honest, incorruptible man and his kin have a right to be proud of him. Biographies of hundreds of men are published every year who were not half as meritorious. The materials for it are in books only to be had in the Congressional library here. Fanny joins me in saying we would be delighted to have a visit from you and cousin Fanny. When you come give us notice of the hour you will leave Philadelphia and on what line, Baltimore and Ohio, or Pennsylvania Central Road, so one of us can meet you at the Depot. Yours sincerely, Jno B Brownlow P.S. The Depots of these two lines are far apart & to meet you we must know which road you come on. Cousin Edmund G., for the first time in his life, is "a bloated capitalist," to use a Populistic phrase. He has $25,000 hard cash which he got from his step-mother's will. I suppose you have already procured from the Mint in Phila. the Gaines & Taylor medals. General G. & General & President Taylor were double cousins. Their mothers were sisters and General G's great-grand mother, Mary Taylor Pendleton, was the daughter of James Taylor, ancestor of General Taylor. With the aid of a magnifying glass I have deciphered a few words in Gen. G's letter which I could not otherwise make out and possibly you could not do so because they have faded out. I inclose you the copy which may be serviceable to the penman if you have it traced as I suggest. J.B.B.