rcoran's very first benefactions were gifts to the town of
his birth. First of all a fund of $10,000 to be spent for firewood,
etc., for the poor. It was left to the town authorities, but was
administered by the Benevolent Society.

In 1849 he gave beautiful Oak Hill Cemetery, lying along the northern
limit of the town. To me no other cemetery that I have ever seen in this
country or abroad has the same natural beauty of slopes and trees--in
the spring bedecked like a bride in flowering white shrubs; in the fall
its towering oak trees aflame with shades of crimson.

I suppose what impressed on him the need of a cemetery for Georgetown so
deeply was the death of his beloved wife in 1840. It had been a very
romantic marriage. She was Louise Morris, the daughter of Commodore
Charles Morris. Mr. Corcoran met his wife when she was sixteen and he
was thirty-six. On the 23rd of December, 1835, they eloped, accompanied
by Mr. Corcoran's sister-in-law, Mrs. James Corcoran, who later became
the second wife of John Marbury, senior, and to the day of her death was
greatly beloved by Mr. Corcoran. When she was lying in her coffin on
14th Street, he came there and although somewhat lamed by paralysis and
nearly ninety years of age, he insisted upon climbing the long flight of
stairs to the room where she lay, saying over and over as he toiled up
the many steps: "I must see Harriet once more!" I suppose in his mind he
was living over the great event in his life when she helped to secure
for him the only love of his life. And so pitifully short a time he had
her, for only five years afterwards, when she was twenty-one, she died
of tuberculosis. In those short years she had had three children,
Harriet Louise, Louise Morris, and Charles Morris. Of these the middle
child, Louise, was the only one to grow up.

Although Commodore Morris had greatly disapproved of his daughter's
marriage, which was very natural as at that time he was one of the most
eminent officers of the United States Navy, and Mr. Corcoran had not
then entered on the career which eventually made him the most
distinguished private citizen of the capital of the nation, he grew to
greatly admire and respect his son-in-law. For there are preserved in _A
Grandfather's Legacy_, a collection of letters received by Mr. Corcoran,
and compiled by him before his death, several letters from Charles
Morris, showing the deepest trust and affection.

I suppose there was never a daugh