e 26th instant, and who will be
buried today, was for many years a most interesting figure in the
social life of Washington. She was the last in her generation of the
descendants of Mrs. Martha Washington. John Parke Custis, Mrs.
Washington's son, left four children. One of his daughters, Martha,
married Thomas Peter, and Mrs. Kennon was their daughter. She
married Commodore Beverley Kennon, of the United States Navy, whose
father was General Richard Kennon, of Washington's staff, a charter
member of the Society of the Cincinnati, and a grandson of Sir
William Skipwith. Commodore Kennon was killed in 1844 by the
explosion on the U. S. S. _Princeton_, so Mrs. Kennon was a widow
for more than sixty-six years.

Tudor Place, Mrs. Kennon's home, was famous for the distinguished
guests that were entertained there, among them being General
Lafayette, who visited there in 1824. She was the center of an
intellectual and cultivated society, and was always in touch with
the progress of events in the world.

Mrs. Kennon was born three weeks after the Battle of New Orleans,
and several months before the Battle of Waterloo. Her life spanned
the period of the great advance in the appliances of civilization in
this and the last century. It was very important that the news of
the battle of Waterloo should reach London without delay, and yet
with every appliance and speed then known, it took three days for
the news to reach England. Indeed, when Mrs. Kennon was thirty-two
years of age, it required eight months to travel from New England to
Oregon. At the age of fifteen she could have been a passenger on the
first passenger railroad train that was ever run; until she was five
years old, there was no such thing as an iron plow in all the world,
and until she was grown up, the people were dependent on tinder
boxes and sun glasses to light their fires. She had reached the age
of twenty-three years when steam communication between Europe and
America was established, and when the first telegram ever sent
passed between Baltimore and Washington she was still a young woman.
If all the advances in civilization which took place during the
lifetime of this remarkable lady were catalogued, they would make a
singularly interesting list.

Mrs. Kennon was left a widow when less than thirty years of age, with
her