302 WOMEN ARTISTS.
teen years old; parting with him, as she believed, for- ever in this life, that he might be saved from peril, and not be tempted to abandon his faith. This boy —called by his descendants “‘'The Huguenot”—went first to Canada, and in 1685 to Charleston, South Car- olina. He became the ancestor of a numerous poster- ity, of which, during the Revolution, thirteen bearing the name were patriot soldiers, active in the cause of American liberty.
On the death of her husband, Madame Legaré left her native France and came to America. Here she found her son married, and the father of nine chil- dren. She had given him up for religion’s sake; God restored him to her arms, able to minister to her de- clining years. Her grandson, the great- grandfather of Hugh and Mary Legaré, died in 1774, at the age of seventy-nine. Yet, when the Colonies entered into a compact for mutual defense, he resolutely refused to be put on the list of the “aged and noncombatant,” saying he was able to “shoulder his musket with any man,” besides managing a charger equal to any troop- er; he “would not be insulted by being laid aside.” Thus our heroine had a great-grandfather and two grandfathers, besides other relatives, in the patriot army of the Revolution, where youths of sixteen and eighteen often fought beside their grandsires.
The father of Miss Legaré married a lady whose grandfather, Alexander Swinton, of a Scottish family, was sent from England, about 1728, as surveyor-gen- eral of the province of South Carolina. He lost a large estate by the villainy of executors and guard- ians; but after his death, Hugh Swinton, his son, was taken to Scotland by his uncle, and educated as be- came a young gentleman of birth and fortune, being
