A NEW-HAMPSHIRE COUNTESS.
By the Rev. Edward Cowley.
Upon visiting the ancient and picturesque cemetery of Concord, where Franklin Pierce and many others not unknown to fame await the archangel's summons, one is struck by the name and title of Sarah, Countess of Rumford, inscribed upon a certain gravestone there, in memory of the first American who inherited and bore the title of countess. She was born at the Rolfe mansion, Concord, Oct. 18, 1774 (not Oct. 10, as her epitaph erroneously reads). She was the daughter of Major Benjamin and Sarah (Walker) Thompson. The major fairly earned, by his various merits and works, before he was forty years of age, the especial favor of the reigning Duke of Bavaria, and by him was made a count of the Holy Roman Empire.
His first wife was the above-mentioned Sarah Walker, the widow of Col. Benjamin Rolfe, one of the earliest settlers of Concord, which was originally called Rumford. She was the oldest daughter of the Rev. Timothy Walker, pastor of the first Congregationalist church in Concord, where she was born, and where she passed the larger portion of her life. She was thirty years old when first married to the colonel,—a rather late age for a bright and winsome lady of those days,—yet his years numbered twice as many as hers; and, after two happy summers of wedded life, Col. Rolfe died, leaving one son, Paul Rolfe, who also became a colonel. To the young mother was left one of the largest estates in New Hampshire. She remained a widow but one year, when she married Benjamin Thompson, late of Woburn, Mass., and then in his twentieth year. He was tall and comely of person, mature above his age, with capacity and fortune seemingly in his favor, and was forty-two years younger than the former husband of his bride. In October following, 1774, Sarah, whose history we shall briefly relate, was born of this marriage in the Rolfe mansion.
What changes are wrought by war! Within six months of the birth of this infant, the father became suspected of his attachment to the cause of independence, and the victim of an intolerant and cruel persecution. Threats of personal violence compelled him to leave his home and child and wife; so he returned to his native town, seeking safety in Woburn, Mass. But jealousy and suspicion followed him even there; and the early spring of 1776 found him a refugee within the British lines, and soon afterward the bearer of royal despatches to England. Major Thompson seems to illustrate what Renan says, that, when you have excited the antipathy of your country, you are too often led to take a dislike to your country. Having honest doubts of the wisdom and practicability of colonial separation from Great Britain, he was bitterly calumniated as a Tory, was driven from his home, separated from his family, and he sought safety in exile. His lovely babe, whom he left sleeping in her cradle, he saw not again for twenty years, till she had grown to womanhood, remembering her father only by name, when he sent her the means, and requested that she would sail for London and
