Introduction
Born: October 23, 1840, Granard, County Longford, Ireland.
Died: December 11, 1902, Redlands, California.
Buried: Hillside Memorial Park, Redlands, California.
Born: October 23, 1840, Granard, County Longford, Ireland.
Died: December 11, 1902, Redlands, California.
Buried: Hillside Memorial Park, Redlands, California.
Mary was the daughter of John Mathews and Anna Reilly. She married three times, to Cassius M. Smith (1869); publisher Alfred Smith Barnes (1883); and Cornell University president Charles Kendall Adams (1890, London).
She was primarily educated at the Packer Collegiate Institute, Brooklyn, New York. She went on to become a teacher, poet, song writer, and philanthropist.
She sought her dead on battlefield.
Her king, of many wars;
And, finding him, she cried, ’Tis he:
I know him by his scars.
O, record of a soldier’s fate,
Whose light outshines the stars!
When she who loved him best can say,
I know him by his scars.
’Tis thus the Christian knows the King
Whose glory nothing mars;
Gazing at hands, and feet, and side,
We know Him by His scars.
O, happy we, if, serving Him
’Till death lets down the bars,
We merit then, from lips divine,
I know thee by thy scars.
Mary Jane Mathews Barnes (1840–1902)