Christine Nicholls in Old Africa 20 Apr 2014 and  19 May 2014 In 1893 a strange procession arrived at Fort Smith, the Imperial British East Africa Company’s outpost eight miles from present-day Nairobi. Accompanied by African porters, there appeared a white man, his wife, and four children ranging from six months to six years in age. They had marched from Mombasa. Who was this intrepid interloper and what brought him to such a wild place? He was Stuart Watt, an Irishman, a former Church Missionary Society missionary who had decided to travel inland to establish his own independent mission. The CMS denied any responsibility for Watt. ‘You know my opinion of the venture you are making,’ wrote its Secretary to Watt, ‘so I will not write more than to say I pray God to avert you from the catastrophe which your scheme appears to court. I am sure of your zeal. I feel equally sure that it is “not according to knowledge”.’ (J.A. Stuart-Watt’s Recollections, Rhodes House). Watt’s plan was foolhardy in the extreme and John Ainsworth at Machakos fort, where the travellers stopped on the way, had tried to dissuade him from proceeding. Frank Hall, in charge at Fort Smith, also told Watt that his plan was foolish and dangerous. ‘I … decline to be in any way responsible for the safety of the lives and property of your party once out of rifle range of this fort’, wrote Hall to Watt on 13 December 1893 (Hall’s Diary, Rhodes House).

Watt had already been to Africa as a CMS missionary at Mamboia in Tanganyika, in 1885, but his infant son died there in January 1886 and he and his wife became ill with fever, probably malaria. They had had a daughter, Martha, in East Africa, and she lived. In May 1888 they had abandoned the CMS and Africa and went to Australia, where Watt’s wife, Rachel, thrived and had two more children, Stuart B. in 1889 and (Rachel) Eva in 1891. They bought a suburban residence in New South Wales, with a garden of fruit trees. But, said Rachel, ‘We determined that … we would return to East Equatorial Africa, unconnected with any Society, and open up missionary work in some of those great tracts of country along the Equator.’ (In the Heart of Savagedom) She was doubtful about the plan and ‘the thought of our young children dying of fever or dysentery’. Yet they sold their house and ‘several properties’ (it seems that Stuart Watt was a bit of a speculator) and decided to finance the mission with the proceeds. They returned to England and Ireland to make plans and settled in Rostrevor, where Rachel had another son, George, in 1893.

Quite why Watt fell out with the CMS is unclear, but he was to fall out with a great many people in his life. He was not partial to authority. He had been born in the village of Gilford, County Down, Ireland, in 1855/6 but we know nothing about his parentage because the Irish records were burnt in the Civil War in 1922. After school he had been a commercial traveller in the tea trade until he felt the pull of missionary work and applied to the CMS. He also became a captain in the Salvation Army, or so he told Ainsworth. He had met Rachel Harris in Dublin (her ancestry is also unknown, but she was born in Newry, Co. Down, in c.1862) and they married in Carlisle Memorial church, Belfast, a Methodist church, in the July/Aug/Sept quarter of 1884. 

Hall described Watt as ‘a raving lunatic’ and what Eric Smith (after whom the fort was named) thought about him was ‘anything but scripturally expressed’ (Hall’s Diary, 14 January 1994, Rhodes House). The family spent Christmas 1893 with Hall at Fort Smith.  Watt abandoned his plan of proselytising in Kikuyuland and retreated to Machakos. Ainsworth did not know quite what to do with the band, but allowed them to go eight miles north into Wakamba country to establish a mission at Ngelani. Needless to say, three more children arrived swiftly – Frederick in 1894, James Alfred on 23 August 1895 and Clara in 1898. Watt had no means of financial support, so was obliged to establish a farm. In fact, farming seems to have predominated – Ainsworth reported that there was little sign of missionary activity.

Watt sent to Australia for wattle, previously unknown in East Africa, and to him must go the credit for its proliferation in Kenya. He also sent to Shepherds, a seed merchant in Pitt St., Sydney, for seeds, and ordered from Australia, Tasmania and Japan different kinds of fruit trees. He introduced maize from Virginia. He grew potatoes, passion fruit, tomatoes, and Cape gooseberries. Rachel made boots for the children from wildebeeste hide. ‘Sometimes a feeling of great insecurity would come over me’, she admitted (p.284). In fact, Watt’s farming was so successful that he swept the board for prizes in Nairobi’s second Agricultural Show in 1902, gaining firsts for apples, apricots, grapes and mangoes, and second for a native bull. (Kenya Gazette, 1 January 1903).

The children were growing up and the eldest needed schooling. Watt was fortunate that a benefactor in the CMS offered to pay their school fees, so Watt set out with the oldest four (Martha, Stuart, Eva, and Frederick) in 1901. The girls were put into a school for the daughters of missionaries at Walthamstow Hall, Sevenoaks, and the two boys were placed in the Methodist College, Belfast. Stuart Watt returned to Ngelani and his wife and other two children. Locusts, jiggers, famine and fires did not deter him from his labours. We don’t know where the children went in the school holidays, but they must have felt a wrench after their free African childhood.

In March 1903 the family decided to visit their children in England and Ireland. In Rochdale Watt attempted to sell his Ngelani farm to the United Methodist Free Church (20 October 1903), but failed. While they were in Dover, another son, Stanley, was born to Rachel, but his birth appears not to have been registered. Soon they were off to Africa again, in November 1904. Martha, the eldest child, returned to Ngelani to help out in 1906, when she had completed her schooling. What happened later to this intrepid family must wait for next month’s blog. Their charmed life was soon to come to an end. In 1908 ‘owing to failing health and the necessity of providing a home for their family, most of whom are at school, Mr and Mrs Watt have been obliged to give up their work in Africa,’ reported the Advertiser of East Africa  on 24 April. Watt sold 1,000 acres to Northrup Macmillan for £1,300, even though no improvements had been made to the land, and Lord Delamere bought the fruit farm, which was now very successful. The Ngelani mission was sold to the American Africa Inland Mission at the same time. Not long after Macmillan had finalised the purchase he was visited by a representative of the Church Missionary Society who had come out from England to take possession of Watt’s land but it was discovered that Watt had put the title in his own name rather than the mission’s, so nothing could be done. Might this indicate that the CMS provided some initial capital for the land? It has been alleged that, after the sale, Watt returned to England, joined another mission, and acquired other land by this means. In any case, and however nefarious his dealings, Watt’s activities prompted the opening up of the Mua hills district to white farming.

The Watts set up home in Branksome Park, Bournemouth. They were there during the 1911 census, when their household consisted of Stuart, Rachel, George (now 17 and a bank clerk), James Alfred (15), Clara (13) and Stanley (6). Their daughters Martha and Eva worked as a domestic nurse and nursery governess at The Vicarage, Cullompton, Devon, in the family of Mary Harris and her children. Could Mary Harris have been a relative of their mother, whose maiden name was Harris? Martha and Eva also appear as evangelical Christians encouraging the Republican Hunger Strike in Ireland. Eva became a missionary, mainly in West Africa, and wrote several books about her missionary endeavours. The wanderlust again visited Stuart Watt in 1913 and he returned to the Mua hills to visit the mission. The family bought land and settled down at Donyo Sabuk, but a fire in February 1914 burnt their house and property. With them were sons Stuart B. (known as Tooty), now 25, and daughter Eva, now 23. On 20 July Stuart senior and junior went riding twenty-five miles away, but the young man developed fever, and died. He was buried nearby. Stuart also developed fever and died on 25 April 2014. He was buried under some forest trees. On hearing of his father’s death, James Alfred left Europe for Kenya in June, to find his mother living in a grass hut. He settled into a tent with his brother George, described by Macmillan as ‘as conscienceless as his father’, for eight months while a stone house was built.

George and James Alfred are in the first voting list for the district of Ukamba, in 1919. They lived at Kyatta estate, Chania Bridge (the early name for Thika). By now George had married – Edna Crystelle. Their farm was hit by rinderpest in 1923-4 (Kenya Gazette, 24 October 1923). By 1927 George is in trouble as a debtor (KG, 2 March 1927). Edna Crystelle emigrated to Australia, where she married again – to Hamilton McMaster Allison, probably in 1956. She died aged 67 on 5 March 1964 and is buried at Oakey Creek cemetery, Coolah, NSW. As for James Alfred, he became a clerk on the Kenya Uganda Railway (KG, 10 January 1920). By 1935 he had been promoted to Stock Verifier and by 1938 Accounting Inspector. On 5 September 1922 he married, in Dublin, Amy Feodora Trench (born in Dublin 1896), and they had three sons, two of whom died young. He left Kenya in 1945 and returned to Ireland, where he died in Dublin in 1975.

At some stage his wife Rachel also returned to Ireland. She died on 25 June 1932 in Rathdrum and was buried at Greystones, County Wicklow. Her life had been hard, but she must have concurred with her husband’s wild plans to have suffered, as she did, the loss of some of her children and finally her husband.

Gazette 13 Jan 1915 probate

HBEA 1912 - some 10 or more years ago started an orchard on the Machakos Hills, which at the present time supplies most of the fruit sold in the Protectorate.  

Hobley - 1892 - During our halt here (Machakos) we were visited by a curious character named S........  W............ , who posed as a missionary and a settler, and came with a tale of woe, begging for provisions to stave off starvation from a wife and children, an appeal which it was impossible to resist. I never heard that he did much missionary work, but he founded a valuable fruit farm which in time proved lucrative. His was a type which appealed to few, for he claimed to be the special charge of the Deity, and told with great gusto the story of how one day when out on the plains he suddenly found himself charged by an infuriated rhinoceros. He ran; the rhino gained on him, and he thought all was lost, but No! Suddenly a voice came out of heaven, and the Lord said to him, "Throw down your hat." He obeyed the mandate, and lo! and behold the rhino stopped, then charged the hat and went off with it impaled on its horn.

The Divine protection apparently extended to the whole family, for on another occasion his wife and small children were out for a walk and suddenly came face to face with a brace of lions seeking their prey. Paralysed with fear they stood and faced the savage beasts, praying the while. Immediately the lions bounded off, diverted from their prey by Divine Command. Why cannot more of us secure such special intervention?

KFA - Won the prize for fruit at the Agricultural & Horticultural Show in Nairobi in 1903. ......... As early as 1896 a missionary called the Rev Stuart Watt, who walked up from the Coast with his wife and small children, had planted fruit trees at Ngelani, near Machakos. As he had previously worked in Australia he planted also eucalyptus and wattle trees - perhaps the first introduction (though we cannot be sure of this) of these invaluable trees, which took to the EA Highlands as a cat to cream. By 1904 this farm, then the property of Mr Langridge, was producing for sale a range of fruit whose catalogue could scarcely be bettered today, including apples in large quantities, peaches, apricots, oranges, lemons, pineapples, figs, guavas, quinces and plums.'

Permanent Way - 'In 1893 a fruit farm was established by the Rev. Stuart Watt near Machako's, and apple, apricot, plum, quince and lemon trees all produced good fruit. Stuart Watt was a great-hearted missionary and pioneer who had first visited the Usoga country in 1885 ....... Then he spent some years in Australia and returned to EA in 1893. He and his wife - with 5 children from 3 months to 8 years old - walked from the coast to Fort Smith. Mrs Stuart Watt was the first white woman to travel into the interior of EA.

Stuart Watt imported many types of eucalyptus and wattle trees, and fruit trees from Australia, and his home, Ngelani, near Machako's, was a prelude to the great enterprise of white settlement in EA.  

Watt - From a Scottish family, descendants of James Watt, who settled in Ulster in the eighteenth century. At 19 he became a commercial traveller until he saw the light. Became a CMS Missionary and in 1885 set sail for Zanzibar  

Sorrenson - Only one European, the ex-missionary Stuart Watt, settled in the Highlands before the Company withdrew, and he was regarded by Company officials as a nuisance, likely to get into trouble with the Africans. Their fears were confirmed; when Watt finally selected land near Machakos he soon quarrelled with the local Kamba.

White Man - 1902 - Stuart Watt was combining fruit farming with missionary work at Machakos

North - Former CMS Missionary in Ugogo; refused permission to return to EA on medical grounds by CMS; arr. Mombasa 1893, travelled to Fort Smith via Machakos; at Fort Smith 13/12/1893, dep. soon after Christmas & returned to Machakos; Set up independent mission at N'gelani, Ngongo Bargas eight miles from Machakos, 1894, with wife Rachel and 5 children; Machakos 1896; acted as agent for Andrew Dick at Machakos until Dick withdrew Agency in May 1894; Machakos Road 14/7/1899 meeting train; attempting to sell farm at Machakos to the UMFC at a meeting at Rochdale 20/10/1903; 'The raving lunatic in the missionary trade' (Francis Hall, RH); 'A low howling cad this person Watt … that awful thing, made like a woman and called Mrs Watt' (John Ainsworth, RH)

Curtis - p. 33 - Stuart & Rachel Watt - 'Stuart and Rachel Watt were an Irish couple who had first gone to EA as CMS missionaries to Tanganyika in 1885, where, almost immediately, they had to bury their baby son. After a few years their health broke down and they retired to Australia. But in 1893 they responded to another call, this time to the Central Kikuyu area as independent missionaries. The CMS, the IBEA Co. and others all warned them not to venture into that country, particularly with 4 young children, and they all disclaimed responsibility for them. For all that, Rachel Watt was the first European woman to go to those parts and both John Ainsworth at Machakos and Francis Hall, now stationed at Fort Smith, gave her a guard of honour when she arrived. The difficulties of working in Kikuyuland at that time proved too great and they eventually settled at Ngelani, 7 miles north of Machakos. The Wakamba did not want them there and tried to poison their water, but eventually Watt made blood-brotherhood with a local chief .....…..

Self sufficiency was obviously essential, and one of the first things Watt did was to order fruit trees from Australia and Japan. At first only a few survived, but after a while they began to produce in quantity and Watt had a thriving fruit farm to look after. It included Japanese plums, oranges, tangerines, guavas and later apples, apricots and peaches. He also imported Australian Blue Gum and Black Wattle trees. With the profits from the farm Watt was able to take his four eldest children to school in England.

In about 1905 he bought 1,000 acres of land in the Mua Hills and planted fruit trees and timber there. There he grew the first pears in Kenya. In 1908 their health again broke down and the Watts sold up. The Ngelani farm was sold to Lord Delamere for £600 and the Mua Hills farm to Northrup McMillan for £1,000. Watt possibly made few converts to Christianity, but his fruit farm is a lasting legacy.

Land - 1908 - Stuart Watt - Grazing - 499 acres and 506 acres, Ngoleni, Machakos, 5-5-06, Registered 5-3-08

Land - 1907 - S. Watt - Agricultural, 100 acres, Machakos, 22-3-06, Registered 1-2-07

CMS 1885 - Age 30. Of Belfast. b. at Gilford. 1885, Apr 21, accepted by CMS; Oct. 28  to E. Eq. Africa Mission; 1887, Sept 27, to England, and connexion dissolved; went to Australia for health. m. when accpted.

Nicholls - Fort Smith - In December 1893 an extraordinary sight met Hall [Frank] at the gates of Fort Smith: standing before him was a white man, his wife and 6 children ranging from 6 weeks to 6 years. It turned out to be Stuart Watt and his spouse Rachel, former CMS missionaries at Mamboia in Tanganyika, who had decided to set up their own, independent mission, in Kikuyuland. Hall refused to let the mother and her children go any further, because of the dangers, but Stuart Watt insisted on leaving to search for a mission site. Watt was an Irishman, a former traveller in the wholesale tea trade before he became a missionary, and, in Hall's opinion, 'a raving lunatic'. Recently he had helped his wife bury their baby. ……

Matson Bio - Francis Hall tried to dissuade Stuart Watt from penetrating into the Kikuyu District in 1893, and was much relieved when 'the raving lunatic in the missionary trade' left, with his wife and 5 small children, for Ainsworth's headquarters at Machakos.

Old Africa - 17-4-14 - Christine Nicholls - In 1893 a strange procession arrived at Fort Smith, the Imperial British East Africa Company’s outpost eight miles from present-day Nairobi. Accompanied by African porters, there appeared a white man, his wife, and four children ranging from six months to six years in age. They had marched from Mombasa. Who was this intrepid interloper and what brought him to such a wild place? He was Stuart Watt, an Irishman, a former Church Missionary Society missionary who had decided to travel inland to establish his own independent mission. The CMS denied any responsibility for Watt. ‘You know my opinion of the venture you are making,’ wrote its Secretary to Watt, ‘so I will not write more than to say I pray God to avert you from the catastrophe which your scheme appears to court. I am sure of your zeal. I feel equally sure that it is “not according to knowledge”.’ (J.A. Stuart-Watt’s Recollections, Rhodes House). Watt’s plan was foolhardy in the extreme and John Ainsworth at Machakos fort, where the travellers stopped on the way, had tried to dissuade him from proceeding. Frank Hall, in charge at Fort Smith, also told Watt that his plan was foolish and dangerous. ‘I … decline to be in any way responsible for the safety of the lives and property of your party once out of rifle range of this fort,’ wrote Hall to Watt on 13 December 1893 (Hall’s Diary, Rhodes House).

Watt had already been to Africa as a CMS missionary at Mamboia in Tanganyika, in 1885, but his infant son died there in January 1886 and he and his wife became ill with fever, probably malaria. They had had a daughter, Martha, in East Africa, and she lived. In May 1888 they had abandoned the CMS and Africa and went to Australia, where Watt’s wife, Rachel, thrived and had two more children, Stuart B. in 1889 and (Rachel) Eva in 1891. They bought a suburban residence in New South Wales, with a garden of fruit trees. But, said Rachel, ‘We determined that … we would return to East Equatorial Africa, unconnected with any Society, and open up missionary work in some of those great tracts of country along the Equator.’ (In the Heart of Savagedom). She was doubtful about the plan and ‘the thought of our young children dying of fever or dysentery.’ Yet they sold their house and ‘several properties’ (it seems that Stuart Watt was a bit of a speculator) and decided to finance the mission with the proceeds. They returned to England and Ireland to make plans and settled in Rostrevor, where Rachel had another son, George, in 1893.

Quite why Watt fell out with the CMS is unclear, but he was to fall out with a great many people in his life. He was not partial to authority. He had been born in the village of Gilford, County Down, Ireland, in 1855/6 but we know nothing about his parentage because the Irish records were burnt in the Civil War in 1922. After school he had been a commercial traveller in the tea trade until he felt the pull of missionary work and applied to the CMS. He also became a captain in the Salvation Army, or so he told Ainsworth. He had met Rachel Harris in Dublin (her ancestry is also unknown, but she was born in Newry, Co. Down, in c.1862) and they married in Carlisle Memorial church, Belfast, a Methodist church, in the July/Aug/Sept quarter of 1884.

Hall described Watt as ‘a raving lunatic’ and what Eric Smith (after whom the fort was named) thought about him was ‘anything but scripturally expressed’ (Hall’s Diary, 14 January 1994, Rhodes House). The family spent Christmas 1893 with Hall at Fort Smith.  Watt abandoned his plan of proselytising in Kikuyuland and retreated to Machakos. Ainsworth did not know quite what to do with the band, but allowed them to go eight miles north into Wakamba country to establish a mission at Ngelani. Needless to say, three more children arrived swiftly – Frederick in 1894, James Alfred on 23 August 1895 and Clara in 1898. Watt had no means of financial support, so was obliged to establish a farm. In fact, farming seems to have predominated – Ainsworth reported that there was little sign of missionary activity.

Watt sent to Australia for wattle, previously unknown in East Africa, and to him must go the credit for its proliferation in Kenya. He also sent to Shepherds, a seed merchant in Pitt St., Sydney, for seeds, and ordered from Australia, Tasmania and Japan different kinds of fruit trees. He introduced maize from Virginia. He grew potatoes, passion fruit, tomatoes, and Cape gooseberries. Rachel made boots for the children from wildebeeste hide. ‘Sometimes a feeling of great insecurity would come over me,’ she admitted (p.284). In fact, Watt’s farming was so successful that he swept the board for prizes in Nairobi’s second Agricultural Show in 1902, gaining firsts for apples, apricots, grapes and mangoes, and second for a native bull. (Kenya Gazette, 1 January 1903).

The children were growing up and the eldest needed schooling. Watt was fortunate that a benefactor in the CMS offered to pay their school fees, so Watt set out with the oldest four (Martha, Stuart, Eva, and Frederick) in 1901. The girls were put into a school for the daughters of missionaries at Walthamstow Hall, Sevenoaks, and the two boys were placed in the Methodist College, Belfast. Stuart Watt returned to Ngelani and his wife and other two children. Locusts, jiggers, famine and fires did not deter him from his labours. We don’t know where the children went in the school holidays, but they must have felt a wrench after their free African childhood.

In March 1903 the family decided to visit their children in England and Ireland. In Rochdale Watt attempted to sell his Ngelani farm to the United Methodist Free Church (20 October 1903), but failed. While they were in Dover, another son, Stanley, was born to Rachel, but his birth appears not to have been registered. Soon they were off to Africa again, in November 1904. Martha, the eldest child, returned to Ngelani to help out in 1906, when she had completed her schooling.

Old Africa - 19-5-14 - By now he seems to have been more of a land speculator than a missionary, for he also took up 1,000 acres on the Lukenya side of the Mua hills. He had been granted a certificate of occupation by John Ainsworth in 1898 and he managed to convert this into a freehold title in 1905 (Kenya Land Commission evidence).

In 1908 ‘owing to failing health and the necessity of providing a home for their family, most of whom are at school, Mr and Mrs Watt have been obliged to give up their work in Africa,’ reported the Advertiser of East Africa on 24 April. Watt sold 1,000 acres to Northrup McMillan for £1,300, even though no improvements had been made to the land, and Lord Delamere bought the fruit farm, which was now very successful. The Ngelani mission was sold to the American Africa Inland Mission at the same time. Not long after McMillan had finalised the purchase he was visited by a representative of the Church Missionary Society who had come out from England to take possession of Watt’s land but it was discovered that Watt had put the title in his own name rather than the mission’s, so nothing could be done. Might this indicate that the CMS provided some initial capital for the land? It has been alleged that, after the sale, Watt returned to England, joined another mission, and acquired other land by this means. In any case, and however nefarious his dealings, Watt’s activities prompted the opening up of the Mua hills district to white farming.

The Watts set up home in Branksome Park, Bournemouth. They were there during the 1911 census, when their household consisted of Stuart, Rachel, George (now 17 and a bank clerk), James Alfred (15), Clara (13) and Stanley (6). Their daughters Martha and Eva worked as a domestic nurse and nursery governess at The Vicarage, Cullompton, Devon, in the family of Mary Harris and her children. Could Mary Harris have been a relative of their mother, whose maiden name was Harris? Martha and Eva also appear as evangelical Christians encouraging the Republican Hunger Strike in Ireland. Eva became a missionary, mainly in West Africa, and wrote several books about her missionary endeavours. But where was Frederick, who has disappeared from the record. Does anyone know what happened to him? Perhaps he died, because in July 1899 Watt had described the child as weak and unable to withstand fever (Watt to his wife, c. July 1899, in J.A.S. Watt’s Recollections, Rhodes House).

The wanderlust again visited Stuart Watt in 1913 and he returned to the Mua hills to visit the mission. The family bought land and settled down at Donyo Sabuk, but a fire in February 1914 burnt their house and property. With them were sons Stuart B. (known as Tooty), now 25, and daughter Eva, now 23. On 20 July Stuart senior and junior went riding twenty-five miles away, but the young man developed fever, and died. He was buried nearby. Stuart also developed fever and died on 25 April 2014. He was buried under some forest trees. On hearing of his father’s death, James Alfred left Europe for Kenya in June, to find his mother living in a grass hut. He settled into a tent with his brother George, described by McMillan as ‘as conscienceless as his father’, for eight months while a stone house was built.

George and James Alfred are in the first voting list for the district of Ukamba, in 1919. They lived at Kyatta estate, Chania Bridge (the early name for Thika). By now George had married – Edna Crystelle. Their farm was hit by rinderpest in 1923-4 (Kenya Gazette, 24 October 1923). By 1927 George is in trouble as a debtor (KG, 2 March 1927). Edna Crystelle emigrated to Australia, where she married again – to Hamilton McMaster Allison, probably in 1956. She died aged 67 on 5 March 1964 and is buried at Oakey Creek cemetery, Coolah, NSW. As for James Alfred, he became a clerk on the Kenya Uganda Railway (KG, 10 January 1920). By 1935 he had been promoted to Stock Verifier and by 1938 Accounting Inspector. On 5 September 1922 he married, in Dublin, Amy Feodora Trench (born in Dublin 1896), and they had three sons, two of whom died young. He left Kenya in 1945 and returned to Ireland, where he died in Dublin in 1975.

At some stage Stuart Watt’s wife Rachel also returned to Ireland. She died on 25 June 1932 in Rathdrum and was buried at Greystones, County Wicklow. Her life had been hard, but she must have concurred with her husband’s wild plans to have suffered, as she did, the loss of some of her children and finally her husband.