Mary Catherine Brisbane Hickox 1832 - 1913 wrote a memoir of her childhood, as she explained it "thinking that after I am gone my children may want to know some thing about their relations when there is no one to tell them".   She had two children, but only one grand child and this grand daughter, Zillah Keese Hickox 1892 - 1975, would herself die unmarried.   Mary Catherine's memoir lives on, however, and includes many delightful reminiscences of her kinsfolk including the one below.   Thanks are due to Zillah Keese Hickox who ensured the preservation of the text and to Tom Tucker who brought it to the compiler's attention.

My grandmother was Catherine Osborne  born 1775, died Jan 1853.   She was always called Kitty by her sisters.   She was a beautiful woman, I have heard, and a miniature of her done by Mallowe [?], and now owned by my sister Mrs Catherine Darby [Catherine Osborne Brisbane b 3 Aug 1836], proves that the legend is true.   There was also one other water colored picture of her, done by Judge Thomas Waties, showing a face in profile which was strikingly like her in old age when I knew her.   We have a photograph of this likeness which is now owned by one of her grand daughters, Mary Amarinthia Lowndes [daughter of  William Henry Lowndes 1808 – 1865 ] who married Henry Elliot of Beaufort [?in South Carolina].   Some of her great grand daughters bear a strong resemblance to the profile.   Besides being so lovely she was very intelligent and ambitious.   I can remember how fond she was of books and had evidently found time to read a great deal when a young girl.   She was much better educated than her sisters and other women of her day.   Her parents were rich, kept open house, as the saying then was, and lived in the gayest circles.   She was a great belle, loved company and had many suitors.   It was the custom in those days and must be now for rice planters to live on their plantations in winter, as the cultivation of rice has to be carried on in the low swampy lands bordering the rivers, which makes the climate deadly to white people….   In consequence, in summer rice planters moved into the cities which were situated for the most part on the sea coast, or travelled about and returned to the country with the first black frost (ice).   The Osborne plantation was at Jacksonboro and there the family spent their winters.   I do not remember ever hearing anything about the extent or grandure [sic] of the house they lived in, but I know that it was usually filled with company.   At Christmas time it was overflowing.   The dining room was very large and as my grandmother described it, it had a raised platform at one end, occupied by a band trained for the purpose, who enlivened the company while they dined with the best music at their command, and also played for the dance in the evening.   My grand mother seems to have been hard to please and undecided in her love affairs for she did not marry until she was about twenty-five years old (an old maid for those days) though my grandfather [James Lowndes  1769 – 1838] had been serving his time for seven long years, like Jacob for Rachel, but he finally won her.

The gay season in Charleston was always in February.  Then young and old and all who could afford it and loved that kind of dissipation flocked to the city to enjoy the balls, theatre and races and have the good time of their lives.   My grandmother used to tell us that there were such crowds of people, so many heads to dress, and so few hair dressers, that they had to engage a long time beforehand, as the hair at that time was worn so elaborately arranged that it was beyond the skill of the uninitiated.   Often heads were dressed two or three days before a ball and the victims had to sit up all night or lie on their faces or take short naps in a chair for fear of disarranging the coiffure.

My grandmother [Catherine Osborne , Mrs James Lowndes 1775 – 1853] was born about 1775, so that at the time that Gen. Washington visited Charleston, she must have been about twenty years old and at the height of her beauty and she often told me the story of being introduced to and dancing with the great man at a large ball given in his honor.   Even in her old age, she seemed to take pleasure in the retrospect and the general was said to be not insensible to the charms of young and lovely womanhood.

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Somehow or other my grand father, James Lowndes  [1769 – 1838] finally managed to overcome the obstinacy of Miss Osborne, and after many ups and downs, they were married on Sunday morning at one o’clock, but I have no idea in what year.   Such a queer day and hour for a wedding, I have never heard of before or since.