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 father’s eldest brother, John [John Wilson Brisbane 1801 – 1833] was celebrated for his riding.   He was over six feet high, and a splendid looking man, I have always heard, and powerfully built.   Alas, one night returning home from a dinner party where he had probably imbibed too freely, he was thrown from his horse in a dark wooded road and killed.   After his death, his wife [Mary Susannah Gillon 1793 - 1859] moved to Stratford, Conn., and finally settled in Litchfield with her two children [Maria Hall Brisbane 1831 - 1863 and Mary Susannah Brisbane b 1828].