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.

Aunt Maria Hall [Maria Hall Brisbane 1802 – 1864], born 1800, never married.   There is a story of a romantic love affair that she was involved in at one time:  though I never heard the particulars, I fancy it embittered her life and made her a much less amiable woman than she would otherwise have been.   However, she was a very pleasant person when she chose to be.   Vivacious and a good talker, always nice to strangers, harsh and critical with her relations whom she repelled, but to the younger generation she was kind and agreeable and I was fond of her.   She was not pretty but had bright black eyes and an expressive face.   She was quite near-sighted but it was not the fashion to wear spectacles in those days.   At any rate, she didn’t and used to walk in the street with eyes screwed up, trying to see and evidently failing.   She always dressed in the most out-landish style, different from everybody else, without dreaming that she was conspicuous.   We children often crossed the street to avoid meeting our blind old aunt when she was too outrageously attired.   She died in 1859 [sic - other sources differ].