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.

I never saw my great aunt Amarinthia, [b 1754] the daughter of Rawlins Lowndes; but always heard her spoken of as very charming.   She married a Mr Champneys and went away from Charleston.   She had no children, I believe, and died quite young.   Her sister Harriet married a Mr Brown and went to New York to live.   They had one son, I think, called Lowndes Brown.   The other sister, Ruth [Sarah Ruth Lowndes 1764 - 1852], married a Mr Simmons and was as sweet an old lady as Aunt Matthews, but very different.   It used to be our delight, as children, to spend the evening with Aunt Simmons [Sarah Ruth Lowndes 1764 - 1852],.   We always went early stayed as late as we could.   She was a widow when I knew her, very tall and rather stout, a great contrast to her brother James [James Lowndes  1769 – 1838], my grand father.   She had blue eyes and a dark red wig, but she always had her own sound teeth, which few old people preserved.   Her house was always as clean as hands could make it and sweet and pretty and in order.   It was furnished exactly the same way every summer.   I was in the country in the winter and never saw it with carpets and a fire, but with cool white matting and lace curtains, always bright and shining.   She taught us to play backgammon and talked to us as if we were grown up, and when the servants brought in tea at eight o clock, we too had little nest tables put in front of us ands received every attention, which children love.   [!]   I have a little basket now which she gave me about sixty years ago.   My sister Ruth [Harriet Ruth Brisbane  1834 – 1918] was named after her adopted daughter, Harriet.   She had no children of her own.   My cousin Harriet and herself were most devoted and demonstrative, much more so than mothers and own daughters usually are.   A day never passed that they did not meet and Cousin Harriet seldom failed to call again at nine o’clock to see that Aunt Simmons [Sarah Ruth Lowndes 1764 – 1852] was well and needed nothing for the night.   I remember being rather amused as a child at their polite and loving ways.    I fancy they [these shows of polite affection?] were rarer in my own home.   If Harriet would happen to sneeze, Aunt Simmons would invariably say “Bless you, my daughter” and Harriet always answered “Thank you, Ma”.   All this sounds stupid, but it was very sweet all the same.

Aunt Simmons [Sarah Ruth Lowndes 1764 – 1852] lived to a good old age and everybody loved her.   I remember going to the funeral and wearing, for the first time, the snood that I spoke of.   They were silk hoods pinned over our bonnets and I felt queer enough, but one could cry under it without being seen.   Poor Cousin Harriet was broken hearted over Aunt Simmons’ death.