Troy Times

September 17, 1845 

TULLIS, MRS. MARY - In your last, you expressed a desire to publish a more extended notice of Mrs. Mary Tullis, who deceased Sept. 7, 1845.  I have collected a few facts--which are at your service. Of her early life, I have learned but little.  Her parents lived in Virginia, Culpepper county--their name Smith.  Mary was born Sept. 15, 1760.  So that she lived eight days longer she would have been 85 years of age--quite beyond the allotted time of man was her lot protracted.  In 1780 her parents removed to Kentucky--then and for many years thereafter the scene of border warfare.  They first located near the Falls of Ohio, but the next year removed to Fisher's station and there she was joined in marriage to Wm. Barbee, whilst the war whoop of the Indian was their bridal serenade.  She with her youthful husband did not escape the hardships incident to frontier settlers, and they were alike distinguished for heroism in the hour of trial.  She then became a member of the Presbyterian Church under the care of the Rev. D. Rice.  In 1804 her husband removed to Ohio and located on the farm owned by her at her death.  Her husband died in 1813, leaving his widow and a family of young children, all of whom except one, yet live.  Being thus separated from the husband of her youth, with whom she had buffeted the waves of a rough sea for thirty two years.  She lived a widow about five years, providing for her family with an energy which peculiarly characterized the mothers of the last age, whose infancy was in troublesome times, when the storm of war soaked the cradles of future heros and heroines.  In 1817, she now in her 57th year, married Aaron Tullis, an aged man and thus spent some 23 years more of her long life.  A few years since her second husband deceased and she has lingered until now a relic of a past age and thus departed in peace and a good old age to be reunited to her former friends in a better world as we hope.  An half hundred descendants remain to tell of her virtues and dwell upon her memory.  Her body was laid beside her first husbands upon her own farm.  There they rest together till the Resurrection morn.                 B. 

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