Page 37 - Family cookbook v30_Neat

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Betty endured some especially hard times in 1793. She wrote to her brother, George, “My daughter has been

extremely ill, and myself owing to great fatigue am scarcely able to attend. I am obliged to buy everything that
I eat...and the most trifling things made use of in the house, and my income so small that I find it a hard matter

to live and keep out of debt.” And to make matters worse her crops were failing. She struggled to support the
members of her household that included some of her younger children, her grandchildren, and her niece Har‐

riot. She also had to manage and support more than forty house servants and field hands.

In 1795 she left the mansion and moved to a 722 acre farm and mill on the Po River. In a letter to her brother,

Betty wrote about the move from the mansion, “I was obliged to quit as I should most certainly have been
ruined had I continued there one year more. This place is pore, but with the advantage of the mill, it will be of

more advantage to me than the other.”

In 1797, she planned a visit to her daughter, Betty Lewis Carter at Western View Plantation in Culpeper County.

She was taking her granddaughter Ann (also known as Nancy) to live in the Carter household where there was
a tutor for the Carter Children. While there, Betty became ill with respiratory problems and on March 31 she
died. George Lewis wrote from the Carter home to inform his brother Fielding Jr. of the loss of their mother

“the dearest and best of women.” Betty was buried on the property of the Western View Plantation. Just

eighteen days after Betty died, the Fredericksburg mansion and its contents were sold. The Lewis descendants
were never compensated for the large financial outlay that Betty and Fielding made in support of the

revolutionary cause.

5th Great Granddaughter Earlene Giglierano standing at the back door of Kenmore