Mary Cyrene Burch Breckinridge
Mary Cyrene Burch Breckinridge (born August 16, 1826 in Georgetown , Kentucky , † October 8, 1907 in Buffalo , New York ) was the wife of John C. Breckinridge , the US Vice President under James Buchanan and thus Second Lady of the United States .
Mary Cyrene Burch was the daughter of Clifton Rhodes Burch and Alethia Viley Burch. On December 12, 1843, she married John C. Breckinridge, her cousin Thomas Bullock's attorney partner. The couple settled in Georgetown and had five children. John C. Breckinridge opened a law firm in Lexington . After serving in the United States House of Representatives for a few years , the couple moved back to Kentucky because of Mary's poor health and financial reasons, where the financial situation improved again through land speculation. In 1857, John C. Breckinridge became vice president. During the civil war he fought on the side of the Confederate , so that the family went into exile in Canada after its end. They spent the summer of 1866 in Niagara on Lake Ontario , later the family moved to Toronto . According to their daughter Mary, this exile was very hard for their father, while for their mother it was like a liberation. In 1868 John and Mary Breckinridge returned to the United States after a general amnesty by President Andrew Johnson and settled again in Kentucky.
Widowed in 1875, Mary Breckinridge herself died in Buffalo at the age of 81.
Her son Clifton R. Breckinridge sat from 1883 and 1894 for the state of Arkansas in the US House of Representatives.
Web links
- www.civilwarwomenblog.com/2009/09/mary-cyrene-burch-breckinridge
- Mary Cyrene Burch on thepeerage.com , accessed August 17, 2015.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Breckinridge, Mary Cyrene Burch |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Burch, Mary Cyrene |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American second lady |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 16, 1826 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Georgetown |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 8, 1907 |
| Place of death | Buffalo |