Margaret Breckinridge

Margaret Breckenridge (1832-1864) was born in Philadelphia on March 24, 1832. Her grandfather had been a senator from Kentucky and the attorney General of the United States under Thomas Jefferson. When Margaret’s sister, Mary Breckenridge, married Peter A. Porter from Niagara Falls, Margaret moved to Niagara. Unfortunately, Mary died just two years later, in 1854. During the Civil War, Margaret Breckenridge served as a nurse on the hospital boats that traveled up and down the Mississippi. Soldiers never forgot her. She sang and read to them. They said it seemed she didn’t walk, she flew. How strange they thought it was for such a high-class lady to come and find herself bothered by them! In a letter to a friend she wrote of this and remarked that she had “come so many miles on purpose to be bothered.” When her brother-in-law Peter A. Porter was killed at Cold Harbor in June of 1864, she was heartbroken. Perhaps her relationship with him was more intimate than publicly revealed for loved ones hesitated to break the news knowing it would utterly devastate Margaret. And it did. She met Peter’s sister, Elizabeth Porter, in Baltimore and accompanied Peter’s body back to Niagara Falls. While here, she succumbed to disease and exhaustion. She died of typhoid fever on July 27, 1864, just a month after Peter. She was only 32 years old. Her tomb may be the most beautiful in all of Oakwood Cemetery in Niagara Falls. It is inscribed as follows: “A life most precious and most beautiful such as consecrated to God and to duty and laid down in its prime in her devotion to her country and to humanity.”

Visit Margaret Breckenridge’s final resting place as part of a Notable Persons walking tour at historic Oakwood Cemetery Heritage Foundation, Inc. in Niagara Falls. Learn more at https://bit.ly/3JfseBs.