This niece was my mother, Clemence Collin.

The Massons were about to retire from business with a comfortable fortune, when they lost practically everything within two weeks, in a panic, saving just enough to live decently.

Shortly after this my mother married my father, a minor official in the Department of the Interior.

My great-uncle died of a broken heart some months before my birth on October 9, 1835.

My father died of consumption on the thirty-first of the following December, just a year to a day after his marriage.
Thus the two women were both left widows, poorly provided for, weighed down by sad memories, and with the care of a delicate child.