Margaret Breckinridge 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 her beloved older sister married their dashing cousin, Peter A. Porter, Margaret also came to live in Niagara Falls. She found the beautiful Porter home to be a most interesting resort for the meeting of literary and scientific minds, a shelter for the poor and homeless, possibly the hub of Niagara’s Underground Railroad, and the center of all local society. With the outbreak of war, she, too, along with her cousins, volunteered her services.

Most of the time she served as a nurse on the hospital boats that travelled up and down the Mississippi. Soldiers never forgot her. She sang to them, 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 Peter 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 Elizabeth in Baltimore and accompanied Peter’s body back to Niagara Falls. The blow was ultimately too great for her and her broken down body 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. 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.”

Julia Averill Griffen
Elizabeth Porter
Margeret Breckenridge