HON. HENEY HASTINGS  SIBLEY, LL.D.                  89
Ann, relict of Dr. Potts, and the mainstay of comfort and help to
Mr. Sibley; a woman of sincerity, deep religious feeling, great
devotion, quick perception, clear judgment, and of pleasing
and sportive conversation ;-a helper in suffering and an angel of
mercy to the distressed; all of them women whom church and
state do well to praise, and whose names and memories their
children will not suffer to fade away. The husband of Abbie
Ann, viz., Dr. T. E. Potts, was a brother of the distinguished
Eev. George Potts, D. D., pastor of the University Place Presby-
terian Church, New York City, a man of majestic presence,
great dignity, deep piety, of universal esteem in all denomina-
tions, and for many years director in the Princeton Theological
Seminary. His brother, a prominent and eminent lawyer,
Major John C. Potts,—whose father, Eev. George C. Potts
of Philadelphia, had four sons and three daughters,—is a
gentleman of high distinction and fine scholarship, having
served his country in various responsible and high posi-
tions, and now in the evening of his life, and abides an honored
elder in the Lafayette Presbyterian Church, New Orleans, the
valued and esteemed counselor of his pastor, Eev. Dr. Mark-
ham.
The family of Mr. Sibley is of rare and remarkable com-
bination, a mixture of genuine Puritan and genuine Presby-
terian blood, and, in both streams, of unusual civil, military,
and ecclesiastical distinction, and of indomitable pioneer pro-
pensity. Children of the first generation of pioneer settlers,
they grew up amid the romances of a fresh life, full of the
freedom of the air they breathed. At Mendota first, then at
St. Paul, they were, in a large measure, moulded by the cir-
cumstances of their environment. The proximity of Fort
Snelling, where always were found considerable* numbers of
troops with their officers and families, and easy access to St.
Paul, and a share in all the social relations and customs that
marked the rapid growth of a new country, made a pleasing
and daily intercourse enjoyable, and not without its influence
upon the rising generation. Mr. Sibley, a man of affairs and
of public interest, was necessarily often absent from home.
Society was then comparatively free from that disgusting
affectation of airs, etiquette, and ceremony, which now are
exacted by the haut ton who have scarcely anything more
than money, ignorance, show, sham, and shoddy, to commend
them as meritorious in the consideration of others of superior