Catalina Juliana Myers

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CATALINA JULIANA MASON

AFTERWARD

MRS. THEODORUS BAILEY MYERS

1824-1905

CATALINA JULIANA MASON was born on the Island of Porto Rico. Her father, Sidney Mason, an American of staunch Massachusetts descent, and a man of large business interests in the West Indies, had married one of the seven beautiful daughters of Don Jose de Rado, who had brought them, with his wife, from Cadiz, old Spain. Catalina was named for her aunt and god- mother, the Marchioness d'Esperanza, and was for a time the only child of her parents ; then came a charming little baby brother, named Alphonso. Their city home, at San Juan, Porto Rico, where the children were born, was near the city wall and the steps leading to the water, and overlooked the well known counting house of Mason & Thompson. In order to educate the children in his native land, Mr. Mason brought his family to the United States in one of his own sailing vessels, the cabin of which he had luxuriously fitted up for their use.

On their arrival at Baltimore, they were taken at once to Gloucester, Massachusetts, Mr. Mason's old home, but the wife soon succumbed to the rigor of the climate. A tomb is erected there to her memory and that of her little son, Alphoiiso, who died some time later, at the age of ten years, when at Peug- net's school, in New York. [...]