Notes for Robert Greenhow

Notes for Robert Greenhow

In Feb 1854, Rose had gone back to Wash. for a visit and to deliver Rose. Robert remained in San Francisco and was walking down the street on a plank sidewalk. He slipped off a plank and fell six feet down an embankment to the street below, hurting his leg. Within days his leg became paralyzed and six weeks after the fall he died. He did not tell Rose about his injury because he did not want her making the trip to back to San Francisco so soon after childbirth, and because he didn't think his injury was that serious.

OBITUARY: The death by drowning of Mrs. Rose Greenhow, near Wilmington, North Carolina, last week, has been already noticed. She leaves one child, an interesting little daughter, who is in a convent school at Paris, where her mother left her upon her return to this country. Hundreds of ladies lined the wharf at Wilmington upon the approach of the steamer bearing Mrs. Greenhow's remains. The Soldiers' Aid Society took charge of the funeral which took place from the chapel of Hospital No. 4.

In 1857, Greenhow and her two daughters accompanied her husband in a trip to California on state department business. Dr. Greenhow accidentally fell down a grating and was killed by the fall. Greenhow sued the city of San Francisco and was awarded a large sum of money. She returned to Washington wearing a mourning dress, and she would continue to wear black until the day of her death. Further tragedy visited Greenhow when her daughter Gertrude died of an illness, leaving her alone with her daughter Rose.