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3

first interview, Feb 1, second version; Packard ancestors

the wife of President Ulysses Grant, she was able to meet with a committee in Congress who, as a result, had a law passed that required the US mail to go to and from insane asylums.

Elizabeth then appealed to the Illinois State Legislature on the question of a husband committing his wife and as a direct result of this and the publicity around it, the state legislature passed the first law on mental health in the United States: that no person could be committed without a jury trial. Mary Todd Lincoln was the first person tried under this law. All this time Elizabeth supported herself and her children by her writing and publishing. She bought a house in Chicago. She secured a divorce from her husband. (Perhaps this story should be told from better-written sources)

In one of Elizabeth's books she tells of standing on the platform of the train leaving for the insane asylum. She says "Little Samuel ran after the train crying Mother! Mother!" Little Samuel was my grandfather, Samuel Ware Packard. He was a strange and colorful character. He left home when he was 12 and apprenticed himself to a lawyer in Chicago. At the age of 21 he argued his first case before the US Supreme Court. His office was destroyed in the famous Chicago Fire of 1871, and he went west for a time, his train slowed or stopped many times because of huge herds of buffalo on the tracks. His law practice prospered and he retired to Pasadena at the age of 35. He remained deeply religious, a Congregationalist, and was dead set against drink and gambling. Yet in Pasadena he invested heavily in the stock market, always praying, making bargains with the Lord that if the Lord would cause the stock to rise, he, Samuel, would give the Lord ten percent of the profit they made. The Congregational mission recieved some sixty thousand dollars in this way, but Grandfather Packard died deeply in debt. When I knew him, he looked much like Mark Twain in his old age: white flowing hair and mustache. He gave me a small bible and the 23rd psalm as my verse. I memorized it, and years later it saved me from flunking an English exam, as I was able to quote it exactly and say a few appropriate words on the King James bible as an example of English literature.