 Her grandmother, a woman she never mentions in her letters except to say she was a "witty and sound Parisian" was at that time remarried to the Marquis de Vitry, an old French aristocrat, born before the French Revolution, who used to tell her story about this era.Although her biological maternal grandfather died when her mother was very young, she mentions in her letters to Theodore Stanton that she was raised with an admiration for this unknown grandfather, Major Adrian Benjamin Bentzon, governor of the Danish West Indies from 1816 to 1820.The major, after Denmark lost the Virgin Islands, went on to file a case in the US Supreme Court arguing he should have his sugar canes plantations back.