Maria Mayo is said to have refused more than a hundred suitors before she accepted General Winfield Scott, who courted her when he was a member of the Richmond bar as Mr. Scott.  After entering the army he continued his addresses, and was refused successively as Captain Scott and Colonel Scott, and it was only as General Scott, the victorious hero of Lundy’s Lane, that he at last won the hand of the much-admired belle.

Mr. William Henry Haxall, a very agreeable gentleman of Richmond, relates that on one occasion he visited Mrs. Scott soon after one of her trips to Europe.  He went in the evening at nine o’clock, and after some time, when he thought he had paid a call sufficiently long, he slyly looked at his watch, and, to his amazement, found it was one o’clock.  On his apologizing for the length of his visit, Mrs. Scott assured him she never retired before one or two o’clock, but that she had no idea it was so late, Mr. Haxall being one of the most agreeable gentlemen she had ever met, when in fact he had not spoken a dozen words, but was a charmed listener to her interesting description of her travels abroad.

In 1828, Mrs. Mayo, in the sixty-eighth year of her age, undertook a voyage to Europe in a sailing-vessel.  After her arrival, she passed most of her time in Paris, where she was the recipient of very flattering attentions and the intimate friend and guest of some of the best families of the nobility, especially those of General La Fayette and his son George Washington, of the Count de Segur, and of M. de Neuville, minister of marine, of whom Mrs. Mayo wrote, January 10, 1829, “He lives in one of the palaces in grand style, and we see there all the people of the court as often as it suits us.”  She renewed also her friendship with many French families whom she had known in Richmond as refugees during the French Revolution, and their attentions and evident pleasure at the reunion seem to have been peculiarly gratifying to her.  She returned to Richmond in 1829, and lived at Bellville until that elegant mansion was destroyed by fire in 1842.  After her return, she confined her entertainments almost exclusively to handsome dinner-parties, at which she presided with exceeding grace and elegance, and where it was said that, though the wines were fine, the flavor and brilliancy of the conversation were far superior.  She never retired without a candle and writing-materials at her bedside, and if during the night any new idea or bright thought arose, she would immediately strike a light and jot it down.  She retained her mental vigor and personal attractions until her death in 1843, in the eighty-second year of her age.