with a small body after the action was supposed to be closed, and very daringly and unexpectedly killed nineteen Hessians and an officer, all of whom were buried there, save the officer, who was next day removed to the city. Boys were suffered to get very near the combatants on the flanks. Benjamin Lehman was one, who has told me, there was no order nor ranks after the first fire, and soon every face was as black as negroes' about the mouth and cheeks, from biting off the cartridges; British officers, especially aids-de-camp, rode at full rate up and down through the men, with entire unconcern as to running over them. The ranks, however, gave way.

When the British burned seventeen houses at one time, between Philadelphia and Germantown, in retaliation for some aggressions made, they said, by Col. Ayres, from some of those houses, they ordered Stenton house to be included: two men came to execute it, they told the housekeeper there, to take out her private things-while they went to the barn for straw to fire it. A British officer rode up, inquiring for deserters; with much presence of mind she said they had just gone to the barn to hide themselves in the straw-off he went, crying, "Come out you rascals, and run before me back to camp!" In vain they protested, and alleged their commissions; and thus Logan's venerable house was spared. This house was built in 1727-8, by James Logan, secretary for Penn, and in which he resided; it was a palace-like structure in that day, and was surprisingly well built. Gen. Howe stayed part of his time there.

A fence of cedar boards is now standing in Peter Keyser's yard, which was very much perforated with musket bullets in the time of the battle.

On the 19th of October, the British army removed from Germantown to Philadelphia, as a more convenient place for the reduction of Fort Island.

After the battle, the British surgeons made use of Reuben Haines' hall as a room for amputating and other hospital operations requiring prompt care; the Americans who were wounded were carried to the hill where Thomas Armatt's house is, and were there temporarily attended by surgeons, previously to being sent to the hospital in the city.

Capt. Turner of North Carolina, and Major Irvine, and six men, were all buried in one grave, at the N. E. corner of the burying ground by the school house. We have set them a stone there.

On the north-east side of Three-mile run (Fox Chase Inn now) was a wood in the time of the war. In it were thirty Oneida Indians, and one hundred of Morgan's riflemen, who raised a warwhoop and frightened Lord Carthcart when in a conference with M'Lane.

A British picket lay in the present yard of Philip Weaver, and several were shot and buried there. The most advanced picket stood at Mount Airy, and was wounded there.

Gen. Agnew and Col. Bird, of the British army, are both buried in the lower burying ground, side by side, next to Mrs. Lamb's grave

stone, (south-west side of it,) at ten feet from Rapp's wall, in a line with the south-west end of his stable. Gen. Agnew showed great kindness to old Mrs. Sommers. Col. Bird died in Bringhurst's big house, and said to the woman there, "woman, pray for me, I leave a widow and four children." The late Mr. Burrill, whose father was grave-digger, told me he saw them buried there. They now have a stone. When the British were in Germantown, they took up all the fences and made the rails into huts, by cutting down all the buckwheat, putting it on the rails, and ground over that. No fences remained. Gen. Howe lived a part of his time at the house now S. B. Morris', so said B. Lehman. B. Lehman was an apprentice to Mr. Knorr, a carpenter, and went to the city with half a calf on his shoulder, for which he got quickly 2s. 6d., metal money, per pound, he also sold his old hen for 1 dollar! He saw there men come stealthily from Skippack, with butter carried on their backs in boxes, which they sold at 5s. There were woods all along the township line to near the city, and they could steal their way through them. Lehman was out two months in the militia draft, but never in battle, he got 200 dollars paper money; for 100 dollars he bought a sleigh ride, and for the other 100 dollars a pair of shoes! Samuel Widdes, in Germantown, used to go to the city with a wheelbarrow to take therein apples and pears, which he sold high. Lehman, and all the other boys, went to meeting in tow trowsers and shirts, without jackets or shoes. What homely days! At that time, and during all the war, all business was at a stand. Not a house was roofed or mended in Germantown in five or six years. Most persons who had any substance lived in part on what they could procure on loan. The people, pretty generally, were mentally averse to the war-equal, certainly, to two-thirds of the population of the place who felt as if they had any thing to lose by the contest. So several have told me.

Mrs. Bruner, who died in Germantown, in 1835, at the age of 80, the wife of a blacksmith, in respectable circumstances, had been the mother of twelve children, and kept her house with such a family more than sixty years of her life without ever having had any hired help. She had done all her own work and done it well; and very often, in her younger days, she had sat down every night, after her house work was done, to make leather gloves for pay as a seamstress. She was but a specimen of many of her day, who looked to such industry as a means to acquire a small estate at the end of a long life. Industry became so habitual to both husband and wife, that they knew not, in time, how to rest when idle. The family was pious, benevolent and kind. When shall we see such people among the moderns?

The trustees of the Academy of Germantown, in the year 1793, had applications from the State, and United States, to rent their academy for their use. It was thereupon resolved by the trustees, on the 26th October, 1793, that they would take measures to accom

modate the Congress of the United States, at their next session, with the use of the same, for the sum of 300 dollars. Only think of such a school-house, of eighty by fifty feet, being seriously purposed for the use of the American congress. The congress was then so small; it is now so great.

The circumstance which led to the intended application of the house, grew out of an inquiry made by Gen. Washington, who then resided in Germantown, in the house afterwards for many years the summer residence of the Perot family-now of Samuel B. Morris. In 1793, when Gen. Washington dwelt in Germantown, the town was held as the government place of the state of Pennsylvania and of the United States; and this was because of the necessary retreat of the officers and offices, from the city of Philadelphia, where the yellow fever was raging with destructive effect. At that time the office of state, &c., of Pennsylvania, was held in the stone house next above B. Lehman's. There you could every day see Governor Mifflin and his secretary of state, A. J. Dallas. The house now the Bank of Germantown was occupied by Thomas Jefferson, as secretary of state of the United States, and by Mr. Randolph, as attorney general. The Bank of the United States was located in the three-storied stone house of Billings, and when its treasure was brought, it was guarded by a troop of horse. Oellers, once celebrated for his great hotel for the congressmen, in Chestnut street, had his hotel here, in the house since Clement Bringhurst's; and, at that house, filled with lodgers, the celebrated Bates, of comic memory, used to hold musical soirees at 50 cents a head, to help to moderate the gloom of the sad times. At that time, the whole town was crowded with strangers and boarders; and especially by numerous French emigrants, escaped from the massacre of St. Domingo.

It was then expected that the next, or future years, might be again visited by yellow fever; and, therefore, numerous engagements of houses, and purchases of grounds at increased prices were made, to insure a future refuge. In this way, the Banks of North America and of Pennsylvania found a place in the Academy in the next fever, which occurred in 1798.

It ought to be mentioned as a peculiar circumstance connected with Perot's house, before mentioned, that it had been the residence severally of Gen. Howe, the British commander in the war of the revolution, and at the same time, the home of the then youth, Prince William, the late king of England, William IV.; afterwards, in 1793, the residence of Gen. Washington, while President of the United States. Look at its size as then regarded good enough and large enough for a president, in contrast with the present presidential palace at Washington city! It is thus that we are rapidly growing as à nation from small things to great things!

The French West India residents that were in Germantown, were of various complexions, were dressed in clothing of St. Domingo fashion, presenting a peculiarity of costume; and showing much VOL. II-F

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gayety of manners. They filled the streets with French conversation by day-for they were all idlers; and with much of music at night. They were withal great shooters, and killed and eat all manner of birds without discrimination-they saying that crows, swallows, &c., were as good as others, as all depended upon the style of the cooking. I have seen or known of several officers of the Revolution, who had been in the battle of Germantown, who came again, in advanced age, to revisit the active scenes of their military prowess; so came Capt. Blakemore and Capt. Slaughter, both of the Virginia regiment; so Col. Pickering, of New England; so some of the relatives of Gen. Agnew, who was killed, &c. What scenes for them to remember afresh.

Intimately connected with the fame and reputation of Germantown is the now frequently visited stream, the Wissahiccon, made attractive by its still native wildness, and rugged, rocky, woody character; there is also there, under the name of the "Monastery of the Wissahiccon," a three-storied ancient stone building of an oblong square, situated on high ground, near to a woody, romantic dell, through which the Wissahiccon finds its meandering way. About this house, so secluded and little known to the mass of the people, there have been sundry vague and mysterious reports and traditions of its having been once occupied as a monastery. A name, and purpose of use, sufficiently startling, even now, to the sensibility of sundry protestants.

The place was last owned and occupied by Joshua Garsed—a large manufacturer of flax-thread, twine, &c.-who has shut up many of the windows, which were formerly equal to four to every chamber, making two on every front or angle of the square. Those who saw the structure sixty years ago, say that it then had a balcony all around the house at the floor of the second story. The tale told in the early days of the present aged neighbours was, that it once contained monks of " the Seventh-day Baptist order," and that they used wooden blocks for pillows [like those at Ephrata,] scallopped out so as to fit the head. Some have also said that they remembered to have seen, near to the house, small pits and hillocks which indicated a former burial place, since turned into cultivation.

With such traditionary data for a starting point, it has become matter of interest to many, who are curious in the history of the past, to learn what further facts we can produce, concerning the premises. If the house should have been built as early as 1708--when Kelpius, the hermit, died "at the Ridge," it may have been constructed by the forty students from Germany-the Pietists who came out in 1694, with Kelpius, to live a single life in the wilderness; but if it was built, as is most probable, and as has been said, by Joseph Gorgas, a Tunker-Baptist, who intended it as a branch of the brotherhood established at Ephrata near Lancaster, and to whom he afterwards moved and joined himself,-then he must have built it before the year 1745, when Conrad Matthias, "the last of the Ridge her