owned by the late Robert Morris, esq.[1] are a fine termination to the view up the river from the bridge.
There is a turnpike road of sixty-six miles from Philadelphia to Lancaster, which my wagonner left at Downingstown about half way, keeping to the right along a new road, which is also intended for a turnpike road to Harrisburgh, and which passes through New Holland, where he had some goods to deliver. Downingstown is a village of about fifty middling houses.[2] The east branch of Brandywine creek crosses the road here, as the west branch does about eight miles further.—These two branches unite twelve or fourteen miles below, and fall into the Delaware near Wilmington, about twenty miles below their junction. The Brandywine is noted for a battle fought on its banks near its confluence with the Delaware, between the British army under Sir William Howe and the American under General Washington, who endeavoured to oppose the progress of the enemy to Philadelphia, from the head of Chesapeak bay where they had
- ↑ This estate of Robert Morris, who died the year before Cuming's tour, was purchased in 1770, and had formed part of the manor of Springetsbury. It is now within Fairmount Park. Morris, known as the "financier of the American Revolution," was an Englishman who, emigrating to Pennsylvania in 1747, became a prominent merchant of Philadelphia. After serving as a delegate to the Continental Congress, and signing the Declaration of Independence, he was assigned the difficult task of procuring funds for the war. To his support was due the maintenance of an army in the field during the disastrous years of 1776 and 1777; while his chief accomplishment was financing the campaign that led to the battle of Yorktown. After retiring from the superintendency of finance in 1784, Morris served in the Pennsylvania legislature (1786), the Constitutional Convention (1787), and the United States Senate (1789-95), declining the position of Secretary of the Treasury in Washington's cabinet. In later life his affairs became involved, and he spent four years (1798-1802) in a debtor's prison. See Sumner, Robert Morris (New York, 1892).—Ed.
- ↑ Downingtown, Chester County, took its name from Thomas Downing, who bought the location in 1739 and bequeathed it to his son. A mill had been established on the Brandywine at this place as early as 1716, and the town was indifferently called Milltown or Downingtown until finally incorporated under the latter title in 1859.—Ed.
