CAPTAIN JOSEPH RICHARDSON.
On the main road leading from Phoenixville, in Chester
county to Norristown, in Montgomery county
Pennsylvania, about two miles from the Valley Forge and
within a few yards of a hamlet called the Green Tree,
may be seen an unpretending two-story stone dwelling
of some note. It would not be likely to attract the
attention of the traveler of to-day; but a hundred years
ago, wayfarers who used the road stopped a moment to
examine it, and perhaps envied the wealth of those who
could afford to live in a mansion so spacious and imposing.
Within sight the beautiful and romantic, though treacherous
Perkiomen, flows into the Schuylkill, and the rich
tract of land in the angle of the two streams, upon a part
of which this house stands, lore in earliest times, the
perhaps Indian name of Olethgo. Ten or fifteen years
before the Revolutionary war it belonged to Joseph
Richardson, a man whose remarkable career, clouded somewhat
by the obscurity which has gathered around it
during the lapse of time, still lingers in the traditions
told by the grandames of the neighborhood to wondering
children, and in such contemporaneous documents as
chance or antiquarian tastes have preserved. The
great-grandson of Samuel Richardson, one of the earliest colonists
most influential in shaping the destiny of the province,
and of John Bevan, a noted preacher of the Society of
Friends, who had abandoned wealth and position in Wales,
to accompany in the cause of truth his “esteemed friend
