Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 11.djvu/254

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232 T. C. Elliott. cessful. In this way his young family became subject to all the horrors attending a residence in the seat of war. But his loyalty to the mother country becoming pronounced, he sought safety as a refugee in New York; and when the British evacuated that section in 1783, he abandoned his property and prospects and took his family to England. There is every evidence that, like his father, he was honest in his con- victions, for several biographers represent him as a man of sterling integrity and of great moral worth. "The sufferings he had undergone and the sacrifices he had made, together with his learning and legal ability, attracted the attention of the English government, and after the close of the war, he was appointed Judge of the Admiralty at Quebec by King George III. in the year 1788. He at once re-crossed the ocean and established his family in Quebec, where his natural energy of character enabled him to retrieve much of his losses, although his salary was small in meeting the demands of the rank he was obliged to assume." (This quotation is from "The Ogden Family," a genealogical work prepared with great care and labor by the late Wm. Ogden Wheeler, from which other facts relating to the family are also drawn.) The two brothers, Abraham and Samuel, who supported the side of the colonies, deserve mention. The former re- sided at Morristown, N. J., and his house became head- quarters for General Washington during one period of the New Jersey campaigns — he was a close adviser of the Gen- eral, and his little son David became a favorite of the General, and a companion on the daily ride among the troops. The story is well authenticated that upon one occasion Gen- eral Washington engaged in a playful fencing contest with the little boy and by accident scratched his hand with one of the foils and then and there shed the only blood drawn from him during the war. After the war Abraham Ogden became District Attorney for New Jersey and a member of the State Senate, and at his death in 1798 was one of the most promi-