Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/172

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PENNSYLVANIAN

book, seen for the first time, which amounted almost to genius. He did much to enhance the value of the collections and in his Issues of the Press of Pennsylvania, in the production of which I aided him materially, he produced a book which is a marvel of research. One day he came to consult with me. We differed about the date of an imprint or some such trifle. He called me a liar, and I ordered him out of the office. He could not help yielding to impulse. He died in young manhood and is likewise gratefully remembered.

On the third of April, 1888, Colonel Oliver C. Bosbyshell, who was one of the First Defenders to reach Washington on April 18, 1861, Dr. Herman Burgin, Horace Burgin, Major J. Edward Carpenter, who took part in Keenan's charge at Chancellorsville, Robert P. Dechert, William C. Houston, Charles Marshall, John W. Jordan, J. Granville Leach, William Brooke Rawle, Richard M. Cadwalader, William Wayne and myself, met in the dingy little office of Herman Burgin and organized the Pennsylvania Society Sons of the Revolution, composed of the descendants of those who participated in the War of the Revolution. It has since grown to a membership of over a thousand and every year gives a reception on the twenty-second of February, attends a service at Christ Church on the anniversary of the beginning of the encampment at Valley Forge, and makes a pilgrimage to some revolutionary field in June on the anniversary of the evacuation of that camp.

I have made addresses before the members—once in the State House, twice at Valley Forge, once at Pennypacker's Mills and once at Neshaminy, and, as chairman of a committee, raised most of the moneys they now have with which to erect a statue to Anthony Wayne. In the Decennial Register of the Society, published in 1898, are copies of an original map of Valley Forge which I secured in Amsterdam, and of the music of one of the dances of the

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