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the pleasure I shall have to serve under
your command in Canada. I shall set out
in two days for New York and from thence
to Canada with the Delegates.1 I beg you
will be pleased to continue me the honour
of your favour and Esteem.

I am with the greatest Consideration,
Sir,

Your mo: obedt & humb Serv

Baron de Woestke

all being now quiet we move the 10th Infantry toward Jersey where the chief of the Army are marched to day and the York troops with the Jersey and some other are to Garrison this place. We hear nothing of the Second Division or Count De Guichen and his fleet and the others with the French Troops are quite safe and quiet at Rhode Island. I have no other news worth your Notice, therefore now pray you and every other worthy Character to use your Influence in Raising a force for the War, or God knows what will be the Result yet. You are pleased to mention I suppose as a pattern to the Profligate Army, the chaste Conduct of our Militia whom God continue in their Chastity and Ease and incline them to the good and not the Ruin of the Country by adding the Enormous Expense of their Chaste Campaigns to the already sinking burthen that the Country Groans under. True friends here are very well and I suppose write you. I Pray you to Present my best Wishes to Mrs. Montgomery and the young ladies, and believe me to be your Sincere friend and Obed'

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I have not received your letter by Cap Hammet and suppose you could not get it furnished by her. I am much obliged to you and all our Friends for your endeavors to convince the people that they have been misled by the Malice of one or two designing men who would run every thing into confusion to gratify their resentment.

Friend Butter

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2

* * * * I am greatly pleased to hear the respectable part of the people do not act under the influence of Mr. Franklin, and hope your advice and assistance without your engaging in personal Squabbles, joyned with many good men's

1 The Baron de Woedtke, had been, for many years, an officer in the Prussian army, and served on the staff of Frederick the Great. He there rose to the rank of Major. He brought to the Congress strong letters of recommendation from Dr. Franklin, with whom he claimed blood-relationship. Six days before this letter was written to Brigadier-general Thomas, he was commissioned a Brigadier-general, in the Continental Army, and ordered to join the forces in Canada. He accompanied the Commissioners of the Congress sent to that army, in the Spring of 1776, and in July following, he died at Lake George, where he was buried with military honors. General Thomas, who was sent to take the command of the army in Canada, had already fallen a victim to the small-pox, in that region.-[EDITOR.]

2 Dr. Benjamin Franklin is here alluded to, and the troubles referred to proceeded out of the peculiar relations of the Proprietors and People of Pennsylvania. The Proprietors, through their governors, asserted and, as far as possible, maintained the privileges granted by the charter to William Penn. By the charter, all laws were permitted to take effect as soon as they were passed, but if disapproved by the King within five years, they were then to be null and void. The process was slow, vexatious and expensive, for determining the question of approval. When a law had gone through all the forms in Pennsylvania, it was sent to an agent in London who laid it before the Board of Trade. Then it was referred to the King's Solicitor for his opinion, when it was sent back

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to the Board of Trade and acted upon. Thence it went to the King's Council and there it was confirmed or rejected. If the Proprietors took exceptions to the law, they employed council to argue the matter before the Board of Trade, and it was necessary for the agent of Pennsylvania Assembly to do the same on the other side. Endless delays and expenses were the consequences, and continual dissensions existed, for a long time, between the Proprietors and the Assembly. Franklin was, at about the date of this letter, one of the most popular of the leaders of public opinion in Pennsylvania. He was a member of the Assembly; was the agent of that body in England and Postmaster-general of America. He had been and still was one of the most zealous friends of the

people in their contests with the Proprietors. His opponents succeeded in the Autumn of 1764, in preventing his election to the Assembly, in which body he had held a seat for fourteen years. His friends were in a majority in the Assembly, and he was reappointed their agent in England, and intrusted with a petition to the King concerning the disputes with the Proprietors.-EDITOR.]

1 John Dickinson. He was a member of the Assembly at that time, and protested against the encroachments upon the rights of the Proprietors and the Assembly, by the crown. Afterward the minority of the Assembly protested against the appointment of Franklin as agent. The protest was, it is believed, drawn by Mr. Dickinson. It was not accepted, but was published, to which Franklin made an able reply.[EDITOR.]

Thomas Secker, LL. D. Archbishop of Canterbury, who, at that time, was striving to establish Episcopacy in America. In 1769, he wrote an able letter to Horace Walpole on the subject of "Bishops in America.'

3 President of the college in Philadelphia to which office he was appointed in 1754.

4 Alexander James Dallas, "statesman and financier," father of the late Hon. George M. Dallas, was born in the Island of Jamaica, June 21, 1759. He was admitted to practice as an advocate in the Superior Court of Pennsylvania,

of the Governor,' several copies of a Proclamation, which has been issued, respecting the murder of four friendly Indians on Beaver Creek, in the County of Alleghany; and you will be pleased to take proper steps for circulating the same as extensively as possible. I am, Sir,

Your most obed' Serv'

A. I. Dalas
Secreting

Secretary's office,

Philadelphia, 30, Mar. 1791.

TO EPHRAIM DOUGLASS, ESQ'RE.'

Proth. of the Court of Common Pleas of the County of Fayette.

in 1785, and soon after in the U.S. Courts. In January, 1791, he was appointed Secretary of Pennsylvania, by Gov. Mifflin. In 1801, under President Jefferson, U. S. Attorney for the Eastern district of Pennsylvania. In 1814, was made Secretary of the U. S. Treasury, "then in a deplorable condition; and in that highly responsible and difficult situation, he exhibited great ability and energy of character." In 1816, he returned to the practice of law in Philadelphia. He wrote and published a number of works on national and political subjects, and died at Trenton, N. J. January, 14, 1817.-E. H. G.]

1 Thomas Mifflin, President of Pennsylvania, in 1788, and its Governor from 1790 to 1799. He was one of Washington's Major-Generals in the Revolution, and concerned in the "Conway Cabal." President of Congress in 1783, and a delegate to the convention which framed the Federal Constitution, in 1787.-E. H. G.]

Through the kindness of that hard-working and enthusiastic antiquary and scholar, Mr. Samuel G. Drake, who has searched his volumes of clippings and written memoranda concerning the Indians of our country, which he has been gathering these many years, the date of this occurrence is here given: "The murder was on March 9, 1791, of three Indians, and a squaw, at a block house on the west side of Beaver Creek, Alleghany Co." Mr. Drake says that murders of the Indians, and by the Indians, were constantly occurring throughout that year, all along the frontier, and that it was difficult to catch the perpetrators, whenever rewards by proclamation, as above, were offered.—[E. H. G.]

3 Ephraim Douglass, was an aid-de-camp to General Lincoln, in the Revolution, was taken prisoner, and is referred to in the following extract from Gen. Washington's letter to General Lincoln, dated Head-Quarters Oct. 25, 1777: "I observe by the terms of General Burgoyne's capitulation, that an exchange of prisoners may probably take place; if so, the number of officers taken in his army will liberate all ours. In that case, Mr. Douglass, your aid-de-camp, will soon be redeemed. But if this exchange should not take place, you may depend that Mr. Douglass shall be called for as soon as it comes his turn, for I have made it an invariable rule to give a preference to those who have been longest in captivity." [E. H. G.]

Note.-The RECORD is indebted to Mr. E. H. Goss, of Melrose, Mass, for the above letter and notes.

SOCIETIES AND their proceedings.

HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF Delaware.The annual meeting of this Society was held October 10th, 1872, in the new rooms of the Society, Masonic Hall. There was

a good attendance of members and guests who listened with pleasure to an interesting paper, prepared and read by the Rev. George A. Latimer, upon Oliver Evans, a native of Newport, New Castle Co., Del. who was possessed of great inventive genius and besides introducing many important improvements in mill machinery is said to have been one of the first in the United States to apply steam power to locomotion on land and water. The following named

were elected

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CURRENT NOTES.

ARRIVAL.-James Anthony Froude, the eminent English historian, whose intended visit to this country was announced sometime ago, arrived at New York on Wednesday, the 11th of October, in the steamship Russia. He comes for the purpose of giving a course of lectures in our larger cities, on the relations between England and Ireland. He was entertained at dinner, on the 15th of October, by Messrs. Scribner, Armstrong & Co. the American publishers of his works.

FRANCIS LIEBER, LL. D.--By the death of Professor Lieber, the RECORD has lost a valued friend and able contributor. A brief biographical sketch of him will be found on another page.

In the last letter received by the Editor of the RECORD, from Dr. Lieber, written a few days before his death, he said: "The last number of the RECORD, (for September) is, to my mind, highly interesting. Would you not my dear Sir, write a short paper on the word Pilgrim Fathers? when and where it came into use, &c. Webster uses it. To me it is very distasteful, and ungrammatical at the same time. The Puritans were no pilgrims toward a shrine; they were self-exiled men, and merely exiles. But that is nothing to you. I wish only the history of this application of the word, leaving the apparent affectation to my own taste and grumbling."

In another part of the same letter, Dr. Lieber

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of my way to see and travel on a railway. I went to Schenectady. I found John Quincy Adams there, whom I knew personally, well. He came to my swimming-school, in Boston, and swam with me. A mischievous boy went up the steps, and leaping down, head-foremost, screamed Hurrah for Jackson! Mr. Adams laughed, and we had some humorous remarks. Adams was then President.

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"But to return to the railway. Now it moves,' said Mr. Adams, holding his watch to see how quick we went by the mile signs. We all had a feeling in our bowels which is a mixture of solemnity, expectation and what next.' We went through the pine-barrens at high speed, compared with other modes of travel; I think at the rate of nearly twenty miles an hour. There were seats on the top of the passenger cars."

Dr. Lieber was an amiable, genial man, and the most agreeable of companions. He was overflowing with varied knowledge gathered from books and the personal experience of a long, active, and studious life; and there was a quiet humor ever playing upon his lips. The news of his death must have filled many a heart with pain, for he was loved by all who, like the writer of this, were privileged to number him among their intimate and confiding friends.

A RARE BOOK.-Claudius Ptolemy, an Egyptian mathematician, astronomer and geographer, who flourished at Alexandria in the second century of our era, wrote a Universal Geography, which Humboldt described as a colossal production, and

spoke of the author, as being superior to Strabo, as authority. It was printed in the year 1482. A well-worn copy of this work was found in a bookstore, in the city of New York, by that fine scholar and antiquary Chief Justice CHARLES P. DALY. It contained, evidently as a more modern inset, a map of America—the first printed map of the New World. He bought it, and presented it to the American Geographical Society, of which he is President. It was sent to Europe for re-binding and restoration; and it has lately come back, an elegant volume, almost as good as new, in appearance.

LAKE TAHOE.—Among the wonders of California, is Lake Tahoe, thirty-five miles long and fifteen wide, situated among the mountains at an altitude of about 9000 feet above the sea. It is walled in by mountains from two to three thousand feet in height above its surface. The water is of an emerald green near the shores, a beautiful blue farther out, and of inky blackness toward the centre. It is perfectly pure and contains three kinds of fine trout. The mountains are wooded with evergreen trees, and beautified with the richest flowers. The average Summer temperature in its vicinity is 70°.

THE MOUNT VERNON ESTATE.-A late issue of "The Country Gentleman," contained the following description of Washington's farm, while the patriot was alive, from the pen of a Virginia gentleman.

"The farm of General Washington, at Mount Vernon, contained in his day ten thousand acres of land in one body-equal to about fifteen square miles. A great portion of it was a vast valley or basin surrounded by a range of hills: a third of it was a neck of land on the Potomac River, with Little Hunting Creek Bay on the east and Dogne Creek Bay on the west. These Creeks are navigable for about two and a half miles up from the river channel, aud certainly would have afforded the General great facilities, as they now do our farmers, in boating and landing manure or fertilizers on the ground, but it is not probable that the General did anything at this. It was divided into farms or fields of convenient size by deep ditches, which may be traced now, and showing that one of them contained as much as two thousand seven hundred acres. These fields were situated at a distance of two, three and five miles from the mansion house. The walls of a sixteen-square barn are now standing, and is quite a curiosity; it was made of brick and quite large; situated three miles from his residence. He had two grist mills on the place, one run by water power, having (I judge) a twelve foot wheel, and a race about two miles in length; the mills, the foundation walls of which are standing, was at the head of Dogne Creek Bay, and it is supposed that boats ran right to the mill door. The other mill is said to have been propelled by oxen or horses. The General delighted to visit the farms above spoken of every day in pleasant

weather, and was constantly engaged in making experiments for the improvement of agriculture.

"Some idea of the extent of his farming operations may be formed from the following facts: In 1787, he had five hundred and eighty acres in grass; sowed six hundred bushels of oats; seven hundred acres of wheat; and as much more in corn, barley, potatoes, beans, peas, &c. and one hundred and fifty acres with turnips. His stock consisted of one hundred and forty horses; one hundred and twelve cows; two hundred and thirty-six working oxen, heifers and steers, and five hundred sheep. He constantly employed two hundred and fifty hands, and kept twenty-four ploughs going during the whole year, when the earth and state of the weather would permit. In 1780, he slaughtered one hundred and fifty hogs (I hope not the "Virginia Pine Roasters") for the use of his own family, and provisions for his negroes, for whose comfort he had great regard.

"Of the ten thousand acres, but two hundred now belongs with the mansion, and the Washington farm has been greatly reduced; but a small portion of this is now cultivated."

The RECORD adds the following from Washington's Diary, in 1768: Would any one believe that with a hundred and one cows, actually reported at a late enumeration of the cattle, I should still be obliged to buy butter for my family."

"CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES."-Much was said and written about "consequential damages," during the late arbitration at Geneva, to make a determination concerning claims against the British government for damages done to American commerce by the depredations of Anglo-Confederate cruisers during the late civil war. Such damages were disallowed by the Tribunal. Senator Wilson in his "Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America," gives a curious instance of " consequen tial damages" being allowed by our national government. The government paid to the citizens of Georgia, after the close of the Seminole War, as compensation for slaves who escaped to Florida, the sum of $109,000. The owners of slaves presented a further claim of $141,000 as compensation for the offspring which the bond-women might have borne to their masters, had they remained in bondage. Congress allowed that sum for children who were never born, but which might have been, if the women had remained as slaves. The damage to their owners was "consequential.”

THE WOOL PRODUCT.-Statistics show that the United States is the first wool-producing country in the world. Its crops in 1871, was, in round numbers, 177,000,000 pounds. That of England was 160,000,000 pounds, Australia 152,500,000 pounds, and La Plata, in South America, 138,070,000 pounds.

It is just seventy years since Colonel Humphreys, the friend and long time inmate of the family of Washington, after a five years residence in Spain,

as American minister, brought to this country and safely housed, at his home in Derby, Connecticut, about one hundred Spanish merino sheep. They were the finest wooled sheep ever seen in America. About thirty years later, the Saxony Merino, a still finer wooled sheep were introduced, and, for awhile, threatened to supersede the Merinos, but the latter being more hardy and productive, held their position. Since then the French and Silesian Merinos have been introduced. The Merinos form the basis of all the fine wooled sheep in the country. The Cotswold, Southdown and Cheviot, are a valuable variety. It is an ascertained fact, that in the main, the fine wools of America are inferior in fineness to those of Germany and Austria.

A SENSIBLE MEASURE.-By a recent act of the Legislature of Connecticut, the few remaining Indians in that State have become possessed of the political rights and franchises which other citizens of the State enjoy. Should the National Government take a similar step in relation to all Indian tribes within the domain of the Republic, Indian wars would soon cease, and the whole corrupt machinery connected with "Indian Affairs," as well as the machinery honestly managed, would also disappear, to the advantage of the State and the credit of humanity and christianity.

The RECORD is of opinion that the recent amendments to the constitution, give the rights of citizenship, to every Indian in the land, and that no State action is necessary only so far as the passage of acts for making those amendments operative. They confer the rights of citizenship, the RECORD believes, not only upon every masculine, but upon every feminine of the human species, of whatever hue or condition, and it only remains for State or national legislature to open the way for the exercise of those rights.

PORTRAIT OF BERNAL DIEZ DEL CASTILLO.— The December number of the RECORD will contain a carefully engraved portrait of Bernal Diez del Castillo, the companion of Hernando Cortez, and historian of his conquests in Mexico and Central America. It will be accompanied by an engraving of his coat-of-arms and a fac-simile of his sign manual, together with a brief account of how the portrait was obtained, in Guatemala, by the accomplished scholar by whom the matter has been contributed to the RECORD. It is believed that a likeness of that eminent soldier and historian is unknown to the literati of Mexico and this country.

THE WASHINGTON ELM.-The venerable Elm Tree, at Cambridge, Massachusetts, under the shadow of whose leaves Washington took command of the Continental Army on the morning of the 3d of July, 1775, is beginning to show signs of mortal decay. Like other relics of that heroic age of America, the " Washington Elm" will pass away, possibly in the course of a generation.

THE OLDEST BOOK IN AMERICA.-It having been asserted that George H. Brewster, of Boston, is the owner of the oldest book in this country, namely, a copy of the New Testament, printed in London, in 1503, and supposed to have been brought over in the May-flower, and used by the Puritans at Plymouth, a correspondent of the Boston "Advertiser," wrote as follows: "I have in my possession a Latin Book of Chronology, written by Werner Laerius, a Carthusian, surnamed Rolefink, and printed, as the book itself declares, in the 8th calender of December, A. D. 1477. It was purchased many years ago in Europe, by the late John Pickering, of this city, a gentleman well versed in bibliography; and on one of its leaves is this inscription in his handwriting; This book is one of the rarities which are so highly prized by bibliographical collectors; and the present edition is noticed by bibliographers among the scarce ones— printed in 1477.'

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"It purports to be a chronology from the creation of the world, as described in Genesis, to the time of the completion of the book, and contains, among many rude illustrations of ancient cities and buildings, an engraving of Noah's ark, showing the manner in which he distributed his numerous, but 'happy family'; the wild animals being appropriately assigned to the forecastle, while the tame and gentle ones find a more quiet and dignified position in the cabin. It must have been a work of some note in its day, as other editions of it were pnblished in Louvain in 1476, in Venice in 1479 and 1484."

-a

A little later, a correspondent of the New York "Evening Post," over the signature of F. B. wrote: "There is in my possession a Latin book"Treatise on Grammar," by Donatus Minorwhich was printed by Quentel at Cologne in the year 1457, twenty years before the date of the "Book on Chronology," of which the Advertiser's correspondent writes.

It belonged to the late Dr. Minturn Post, of this city, and is, in all probability, the 'oldest book in America.'

It is a quarto, in Gothic character similar to that of the "Psalter" of Faust, and is a specimen of the same work which is said to have been seen at Dresden in the year 1722 by M. La Croze and M. Duchat."

A RELIC.-Major Washington Richards, of Rodney, Pennsylvania, possesses a solid silver cigar case, manufactured in Germany by a famous silversmith named Gucher, for Mr. Muhlenburg the "fighting preacher of the American Revolution."

uhlenberg presented it to General Francis Swaine who was a drummer-boy in the old war for independence, and a general in the war of 1812. By the latter it was given to the father of the present

owner.

John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg acquired his title of "fighting preacher," from the circumstances which attended his introduction into the military service of his country. He was a son of Henry

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