Miss Owen declined to go to Springfield, because she felt that Lincoln was "deficient in those little links which make up the chain of a woman's happiness."

Five years later, on November 4, 1842, Lincoln married Miss Mary Todd, a member of a prominent Kentucky family, who had come to Springfield in 1839 to live with her sister, Mrs. Ninian W. Edwards. The house in which she spent the three years before her marriage was one of the handsomest in the town, and was a centre of social gayety. Mr. and Mrs. Edwards opposed the marriage to the poor and plebeian lawyer; they urged the folly of exchanging a cultured home for the surroundings to which Lincoln would take her. But she knew her own mind, and she went with Lincoln to the home he provided for her.

The character of the accommodations to which he took his bride is revealed by a letter written in May, 1843: "We are not keeping house, but boarding at the Globe Tavern.... Boarding only costs four dollars a week."

But the day came when the young statesman was able to open for Mrs. Lincoln the door of their own modest one-story house. Later a second story was added under the direction of his wife, most of the work being done while he was away from home, riding the circuit.

J. G. Holland's pleasing picture of life in the home during the years from 1850 to 1860 should be remembered:

Once Lincoln was sitting on the porch when three-year-old Willie escaped from the bathtub, ran out cf the house and the gate, up the street, and into a field. There his father caught him, and carried him home on his shoulder.

The children liked to ride on his shoulder, and they clambered for the position. If they could not get there, they contented themselves with hanging to his coat tails. One day a neighbor heard the boys crying, and asked what was the matter. "Just what's the matter with the whole world," was Lincoln's reply. "I've got three walnuts, and each wants two."

During the last day of the Republican Convention of 1860, which was in session in Chicago, Lincoln was in the office of the Springfield Journal, receiving word of the progress of events. A messenger came in and said to him, "The Convention has made a nomination, and Mr. Seward is—the second man on the list!" After reading the telegram, and receiving the congratulations of all in the office, Lincoln spoke of the little woman on Eighth Street who had some interest in the matter, and said he would go home and tell her the news.

When the news became generally known, the citizens followed him to the house on Eighth Street. In the evening, after a meeting in the State House, the Republicans present marched to the Lincoln home. The nominee made a speech, and invited as many as could get in to enter the house. "After the fourth of March we will give you a larger house," came the laughing response.

Next day Lincoln was in a quandary. Some of his friends had sent him a present of wines and other liquors, that he might be able to give what they thought would be appropriate refreshment to the Committee sent from Chicago to notify the nominee. Before the formal notification, Lincoln asked the members what he should do with the wine. J. G. Holland says that "the chairman at once advised him to return the gift, and to offer no stimulants to his guests."

A few years later, when he had closed the house which he was never to enter again, he said to his friends, who had gathered at the train to say good-bye:

When the body of the martyred President was brought back to Springfield on May 3, 1865, it was not taken to the old home on Eighth Street, but to the State Capitol, and from there to Oak Ridge Cemetery.

The house is now the property of the State of Illinois, the gift of Robert T. Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's son.

LXXXV

THE GOVERNOR'S PALACE AT VINCENNES,
INDIANA

WHERE "OLD TIPPECANOE" WELCOMED HIS GUESTS

William Henry Harrison, son of Benjamin Harrison, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, was a ward of Robert Morris. The great financier opposed the young man's purpose to enlist in the Ohio campaign against the Indians that followed the war of the Revolution, but when young Harrison applied directly to Washington he was appointed ensign and sent to the front. This was in 1791, and the new ensign was but nineteen years old.

Gallant conduct during a campaign of four years under General Anthony Wayne brought to him promotion to a captaincy, the favor of his general, and the command of Fort Washington, at what is now Cincinnati, Ohio.

This post was resigned in 1798, when there seemed no further prospect of active service. Thereupon Washington appointed the twenty-four-year-old captain Secretary of the Northwestern Territory and ex officio Lieutenant Governor. When, in 1800, the Northwestern Territory was divided, he was nominated by Thomas Jefferson Governor of Indiana Territory, including what is now Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa.

Vincennes, one of the three white settlements in all this vast territory, became the seat of government. As Fort Sackville Vincennes had been made famous during the Revolution by the brilliant exploit of George Rogers Clarke, who took it from the British after an approach across Illinois and through the flooded valley of the Wabash, for which he will ever be remembered by a grateful country.

For thirteen years he was the autocrat in his remote outpost. To him were committed, in company with the Judge, all legislative powers; he was commander-in-chief of the militia, and he had the power of treaty-making with the Indians. His signature became a valid title to lands in the Indian country. His care of the interests committed to him was so satisfactory that the legislature of Indiana asked for his reappointment. He was especially successful in dealing with the Indians. The victory at Tippecanoe became a rallying cry when, in 1839, he was nominated for the Presidency.

One of the most notable events of his career as Governor took place before his house at Vincennes. The Indian warrior Tecumseh, claiming that lands ceded by other tribes belonged to his own tribe, threatened vengeance on any who should attempt to settle on these lands. General Harrison sent for him, promising to give him a careful hearing and full justice. Accordingly, in August, 1810, Tecumseh came to Vincennes, accompanied by several hundred warriors. The meeting of the Governor and the Indians took place in front of the official residence. At one point in the conference, Tecumseh, being angry, gave a signal to his warriors, who seized their knives, tomahawks, and war clubs and sprang to their feet.

The Governor rose calmly from his armchair, drew his sword, and faced the savage. His bearing overawed the Indians, and when he told Tecumseh that he could have no further conference with such a bad man, the chief and his supporters returned to their camp.

The house that looked down on this scene was probably the first house of burned brick built west of the Alleghenies. It was erected in 1804, at a cost of about twenty thousand dollars.

The walls of the basement are twenty-four inches thick; the upper walls are eighteen inches thick. The outer walls are of hard red brick. The doors, sash, mantels, and stairs are of black walnut, and are said to have been made in Pittsburgh.

The basement contains the dining-room, the kitchen, in which hangs the old-fashioned crane, a storeroom in which the supplies of powder and arms were kept, and four servants' bedrooms. At one side of the large cellar is the entrance to a tunnel which led to the banks of the Wabash, some six hundred feet distant. This was built, so tradition says, that the Governor and his family, if too closely pressed by Indians, might escape to the river and continue their flight in canoes. This would be useful also for the carrying in of water and food during a siege.

On the first floor a commodious hallway communicates on the left with the Council Chamber, where notable visitors were received. This was also the chamber of early territorial lawmakers. Here, in 1805, by Rev. Thomas Clelland, was preached the first Presbyterian sermon in what is now the State of Indiana.

In the shutter of a room facing the rear is the mark of a bullet which, it is said, was fired by an Indian who was attempting the life of the Governor, while that official was walking the floor with his little son in his arms.

To-day the house is cut off from the city by railroad tracks and is surrounded by factories. Until 1916 it was owned by the Vincennes Water Company, which proposed to raze it to the ground, that they might have room for extension. Learning of this purpose, six members of the Francis Vigo Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution begged the City Council to buy the house and preserve it. When the Council announced that the way was not open to do this, a number of patriotic women, led by Mrs. Frank W. Curtis, raised the sum necessary for the purchase of the property.

Under the direction of the Francis Vigo Chapter, the house has been restored, and opened for visitors. It is the intention to maintain it for the inspiration of those who visit Vincennes to look on the scene of the wise labors of the first Governor of the Indian Territory.

In 1775 General Washington decided that he must fortify Dorchester Heights, Boston, if he was to force the British to leave the country. But how was he to do this? The ground was frozen to a depth of eighteen inches, and the enemy's cannon commanded the coveted position. Lieutenant Colonel Putnam told the General that the seemingly impossible task could be performed. Washington was dubious, but he had learned that Colonel Putnam was to be counted on. One night, after dark, the work was begun, and before daylight it was so far completed that the surprised enemy were compelled to retire.

In recognition of services like this, Colonel Putnam was made a brigadier general. A reward even greater was his; he won the lasting friendship of Washington.

Eight years after the fortification of Dorchester Heights, two hundred and eighty-three officers asked Congress for a grant of land in the western country. General Putnam forwarded the petition to Washington, and urged that it be granted, in order that "the country between Lake Erie and the Ohio might be filled with inhabitants, and the faithful subjects of the United States so established on the waters of the Ohio and on the lakes as to banish forever the idea of our western territory falling under the dominion of any European power."

Action by Congress was delayed. On June 2, 1784, Washington wrote to Putnam:

Putnam did not lose heart. His next step, taken in January, 1786, was to call a meeting of officers and soldiers and others to form an Ohio Company. The meeting was held at the Bunch of Grapes Tavern, in Boston, March 1, 1786, and the Ohio Company of Associates was duly formed. It was agreed to raise a fund to purchase from Congress, for purposes of settlement, the western lands which Congress had been asked to give them.

On July 27, 1787, a tract of 1,500,000 acres on the Ohio River, between the Scioto and the Muskingum rivers, was sold to the Company at sixty-six and two-thirds cents per acre. Half the amount was paid down. When, later, it became impossible to pay the remainder, Congress gave a measure of relief.

The first emigrants to go to the new lands set out from Danvers, Massachusetts, December 1, 1787, under the guidance of General Rufus Putnam, while a second party started from Hartford, Connecticut, January 1, 1788. The first party of twenty-two men followed the Indian trail over the Allegheny Mountains and reached the Youghiogheny River, on January 23, 1788, while the second party of twenty-eight men, making better time, joined them on February 14. Then a barge, called the Mayflower, was built, forty-six feet long and twelve feet wide. A cabin was provided for the women of the party, and an awning was stretched. The men propelled the boat with ten oars.

On April 1 the voyage to the Ohio was begun, and on April 7 the party reached the mouth of the Muskingum. The barge was moored to the bank, opposite Fort Harmar. Thus came the Massachusetts pioneers to the town of which Washington wrote later: "No colony in America was ever settled under such favorable auspices as that which has just commenced at Muskingum. Information, property, and strength will be its characteristics. I know many of the settlers personally, and there never were men better calculated to promote the welfare of such a community."

Here the pioneers laid out the town of Marietta among the famous Indian mounds, naming it in honor of Marie Antoinette of France. The greatest mound of all was made the central feature of Marie Antoinette Square. This mound is thirty feet high, while the circular base is 375 feet in circumference. It is surrounded by a moat fifteen feet wide and five feet deep. Beyond the moat is a parapet twenty feet thick and 385 feet in circumference. This square was leased to General Putnam for twelve years, on condition that he "surround the whole square with mulberry trees with an elm at each corner." The base of the mound was to be encircled with weeping willows, and evergreens were to be placed on the mound. The parapet was to be surrounded with trees, the square was to be seeded down to grass, and the whole was to be enclosed with a post and rail fence. This effort to create a park at the very beginning was an unusual feature of this pioneer experience.

An enclosure of logs, with a log fort at each corner, was built for protection against the Indians. Between the corner forts were the cabins occupied by the various families. The forts and the enclosure were named the Campus Martius. One of the early houses built within this stockade became the home of General Putnam.

Marie Antoinette Square soon became known as Mound Square. General Putnam turned over his lease to the town, which set the property aside as a cemetery. Many of the settlers had died during two epidemics of smallpox, and there was need of a cemetery nearer the town than the ground set aside at the beginning.

It is claimed that more officers of the Revolution have been buried in the Mound Cemetery than in any other cemetery in the country. There were twelve colonels, twelve majors, and twenty-two captains among the Marietta pioneers. When General Lafayette was in Marietta in 1825, the list was read to him, and he said: "I knew them all. I saw them at Brandywine, Yorktown, and Rhode Island. They were the bravest of the brave."

Over Putnam's grave is the following inscription:

Gen. Rufus Putnam
A Revolutionary Officer
And the leader of the
Colony which made the
First settlement in the
Territory of the Northwest.
Born April 9, 1738
Died May 4, 1824.

The house occupied by "the Father of Ohio," as he has been called, is preserved as a historical monument. In 1917 the Daughters of the American Revolution and Marietta succeeded in persuading the Ohio Legislature to pass a bill making provision for its repair and care.

LXXXVII

MONUMENT PLACE, ELM GROVE, WEST VIRGINIA

THE PLANTATION HOME OF TWO MAKERS OF HISTORY

At Shepherdstown, the oldest town in what is now West Virginia, Moses Shepherd was born on November 11, 1763. His grandfather had founded the town.

When Moses was about seven years old his father, Colonel Shepherd, removed his large family to his plantation between Big Wheeling and Little Creek, which is now included within the limits of Elm Grove. On the banks of the creek he built Fort Shepherd, that the settlers for miles around might have a place of refuge from the Indians. Of this fort Colonel Shepherd was in command till it was destroyed by the Indians in 1777. The family was hastily removed to Fort Henry, nearer the present site of Wheeling. There they were hard pressed by the Indians. Moses, along with other children, assisted in the defence by moulding bullets and carrying ammunition.

Word went out to the neighboring strongholds of the endangered settlers at Fort Henry. Captain John Boggs, then at Catfish Camp (now Washington, Pennsylvania), hurried to the assistance of Colonel Shepherd with forty armed men. With him was his daughter, Lydia, who took her place with Moses and the other young people as an assistant to the defenders.

She was there when Molly Scott made her sally from the fort in search of shot, and she saw the heroine bring it in in her apron. She witnessed also the attempt of Major Samuel McColloch to enter the fort at the head of a squad of men which he had brought from Fort Van Meter, a few miles away. With joy she saw the men enter the gate of the fort, and her heart was in her mouth when she saw that McColloch, who was her cousin, was unable to follow because the Indians had managed to get between him and the gate. At last the gate was closed, lest the Indians gain entrance, and the gallant Major was left to his fate.

The Indians thought they could capture him easily. They hemmed him on Wheeling Hill, on three sides. On the fourth side was a rocky precipice almost sheer, covered with growth of trees and bushes. But the savages were not to have such an easy victory after all, for Major McColloch urged his horse over the brow of the steep hill, and, to the astonishment of all, slipped, slid, and fell to the bottom, where the way across the creek and to safety was comparatively easy.

The Indians were finally driven away, but not until Moses Shepherd had made the acquaintance of Lydia Boggs, his companion in service at the fort. They were married later. In 1798, after the death of Colonel David Shepherd, Colonel Moses Shepherd took her to the palatial new home built on the site of the second Fort Shepherd, near the banks of Wheeling Creek. This house, which was called at first the Shepherd Mansion or the Stone House, later became known as the Monument Place.

The story of the third name, which still persists, is interesting. When, during Jefferson's administration, certain farsighted statesmen advocated the building of a National Highway which should connect Washington with Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, Colonel Shepherd became one of the earnest and influential advocates of the road. He was a friend of Henry Clay, to whose indefatigable advocacy of the road was due much of the success of the venture. Clay was frequently a guest of the Shepherds, and in the stately stone house he talked with them about the difficulties, progress, and final triumph.

When the road was an accomplished fact Colonel and Mrs. Shepherd caused to be built on the lawn a stone monument dedicated to their friend, in appreciation of his service. The monument, whose inscriptions have become illegible, is in plain sight from the Cumberland Road, or, as it came to be called, the National Road, just before it makes a sharp turn to cross the sturdy stone bridge over Little Wheeling Creek. Possibly this was one of the bridges Colonel Shepherd constructed. At any rate he was a contractor for a section of the road, and several bridges were erected by him.

Along the Cumberland Road, which was the great highway between the East and the West, travelled home-seekers outward bound and business men and politicians to whom Washington beckoned irresistibly. Among the regular travellers at this and later periods were Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, General Houston, James K. Polk, and others who made it a point never to pass the Shepherd Mansion without stopping. One of the early politicians who frequented the house, attracted there by Mrs. Shepherd, said: "She had a powerful intellect in her younger days. Many of our caucuses were held in her drawing-room. She could keep a secret better than most women, but her love of sarcasm and intrigue kept her from being very effective."

Mrs. Shepherd, in fun, had criticisms to offer of some of her visitors. Once she spoke of Burton, Clay, and Webster as "those young men, promising, but crude, crude."

She was accustomed to go every winter with her husband to Washington, where she would spend a few months during the season. They always travelled in a coach and four and they lived in great style at the Capital. There she was sought for her beauty, for her eccentricities, and her familiarity with private political life.

Colonel Shepherd died in 1832. In 1833 Mrs. Shepherd married General Daniel Cruger, a New York Congressman, who spent the last years of his life in West Virginia.

After the General's death in 1843 Mrs. Cruger lived at Monument Place, receiving visitors as of old, and increasing in the eccentricities that kept any one from being her warm admirer. Always she proved herself an unusual woman. "If fate had placed her in the compressed centre of a court, instead of in the inconsequent hurly-burly of a republic, she would have made for herself a great place in history," Mrs. Rebecca Harding Davis once wrote of her.

She was still managing a large plantation during the Civil War, when a visitor dropped in to see her who has left the following picture of what she saw:

To another visitor Mrs. Cruger explained that it had long been her custom to put aside each year two gowns made in the fashion of that year.

In her old age she liked to be alone. Frequently she would send every one from the house that she might bathe at night. Once her physician urged her to keep her maid near her. "Why?" she asked; "because I am afraid? afraid of what? of death? Death will not come to me for twenty years yet." She was then ninety years old, and she lived to be nearly one hundred and two. She is buried, by the side of her two husbands, in Old Stone Church Cemetery on the hill above Elm Grove. A rough monument carries inscriptions to the memory of the three pioneers whose lives, as has been pointed out by a local historian, "covered the Indian War, the Colonial Period, the War of the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Civil War."

LXXXVIII

THE CASTLE AT FORT NIAGARA, NEW YORK

THE OLDEST BUILDING IN THE NORTHERN UNITED STATES,
WEST OF THE MOHAWK

"The story of Fort Niagara is peculiarly the story of the fur trade and the strife for commercial monopoly," Frank H. Severance of the Buffalo Historical Society said in an address delivered at the fort in 1896; "and it is, too, in considerable measure, the story of our neighbor, the magnificent colony of Canada.... It is a story replete with incidents of battle and siege, of Indian cruelty, of patriot captivity, of white men's duplicity, of famine, disease, and death,—of all the varied forms of misery and wretchedness of a frontier post, which we in days of ease are wont to call picturesque and romantic. It is a story without a dull page, and it is two and a half centuries long.... I cannot better tell the story ... then to symbolize Fort Niagara as a beaver skin, held by an Indian, a Frenchman, an Englishman, and a Dutchman, each of the last three trying to pull it away from the others (the poor Dutchman early bowled over in the scuffle), and each European equally eager to placate the Indian with fine words, with prayers, or with brandy, or to stick a knife into his white brother's back."

The story begins in 1669, with the first efforts of the French to secure possession of the Niagara country. It includes also the romance of the building of the Griffon, the first vessel on the Great Lakes, and the episode of the early fortification of the late seventeenth century. But it was not until 1726, the year of the building of the stone castle near the mouth of the Niagara River, that the fort had its real beginning. The French felt compelled to build the fort because the activity of the English was interfering with their own fur trade with the Indians, and their plan to build Fort Oswego would increase the difficulty. No time was to be lost; Governor Joncaire felt that he could not wait for the approval of the authorities at home. To these latter he sent word that he must build a fortress, and he asked for an appropriation; to the Indians he declared that he wished to have a mere trading station. His real purpose was indicated when he wrote to France that the building "will not have the appearance of a fort, so that no offence will be given to the Iroquois, who have been unwilling to allow any there, but it will answer the purpose of a fort just as well."

The first step was the construction of two barques for use on Lake Ontario, to carry stone and timber for the building, and later, to cruise on the lake and intercept traders bound for Oswego.

After the construction of the barques had been begun, the consent of the five Iroquois nations was secured. Longueuil promised them that it would be to them "a House of Peace" down to the third generation and farther. To Gaspard Chaussegros de Léry, engineer, was committed the building of the structure. He determined to make it fireproof. "Instead of wooden partitions I have built heavy walls, and paved all the floors with flat stone," he wrote in a report sent to France. The loft was paved with flat stones "on a floor full of good oak joists, upon which cannon may be placed above the structure."

The trade with the Indians at the completed stone house on the Niagara increased. So did the activities of the English. Governor Burnet of New York craftily persuaded the Onondaga Indians that their interests had been endangered by the building of the French fort, since it penned them up from their chief hunting-place, and was therefore contrary to the Treaty of Utrecht; they agreed with him that the Iroquois had no right to the territory, which was really the property of the Senecas, and they asked the Governor to appeal to King George to protect them in their right.

Therefore the suggestion was made that they "submit and give up all their hunting country to the King," and sign a deed for it. Accordingly Seneca, Cayuga, and Onondaga sachems deeded to the English a sixty-mile strip along the south shore of Lake Ontario, which included the Niagara frontier, the Niagara River being the western boundary.

"From this time on the 'stone house' was on British soil; but it was yet to take the new owner a generation to dispossess the obnoxious tenant," Frank H. Severance writes in "An Old Frontier of France."

The story of the next thirty years is a story of plots and counter-plots, of expeditions threatened and actual, of disappointing campaigns, of imprisonment and cruelty and death. More than once Indians promised the English that the house at Niagara should be razed. Spies reported that the defences at the castle were in bad shape; "'tis certain that, should the English once attack it, 'tis theirs," one report ran. "I am informed that the fort is so dilapidated that 'tis impossible to put a pin in it without causing it to crumble; stanchions have been obliged to be set up against it to support it." Another report disclosed that if the cannon were fired the walls would crumble.

But the French were not ready to give up. They felt that Fort Niagara was the key to the Ohio Valley, which they wished to control. They strengthened the defences of the fort. The defeat of Braddock at Fort Du Quesne and the strange decision of General Shirley to stop at Oswego instead of continuing with his force to Niagara, gave the French a new lease of life.

In 1759 came the end of French rule. General Prideaux's expedition from New York began the siege of the fort early in July, and after several weeks it capitulated. Until 1796 the English flag floated above the "castle." The commander of this post, like the commanders of six other forts, refused on various pretexts to surrender to America, in spite of the terms of the treaty of 1783. Attempts were made to secure possession, but none of them were successful, and it was not until 1794 that Great Britain agreed to evacuate Niagara and the other forts still held, "on or before the 1st of June, 1796."

Seventeen years later, in 1813, the British flag again replaced the Stars and Stripes over the historic building, but the fort was restored to the United States in 1815. Since that time it has been a part of the army post that has been more important because of its history than for any other reason.

The Daughters of the War of 1812 have placed a suitable tablet on the Old Castle, and are interested in the proposition that has been made to turn the venerable edifice into an international museum, which shall commemorate the one hundred years of peace between Great Britain and America.

In 1917 the eyes of the nation were once more turned on the fort by Lake Ontario, for it was made a training ground for officers who were to be sent to the battle front in France and Belgium. The castle, nearly two hundred years old, and strong as ever, again witnessed the gathering of patriots, and the spot that had echoed to the tread of French who had yielded to the English, of English who had driven out the French, and of Americans who had driven out the English, became the parade ground of Americans who were making ready to stand side by side with French and English for the freedom of the world.

LXXXIX

THE SCHUYLER MANSION, ALBANY, NEW YORK

THE RALLYING PLACE OF THE CONSTITUTIONALISTS

When Catherine Van Rensselaer married Philip Schuyler, on September 17, 1755, he was a soldier who had been engaged in the campaign against the French at Crown Point. She was glad when he resigned, in 1756, but he returned to army life in 1758 and at intervals for more than twenty years he continued his military service. Two days after the Battle of Bunker Hill Congress made him a major-general. During his three years in the army of the Colonies, he was the subject of continual abuse on the part of those who felt that he had conducted carelessly his expedition to Canada and the campaign against Burgoyne. He was able to stand up against the public clamor because Washington had confidence in him and because he was twice given a clean bill of health by a court of inquiry.

During this season of misunderstanding he was sustained by his wife, who was a remarkable assistant both in his home and in public affairs. During the years when he was frequently incapacitated by gout she carried on much of his work for him, and so enabled him to maintain his place in the councils of the nation.

It was in 1760 that Mrs. Schuyler first showed her great executive ability. While her husband was absent in England, where he had been sent by General Bradstreet, she superintended the erection of a new house, a spacious mansion of yellow brick that is to-day as staunch as when it was built.

From the beginning the Schuyler mansion, the home of the first citizen of Albany, was noted because of the boundless hospitality of its mistress. All were welcomed who sought its doors. One notable company was made up of nine Catawba warriors from South Carolina, who were on their way to ratify a covenant with the Six Nations at the close of the Cherokee War. They were met at the wharf by Major Schuyler and taken directly to the house.

Among the visitors to Albany in 1776 were three Commissioners appointed by Congress to visit the Army of the North, one of whom, Benjamin Franklin, was so wearied by the journey from Philadelphia that he was sincerely grateful for Mrs. Schuyler's care. One of the Commissioners said later of General Schuyler, "He lives in pretty style, and has two daughters, Betsey and Peggy, lively, agreeable gals." He was delighted to learn that the motto of Philip Schuyler and his household was, "As for me and my house, we will serve our country."

Another of the fortunate men who were privileged to be in the house for a season was Tench Tilghman, an aide-de-camp of General Washington. He wrote in his journal of "Miss Ann Schuyler, a very Pretty Young Lady. A brunette with dark eyes, and a countenance animated and sparkling, as I am told she is." Later he met "Miss Betsey, the General's 2nd Daughter." "I was prepossessed in favor of the Young Lady the moment I saw her," he said. "A Brunette with the most good natured dark lovely eyes I ever saw, which threw a beam of good temper and Benevolence over her entire countenance. Mr. Livingstone informed me that I was not mistaken in my Conjecture for she was the finest tempered Girl in the World."

Tench Tilghman was to renew the acquaintance in 1779, when Betsey and her parents spent a few months in Morristown, New Jersey. Alexander Hamilton also was there, and he secured Betsey's promise to be his bride.

The marriage took place at the Albany homestead on December 14, 1780. A few months later the young husband, having resigned from the army, was studying law in Albany and was a welcome addition to the Schuyler household.

Two years after the wedding came one of the incidents that has made the mansion famous. Because of the General's influence with the Indian allies of the British, a number of attempts were made to capture him; the British wished to put him where he could not interfere with their plans. One summer day, when Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Hamilton's sister Margaret, was in the house with her baby Philip, a party of Tories, Canadians, and Indians surrounded the house and forced an entrance. Mary Gay Humphreys, in "Catherine Schuyler," tells what followed:

After the attack on the mansion Washington wrote to General Schuyler, begging him to strengthen his guard. The following year the Commander-in-chief was a guest at the mansion, while in 1784 he spent the night there, after an evening consultation with Schuyler, while Mrs. Washington visited with her friend Mrs. Schuyler.

Lafayette, Count de Rochambeau, Baron Steuben, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, John Jay, and Aaron Burr had a taste of the delights of life at the mansion. The latter was destined to defeat General Schuyler for reëlection to the Senate, as he was to be in turn defeated by the General. The British General Burgoyne and his staff also were entertained in the mansion, after General Schuyler's victory at Saratoga, and this in spite of the fact that much of the General's property had been destroyed by Burgoyne's order.

For many years the house was famous as the meeting place of the friends of the young nation. Frequent conferences were held in the library on the proposed constitution. It is said that many sections of the document were written there by Hamilton, and the steps of the campaign for the ratification of the document were outlined within the historic walls. When, at last, the victory was complete, General Schuyler and Alexander Hamilton walked at the head of the gay procession that hailed the news with joy. The whole town was illuminated, but the most brilliantly lighted building was the old mansion.

During the years that followed General Schuyler's health failed gradually, and he became more than ever dependent on his wife. When she died, in 1803, he did not know what to do without her. To Hamilton he wrote:

General Schuyler died in November, 1804, four months after the duel with Burr in which Hamilton was slain.

The mansion in which he spent so many happy years was long an orphan asylum, but in 1911 it was purchased by the State. On October 17, 1917, it was dedicated as a State Monument.

When, in 1750, Governor Benning Wentworth began to rebuild for his mansion at Little Harbor, two miles from the business centre of Portsmouth a farm-house which dated from the latter part of the sixteenth century, he thought more of comfort than of architecture. Evidently those who later added to the house thought as little of architecture as the original builder; the product became such a strange conglomeration of wings and "L's" that it is difficult to see which is the original portion. Once the house contained fifty-two rooms, but a portion has been torn away, and the structure as it stands is not quite so spacious, though still large enough for a hotel. Even the cellar is tremendous, for Governor Wentworth provided there a place for his horses, to be used in time of danger. Thirty animals could be accommodated there.

Many of the rooms are small, but some are of impressive size, notably the Council Chamber, where meetings that helped to make history were held, and the billiard room, where the owner and his associates were accustomed to go when the strain of business became too great.

Longfellow thus describes the house: