USA > New Jersey > Somerset County > The Somerset hills : being a brief record of significant facts in the early history of the hill country of Somerset County, New Jersey > Part 4
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FFIGIES GULIELM
LVII
SUÆ
E
S
Æ TATIS
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Alexander to try: to recover the title to some portion of them, along with the dignity.
William Alexander proved his claim to the title according to Scotch law, and since the claim was for a Scotch peerage, this would seem to settle the matter. But some of his friends persuaded him to present his claim to the House of Lords, not as a necessary meas- ure, but as a matter of courtesy to that august body. The decision by the House of Lords was not reached until after his return to America, when they decided the claim could not be allowed because he had failed to show that heirs in a direct line were extinct.
He had assumed the title of Earl of Stirl- ing when the Scotch court reached the de- cision in his favour, and continued to be known as such in public and private life to the day of his death. But with all his apparent vanity, there was no uncertain note in his politics
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when it became necessary to take issue in the events that led to the Revolution.
On his return to America, he disposed of his mercantile interests in New York City and began the work of developing the landed es- tate at Basking Ridge, which he had inherited from his father. He built thereon a summer residence, which after a few years became his permanent residence.
Smith's "History of New Jersey," published in 1765, has the following reference to it:
" Here also at Basken-Ridge, is the seat of William Alexander, Earl of Stirling; his im- provements for taste and expense promise more than anything of the kind hitherto effected in the Province."
In 1748, he had married Sarah Livingston, a sister of the Governor Livingston who was to succeed the last royal governor of New Jersey.
Meanwhile he continued to be active in
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public life as Surveyor-General of the Province and member of the Provincial Council. In the latter capacity, he was summoned to Bur- lington by Governor Franklin in November, 1765, to consider the Stamp Act. He was detained in Basking Ridge by illness, but wrote the Governor his sentiments on the subject. Like many another man of the day, he refused to consider the Stamp Act a de- liberate measure on the part of the ministry, believing it to be a mere blunder, which would be repealed as soon as recognized.
At no time in the course of the events that led to the Declaration of Independence was his judgment obscured or his course vacillating. He was still a member of the King's Council, and on terms of friendly in- timacy with Governor Franklin when the first Revolutionary Congress appointed him to com- mand the First New Jersey Battalion.
His prompt acceptance and vigorous organi-
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zation of the same led to his dismissal from the Board until the King's pleasure should be known. When, however, the Provincial Congress deposed Governor Franklin, the last royal Governor of New Jersey, it became the duty of his old friend and associate, Lord Stirling, to arrest and imprison him. He was soon released on parole, and at the close of the war retired to England, where he died in 1813.
The career of Major-General the Earl of Stirling, as he was officially designated, in the course of the Revolutionary struggle, is well known. His bold attack and capture of a British man-of-war laden with provisions in New York Harbour in January, 1776; his gallant and able service in the Battle of Long Island; his services at Brandywine Creek, Germantown, and Monmouth; his timely ser- vices in exposing the Conway cabal and thus preserving to the army its Commander-in-
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chief ; his lamented death in Albany, in January, 1783, while in charge of the Northern Depart- ment awaiting definite terms of peace-all these are matters of public history.
There is but little difference of opinion from the American point of view on the sub- ject of his public life. Judge Jones, the Tory historian of New York during the Revolution, presents quite a different viewpoint. He quotes with great satisfaction a reference to Lord Stirling by the Marquis de Chastellux, a member of the personal staff of Count de Rochambeau, who made a tour of the rebel colonies during the war, and, like many a later traveller, "wrote us up." The Marquis writes: "His birth, title, and property have given him more influence in America than his talents could ever have acquired him. The title of 'Lord' which was refused him in England is not here contested. He is ac- cused of loving the table and the bottle as
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becomes a 'Lord' but more by far than be- comes a General."
His fondness for his title was sometimes the subject of jokes, at his expense, even among his friends. On one occasion, when a soldier was about to be executed for desertion, the criminal called out in terror, "Lord have mercy on me!" Lord Stirling, who chanced to be in that vicinity, replied with warmth: "I won't, you rascal! I won't have mercy on you."
With the death of Lord Stirling the family disappears from the active life of the village of Basking Ridge. His estate, owing to his extravagance and the depreciation of the Con- tinental currency, was so deeply involved that he died practically bankrupt. The Basking Ridge estate passed out of the family, and the splendours of The Buildings were soon tarnished by time and neglect. What is at once the most authentic and realizing picture of the elegance and refinement of the home
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of this American nobleman is from the memoirs of Mrs. Quincy, wife of a former president of Harvard College. Her father, Mr. John Morton, lived near the Stirling estate, and during her girlhood she knew the family intimately. She writes:
"The seat of Lord Stirling, called by the country people The Buildings, was two miles distant. Designed to imitate the residence of an English nobleman, it was unfinished when the war began. The stables, coach houses, and other offices, ornamented with cupolas and gilded vanes, were built round a large paved court behind the mansion.
" The front with piazza opened on a fine lawn descending to a considerable stream called the Black River. A large hall extended through the centre of the house. On one side was a drawing-room with painted walls and stuccoed ceiling. Being taken there while a child, my imagination was struck with a style
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and splendour so different from all around. The daughters of Lord Stirling, called Lady Mary and Lady Kitty, afterwards Mrs. Watts and Mrs. Duer, the Miss Livingstons, afterwards Mrs. Kane and Mrs. Otto, and other cultivated and elegant women domesticated in the family, made an impression 1 can never forget, for they were all very pleasing and kind to me. Ten years afterwards l again visited The Build- ings, but what a change had taken place! The family had removed, the house was tenanted by a farmer, and the hall and elegant drawing-room, converted into granaries, were filled with corn and wheat, and the paved courtyard with pigs and poultry.
" The stables and coach house were going to ruin, and through the door of the latter, which was falling off the hinges, I saw the state coach of the fashion of Sir Charles Grandi- son's day. It was ornamented with gilded coronets and coats-of-arms blazoned on the
your Host Hun Il Serv. Hirling /772.
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panels, and fowls were perching and roosting upon it."
Lord Stirling was buried in the Livingston vault in the old Dutch Church in Albany. When the church was demolished in 1808, the remains were moved to the Protestant Episcopal bury- ing ground on State Street. In 1868 the grave- yard was included in a public park and the bodies removed to the Albany Rural Cemetery. Here, it seems probable, rest the bones of Major-General the Earl of Stirling in an un- marked grave; for in the process of removal their definite location was lost. "Our fathers find their graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors."
Other citizens of national reputation belong to the Basking Ridge of the next two genera- tions. William L. Dayton was born here in 1807. In the course of his life he served suc- cessively in the State Senate, on the bench of
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the Supreme Court of the State, in the United States Senate, as State attorney, as candidate for Vice-President on the Republican ticket of 1856 along with Gen. John C. Fremont, and in 1861 was appointed Minister to the Court of France by President Lincoln. He died in Paris in 1864 while in charge of this important post.
The Southard family, already referred to, had migrated from Long Island soon after the set- tlement of Basking Ridge. Here Henry South- ard was born in 1747. He was a member of the State legislature for eight years and repre- sented his district in Congress for twenty-one years. His still more distinguished son, Samuel L. Southard, was born here in 1787. He was Associate Justice of the Supreme Court and was elected Governor of the State in 1829. He was appointed Secretary of the Navy in 1823, and for a time was also Acting Secretary of War and Treasury. He served several terms in the United States Senate, of which body he was
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president in 1841. While in the Senate he met his father in a joint committee of the two houses-father and son each being chairman of his respective committee. When St. Mark's Church was erected in 1852, the stone altar therein was built by the Southard family as a memorial to the Congressman and Senator of their family.
Basking Ridge, no less than Lamington, has the tradition of an Indian horror, at least by association. The following story, told by an aged kinswoman of the heroine, was written out many years ago, under title of
THE LOCUST GROVE.
Not far from the banks of the Passaic River, where the narrowing meadow-lands approach the Passaic Water Gap, is a grove of locust trees. It is not far from the high- road leading to the ancient village of Basking Ridge and was once a part of the estate of
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Lord Stirling. The surrounding country is steeped in the tradition of a past century ; across the meadows, some two miles to the west, is the stately old mansion which was Lord Stirling's home before and during the Revolutionary struggle-the trysting-place of many men now known to fame, during the two winter encampments of the Conti- nental army at Morristown. On the crest of the ridge that lies to the east of the village stands the colonial house in which the too ambitious General Lee was captured. The church edifice guarding the head of the main street is not as ancient as the village, though venerable enough to command respect.
But to return to the Locust Grove. The present generation can still remember when the solitude of the place was broken only by the low of cattle grazing in the meadows, the note of Bob White, or the rumbling of wagons over the road hard by. Near the
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centre of the grove is still to be seen the remnant of a hearth that was once a home, and some fragments of a foundation. A suc- cession of old-fashioned flowers here makes an annual struggle for existence. Daffodils, grape-hyacinths, rockets-each has its season, and each season the noiseless encroachments of 'tares' rob them of a little of their former glory. These, together with some traces of a well-sweep, are all that is left of the home of ' Old Aunt Polly Kernan.' Here she lived in lonely, childless widowhood, well into the nineteenth century, surviving the tragedy of her life nearly half a century.
She was married in Basking Ridge several years before the outbreak of the Revolution, and then went to Cherry Valley in Central New York where her husband had purchased some land. This was then a frontier region, and its proximity to the house of the Six Nations resulted in the destruction of the
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village and the massacre of the inhabitants in the course of the border warfare that added to the horrors of the period. In the summer of 1778, the country was terrorized by the reports of the massacre of Wyoming Valley in Northern Pennsylvania. The Tories and their Indian allies of New York resorted to barbarities scarcely equalled in the earlier border warfare. A few months later Cherry Valley was similarly raided, and among the victims was the pioneer Kernan family. Among the Indians was a party of Mohawks, led by their chief, the notorious Joseph Brant, the ally of his Majesty George III.
The Kernans lived on the outskirts of the village on a secluded farm off the highroad. The even tenor of their uneventful lives was rudely interrupted towards the close of a quiet autumn day in 1778.
Aunt Polly was busily engaged before the great kitchen hearth preparing the evening
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meal. The children were playing about the door waiting for the return of their father and the men from the meadows. A wild shriek and the alarming cries of the children brought the mother to the door, only in time to see two of the children scalped by a party of savage Indians; the third, a little brown-eyed girl of four years, taken roughly into custody, and to be herself bound hand and foot and along with the little girl put under guard while the house was plundered. Meanwhile John Kernan returned from the field, and almost before he could comprehend the situation, was scalped before the eyes of his wife and child, and the bloody trophy flaunted in their faces.
As soon as night set in, the Indians turned their backs on the ghastly victims of their ven- geance and the home they had desolated and began a hurried and stealthy retreat, carrying the little girl but compelling the mother to follow on foot.
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The story of Polly Kernan's life among the Indians was never known in detail. Years after her capture, when she returned saddened and changed, the subject was too painful for dis- cussion in her presence.
This much became known: She was early separated from her only surviving child and for years was jealously watched by her captors, who took her to Western Pennsylvania-the far West of that day. She finally succeeded in evading the vigilance of her captors sufficiently to con- fide her story to an English trader, with whose connivance she succeeded in returning to the East. Long and weary marching by night, and hiding during the day, with many an escape that seemed almost miraculous, placed her beyond their power. One day she lay concealed under a brush heap in a clearing, and her benefactor barely succeeded in preventing the Indians from firing the brush heap in pursuing their work. She eventually found an asylum
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with a relative near her former home in Basking Ridge and immediately began to make efforts to trace the wanderings of her daughter, the little brown-eyed Mary.
After years of patient following and of one clew after another, she was identified as the wife of a chief in the far West. She had lost her original identity and had no interests further than those of her children, her husband, and the tribe with which she had become identified. The trader who found her learned that she had a vague recollection of a mother, and an early home, but she refused to return to either.
"The old order changeth, yielding place to the new," and the quiet locust grove with its succession of old-time flowers and its pathetic tradition is to be no exception. Already the shriek of the locomotive crashing through the woods to the south disturbs the repose of the summer days, and bustle of the new life of progress is crowding out this significant inci-
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dent of pioneer days. The passing of the Indian would seem to indicate that his mission is accomplished. What that mission was in the development of the human race is a subject beyond the limit of the Somerset Hills.
For
DEVOIRGT
POVR
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VII. LAMINGTON.
T HE Presbyterian church was organized about 1740, and the first regular pastor was installed in 1742. This was the Rev. James McCrea, who organized the parish and erected a manse on the banks of the Peapack River, where his children were born. Two of his sons were killed in the battle of Saratoga, one was killed in a skirmish, and one was a surgeon in the army. But the chief interest in the family centres about his daughter Jane, whose life furnishes a romance of the Revolution, and the circumstances of whose tragic death were cited with thrilling effect when the great Burke arraigned the ministry before the House of Commons.
Jane McCrea, second daughter of Rev. James McCrea, and Mary Graham his wife, was born
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in the Lamington manse in 1753. There was an excellent school in the village, from which there is a record of at least one student who entered the University of Edinburgh. Here Jane McCrea received her education along with her future lover, one David Jones.
Her oldest brother John studied law and settled in Albany for the practice of his profes- sion, and in 1773 purchased a farm on the western bank of the Hudson near Fort Miller Falls. After the death of her father in 1769 Jane made her home with her brother at Albany and on the farm. There were other emigrants from Lamington settled in that region, among them one Mrs. Jones, a widow, and her six sons, one of whom, David, was the old schoolmate of Jane McCrea at Lamington.
Before the marriage was consummated, how- ever, the war of the Revolution broke out, and the home of the McCreas and Joneses became the theatre of the series of events connected
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with Burgoyne's invasion of Northern New York. The McCreas were stanch patriots ; the Joneses were Tories. So the course of true love between the Tory Jones and his fiancée ran the traditional course. But affec- tions are deeper than political prejudices, and secret communications with Lieutenant Jones of his Majesty's forces in America led to the plan of a clandestine marriage. He was to meet her at the house of a mutual friend, a Mrs. McNeil, at Fort Edward, on July 27th (1777), but the close proximity of the American pickets made that impracticable. So he sent her word that a band of friendly Indians would meet her as near the house as safety would permit and conduct her to the British camp where the marriage was to take place. On the morning of the 27th, while Jane was watching for the appearance of her escort, the American troops were driven forward by a band of Indians under one DeLoup. Six of the band left the
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pursuit and entered Mrs. McNeil's house, took Mrs. McNeil and Jane prisoners and hurried them off to a neighbouring hill. Here they were met by another band of Indians, those sent by Jones to escort his bride to his camp. They demanded the release of Jane; her captors refused and in a quarrel that ensued, DeLoup in a fit of rage turned to Jane McCrea, brutally struck her with a tomahawk, "scalped her and tossed her flowing hair aloft with a fiendish yell of triumph." The next day her body was found covered with leaves and brush; it was conveyed to the fort, near which it was buried the following day by her grief- stricken brother. Her lover, Lieutenant Jones, saw the bloody scalp in the British camp and learned the details of the horror from DeLoup, the leader of the band he had sent to escort her.
This is not an isolated instance of Indian brutality, but it attained almost international
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importance as an illustration of the infamous policy of the British Government in the Indian alliances. The immediate responsibility of the deed, as a question of military ethics, has never been definitely settled, but the willing- ness on the part of the British Government to employ savages against the colonists cost them the loyalty of more than one vacillat- ing colonist.
In his formal protest to General Burgoyne, General Gates said: "Miss McCrea, a young lady, lovely to the sight, of virtuous character and amiable disposition, engaged to an officer of your army, was taken out of a house near Fort Edward, carried into the woods, and there scalped and mangled in a most shocking manner. The miserable fate of Miss McCrea was particularly aggravated by her being dressed to receive her promised husband, but met her murderers employed by you." During the Revolution, when the British
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were in possession of New York, the patriotic Rev. Dr. Rodgers, pastor of the First Presby- terian Church, found it necessary to leave the city, and for a year he ministered to the con- gregation at Lamington. In 1778, in conse-
quence of the British occupation of Phila- delphia, the Synod of Philadelphia met in the Lamington Church.
This was before the days of the temperance agitation. There is a story of a clergyman who was once sent to supply Lamington Church, who preached with particular force and eloquence. After the morning service, as was the custom, the elders gathered about him and paid his fee in crisp half-pound notes. " Gentlemen," he said, "will you take a walk with me?" Whereupon they all crossed the street to the tavern and took a drink at the parson's expense. He handed the barkeeper one of the half-pound notes, saying: "Take your pay out of that, I just received it for
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preaching the sermon." Then they all re- turned to the church for the afternoon meet- ing. A full century before this date, the Vir- ginia House of Burgesses had deemed it necessary to enact a warning to the clergy- men in the following terms: "Mynisters shall not give themselves to excesse in drinking and ryott." Whether for better or for worse is another question. But standards and judg- ments have both changed by process of the silent years.
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VIII.
MENDHAM, PEAPACK, Etc.
T HE village of Mendham is just beyond the limits of the Somerset Hills. But inasmuch as it was within the original limits of the county-Hunterdon and Morris counties being both included in the original limits of Somerset-it may fairly claim a passing note here. In 1713 a large tract of land, including the present site of the village, was purchased from the original lords proprietors by one James Wills. It was at first called Rocksiticus, by which name it was known until shortly before the Revolution, when it received the name by which it is known at present.
The early church relations of the Mendham pioneers were either with the congregation of Basking Ridge, or with that at Morristown, first known as West Hanover. But by 1738
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there was a separate Presbyterian congrega- tion in existence here, and in 1745 the first church edifice was erected on the site of the present building. As a result of the British occupation of New York after the disastrous battle of Long Island, in 1776, the Presby- terian Synod of New York met in the Mend- ham Church. During the winter of 1780-81, when a division of the Continental army was encamped on the hills extending from Morris- town to Washington Corner, near Mendham, the church was cleared of its pews and turned into a hospital. Some unnamed and un- marked graves in the churchyard bear mute testimony to the ravages of disease in the army hospital during that severe winter. Still they could hardly wish "couch more magnificent." For like the martyrs of many another struggle for a great principle:
"On Fame's eternal camping-ground Their silent tents are spread ;
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And Glory guards in solemn round The bivouac of the Dead."
The Presbyterian congregation in Mendham claims to have given some thirty ministers to the Church in the course of its existence. Among these may be counted the late dis- tinguished bishop of Western New York, the Rt. Rev. Arthur Cleveland Coxe. He was born in Mendham, the son of the then pastor of the Presbyterian Church, the Rev. Dr. Cox, distinguished alike as theologian, preacher, and wit. Of his family of ten children, five be- came members of the Episcopal Church. "How many children have you, Dr. Cox?" he was once asked. "Ten" was the prompt reply; "Five of them are wise and five of them are Episcopalians."
The village of Peapack records the name and location of an Indian trail that crossed Northern New Jersey east and west. £ This trail was known as the Peapack Path and
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was a well-known landmark. In 1701 a large tract of land was conveyed by the proprietors to George Willocks and John Johnston. The tract was known as the Peapack patent and em- braced the site of the present village, which was settled soon after this time. George Willocks, along with John Harrison, who purchased the Basking Ridge tract in 1717, were among the founders of the first Church of England parish in East Jersey, St. Peter's, Perth Amboy (1698). The fact is recorded on a tablet on the walls of the present church edifice erected by the parish in 1825.
The settlement of Liberty Corner may be dated about 1730, the date when the Annin family located here, and the place was long known as Annin's Corner. It was to all intents and purposes a part of Basking Ridge, having no church of its own for a hundred years. The first regular pastor of the Bask- ing Ridge Church, the Rev. John Cross, lived
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here in the house still standing, and here he entertained the Rev. George Whitefield during his memorable visit in 1740. There is a tradition in the family that Lafayette spent the night in this house in the spring of 1780. He was en route for Morristown on his re- turn from his memorable mission to the French Court in the interest of the States. He is also said to have recalled the fact to a member of the Cross family when he re- visited this country in 1825.
Several houses still standing antedate the Revolution, notably the old stone house (the Annin homestead) and the Cross house already mentioned, both to the north of the village.
The earliest homesteads were established on Long Hill and Millington about 1730. The highroad over Long Hill was the main thoroughfare to Newark by way of New Providence (Turkey) and Springfield.
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IX.
EPILOGUE.
N OTHING has been said in the foregoing pages of the natural beauties of the Somerset hills. These speak for themselves. Historic associations may fade, yes, vanish ; but the beauties of nature are enduring and self-evident.
The earliest civilizations developed in the lowland plains of the great river valleys. This is in accordance with the natural law of de- velopment along the lines of the least resist- ance. The hill country marks the frontier in the evolution of all the earlier civilizations. The occupation of the hills is a second period in the march of progress, the extension of empire, the beginning of conquest. Of the three great monarchies that successively occu- pied the basin of the Euphrates and Tigris
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rivers-Chaldæa, Assyria, and Babylonia-each in turn stretched farther inland embracing more and more of the hill country. The settlement and development of colonies illus- trate the same principle. In the settlement of the colony of New Jersey, the lower courses of her two chief rivers, the Raritan and Passaic, were first occupied. For a gen- eration or longer, the hill country was a natural frontier-the abode of elves and fairies, it may be no less than of witches; a land full of mystery and beauty-not without its dangers and therefore alluring.
But more than for anything else, the hills have stood for a region of refuge and repose. We shall not have to search far in Holy Writ for illustrations of this. For the great Hebrew poet, "the little hills rejoice on every side," and in his despair he exclaims, "I will lift mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help!" Shakespeare retires the disheart-
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ened Henry VI. to a hill, there to await the result of the battle of Towton. Here the tempest-tossed king reflects :
" Methinks it were a happy life To be no better than a homely swain; To sit upon a hill as I do now. . . . Ah, what a life were this! how sweet! how lovely !
Gives not the hawthorn brush a sweeter shade
To shepherds looking on their silly sheep, Than doth a rich embroidered canopy To kings that : fear their subjects' treachery ? "
The hill country is, moreover, the haunt of the babbling brooks, the "little rivers"; and there be those to whom the sound of the bab- bling, purling waters of a brook is the most delicious note in nature. "There's no music like a little river's," writes Robert Louis Steven- son in "Prince Otto." "It plays the same tune (and that's the favourite) over and over again, and yet does not weary of it like men fiddlers.
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It takes the mind out of doors ; and though we should be grateful for good houses, there is, after all, no house like God's out-of-doors. And lastly, sir, it quiets a man down like say- ing his prayers."
But the lowlander may not share this par- tiality for the hill country. Like the Lincoln- shire farmer in Alton Locke, he will have "none o' this darned ups and downs o' hills to shake a body's victuals out of his inwards," but he would have "all so vlat as a barn door for vorty mile on end-there's a country to live in!" Ah, well! "Chacun a son mauvais gout."
For the hill dweller will persistently regard the lowlands as a land of exile. He may be out-argued in the matter and have to admit that the coign of vantage is not always in his favour ; but he will insist that the hill country is the only fit dwelling-place. That here, more than otherwhere, lovers of nature,
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of "God's out-of-doors," find her responsive to every passing mood. Her sympathies are eternal and infinite; her influences manifold. Some of these are reflected in the following sonnet :
"O Earth! thou hast not any wind that blows Which is not music; every weed of thine Pressed rightly flows in aromatic wine;
And every humble hedgerow flower that grows,
And every little brown bird that doth sing, Hath something greater than itself, and bears A living word to every living thing,
Albeit it holds the message unawares.
All shapes and sounds have something which is not
Of them; a Spirit broods amid the grass ;
Vague outlines of the Everlasting Thought Lie in the melting shadows as they pass;
The touch of an Eternal Presence thrills The fringes of the sunsets and the hills."
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X.
NOTES ON ILLUSTRATIONS.
FRONTISPIECE.
Book Plate of Seymour, Duke of Somerset, from a copy of the original, engraved on steel by B. Clowes.
" THE DUST OF A VANISHED RACE." Facing Page 20. Specimen arrow heads found in Somerset County. Drawings the exact size of the originals in a private collection.
GENERAL KNOX'S HEADQUARTERS, BEDMINSTER. Facing Page 54. The house still stands as originally built. Illustration is from a drawing made in 1900.
SIR FRANCIS BERNARD. Facing Page 62. From the original painting by Copley in the hall of Christ Church, Oxford; by per-
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mission of the Dean and Canons of Christ Church, and through the kindness of Messrs. Macmillan & Co., of London. Au- thor's note in The American Revolution, by John Fiske. Illustrated Edition. Pub- lished by Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., by whose courtesy the portrait is here pre- sented.
FACSIMILE OF GENERAL LEE'S WRITING. Page 70. This letter, written at Basking Ridge just before his capture, was an important link in the chain of evidence that established Lee's treason.
MRS. WHITE'S TAVERN. Facing Page 76. The frame of the original tavern is incorpo- rated in the house occupying the original site. The drawing was made from a woodcut, circa 1850, before the house was remodelled.
CARICATURE OF GENERAL LEE. Facing Page 78.
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From the engraving in Girdlestone's Facts tending to prove that General Lee was the Author of Funius, London, 1813. The drawing was made by Barham Rush- brooke, on Lee's return from Poland in 1766, in the uniform of an aide to King Stanislaus, and shows the inevitable dog. According to Dr. Girdlestone, "though designed as a caricature, it was allowed by all who knew General Lee to be the only successful delineation, either of his countenance or person." The absurd notion that Lee might have been the author of The Letters of Funius had its origin in a particularly audacious lie which he told to Thomas Rodney, of Delaware, in 1773. Author's note in The American Revolution, by John Fiske. Il- lustrated Edition. Published by Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., by whose courtesy this portrait is here presented.
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EAST FRONT OF STIRLING MANOR HOUSE. Fac- ing Page 86. After a drawing made about 1850, at which time this front still remained as it was built by Lord Stirling. The cedar tree shown in the foreground is the one under which, according to one tradition, Lady Kitty Alexander was married to Colonel Duer in July, 1779. According to another tradition, she stepped out on the lawn in her bridal gown, after the ceremony, and under this tree received the congratulations of a company of soldiers who assembled to honour their Major-General's daughter.
WILLIAM ALEXANDER, FIRST LORD STIRLING. Fac- ing Page 92. From a copy of the ex- ceedingly rare engraving by William Marshall. "In 1637 Lord Stirling published his collected works (with the exception of his 'Aurora') under the title of 'Rec-
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The Somerset Hills.
reations with the Muses.' Marshall en- graved his portrait, which, it is stated, the noble Lord placed only in the copies pre- sented to his friends. It is a fact that it is found in only a very few copies and has always been considered rare."
MAJOR-GENERAL THE EARL OF STIRLING. Facing
Page 101. From the portrait engraved for The Life of William Alexander, Earl of Stirling. New Jersey Historical Society, 1847.
RELICS OF THE BUILDINGS. Page 128. Weather Vane and Bell owned by The Washing- ton Association of New Jersey and pre- served in Washington's Headquarters at Morristown.
a
BOUND TO PLEASE THE H Heckman Bindery. INC.
NOV.65
CERTIFY
N. MANCHESTER, INDIANA
4
.
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