USA > Pennsylvania > Montgomery County > Historical sketches : a collection of papers prepared for the Historical Society of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Volume I > Part 11
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delphia county, and member of the Governor's Council. At his decease he was Chief Justice of the province. He was ever active in civil and religious matters, and died suddenly of an apoplectic fit in Germantown Meeting House, June 4, 1735, in the sixty-fourth year of his age. His will was dated Janu- ary 17, 1731, and appointed his wife Mary, and sons Isaac, Charles and Samuel, jointly his executors. His eldest son, Isaac, was also distinguished for his services in public life. He was long an alderman, and for many years Speaker of the Assembly. Watson, in his Annals, says : " The name of Nor- ris has been remarkable for its long continuance in public life, from the origin of the city of Philadelphia to the period of the Revolution. In September, 1759, Isaac Norris who had been almost perpetual speaker, resolved to resign his public employ, and in declining his re-election remarked thus: "You were pleased to make choice of me to succeed my father in the Assembly at the election of the year 1735 ;" thus showing the latter had been in the Assembly more than twenty-four years. He adds : "I never sought emolument for myself or family, and I remained at disadvantage to my private interest, only to oppose the measures of unreasonable men."
An anecdote is related of the speaker Norris, about the time of his resignation, when opposing the measures of Gov- ernor Morris' administration. Having left the chair, he con- cluded his speech with all the fire of youthful patriotism and the dignity of venerable old age combined, saying : " No man shall ever stamp his foot on my grave and say, 'curse him !' or, 'here lies he who basely betrayed the liberties of his country.'"
Isaac Norris, previous to his death, sold off several por- tions of his estate to settlers, amounting to about 1720 acres. He died in 1735. The family retained the property for some time after, though occasionally selling portions of it. On the 16th of November, 1738, they sold 100 acres to Cadwalader Evans, who, in 1748, sold the same to Dennes Conrad. The greater part of the land where Norristown now stands came in possession of Charles Norris, son of the aforesaid, who erected
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a mill by the side of the Schuylkill, and made other valuable improvements. After his death his wife Mary sold, on the 17th of September, 1771, the mill and 543 acres to Colonel John Bull, of Limerick township, for £4,600. Included in the purchase was Barbadoes Island, which then contained eighty- eight acres. Colonel Bull continued to reside here till the spring of 1777, having sold it on the 2d of November previous to Rev. Dr. William Smith, of Philadelphia, for £6,000, who held it in 1784, when the county seat of Montgomery county was established at Norristown.
From the assessor's book it appears that in 1785 Norriton contained one hundred and eighty-one horses, two hundred and sixty-nine cattle, fourteen negro slaves, two riding-chairs, two grist-mills, four saw-mills, one tannery, and six taverns.
As the court-house and jail were not built for several years after the erection of the county, the courts had to be held wherever they could get the most suitable accommoda- tions. The first court was held in this township at the public house kept by John Shannon, December 28, 1784. Frederick A. Muhlenberg, James Morris, Henry Scheetz and William Bean, Esqs., Justices, presided, the former being President. To show the spirit of the times we learn from the records of the court that one person for committing two larcenies was sen- tenced on the 28th of September, 1785, to receive on his bare back fifteen lashes well laid on, and on the following 8th of October the same number to be repeated for the second offence. "Negro William" was sentenced at the same time to receive nineteen lashes.
The oldest house of worship now standing in the county, if we except the Lower Merion meeting-house, is the Presby- terian church on the Germantown turnpike, about three miles northeast of Norristown, familiarly known as the Old Norriton Church. From the style and architecture of this building it must have been erected previous to 1740, which is the year of the earliest date found on the tomb-stones. The church is a small, one-story building, and, from its appearance, has under- gone no material alteration since its erection. The oldest stone
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in the grave-yard informs us of the death of Joseph Armstrong, who died April 29, 1740, aged four years. Among the patriots of the Revolution who lie buried here may be mentioned Col. Archibald Thompson, who.died November 1, 1799, aged thirty - nine years, and Col. Christopher Stuart, who died May 27, 1799, aged fifty-one years. This church, it is said, was considerably injured during the Revolution by the soldiers using it as quar- ters. In consequence of these damages the Assembly passed an act September 17, 1785, permitting money to be raised by means of a lottery for its repair.
During the Revolutionary war, while the American troops were encamped at Valley Forge, the British soldiers, who occu- pied Philadelphia and vicinity, their videttes extending up at times as far as Barren Hill, made a reconnoissance in force, and at Jeffersonville, which was often an out-post of the Amer- ican pickets, a sharp conflict took place, which resulted in the defeat of the Americans, who were largely outnumbered by the enemy. The British then fired the hotel standing on the pres- ent site, which was burned to the ground. It was soon after rebuilt, and the walls being in a good state of preservation were not torn down.
We are told that Indian creek, that flows through a por- tion of our township, received its name because of the Indians who once dwelt here. There is a tradition that a large num- ber of Indians were encamped and made their home on the ground now occupied by the Indian Creek public school- house. They had wood and water there, and abundance of game, and plenty of fish in the Schuylkill below. Hard stones, called darts, which they used in shooting, and which were fas- tened on the ends of their arrows, are frequently found in this portion of the township.
In Buck's History of Montgomery County there is an in- teresting chapter concerning the Indians. Rev. John Campa- nius, a Swedish chaplain, who came to this country forty years before William Penn, and who resided on Tinicum Island, near the mouth of the Schuylkill, in speaking of the Indians, says: "Their way of living is very simple. With arrows pointed
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with sharp stones they kill the deer and other creatures. They made axes from stones, which they fastened to sticks to kill the trees where they intended to plant. They cultivated the ground with a sort of hoe made from the shoulder blade of a deer or tortoise shell sharpened with stones and fastened with a stick. They made pots of clay mixed with powdered mus- sel shells burnt in fire, to prepare their food in. By friction they made fire from two pieces of hard wood. The trees they burnt down and cut into pieces for fire wood. On journeys they carried fire a great ways in spunk, or sponges found grow- ing on the trees. They burnt down great trees and shaped them into canoes by fire and the aid of sharp stones. Men and women were dressed in the skins of wild animals. The women also made themselves garments from wild hemp and to knit twines the feathers of turkeys, eagles, etc , into blankets.
" The earth, the woods, and the rivers were provision stores of the Indians, for they eat all kinds of wild animals and pro- ductions of the earth-fowls, birds, fishes and fruit which they find within their reach. They shoot deer and birds with the bow and arrow. They eat generally but twice a day, morning and afternoon, the earth serving them for tables and chairs. They sometimes boil their meat and fish ; at other times dry
them in the sun or in the smoke, and thus eat them. They make bread out of the maize or Indian corn, which they pre- pare in a manner peculiar to themselves. They crush the grain between two great stones or on a large piece of wood ; then moisten it with water and make it into small cakes, which
they wrap up in corn leaves and thus bake them in the ashes. In this manner they make their bread. They can fast, when necessity compels them, for many days. When traveling or lying in wait for their enemies, they take with them a kind of bread made of Indian corn and tobacco juice to alleviate hunger and quench thirst. Both men and women smoke tobacco, which is found in great abundance. When a white person visited them in their dwellings, they immediately spread on the ground pieces of cloth and fine mats or skins, and then produced the best they had, such as bread, deer, elk or bear's
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meat, fresh fish, and bear's fat to serve in lieu of butter. These attentions must not be despised, else their friendship will turn to hatred.
" When an Indian visited his friends, the whites, the table was uncovered at one end, for it was his custom to jump on the table and sit with his legs crossed, not being accustomed to chairs, and then ask for whatever he would like to eat."
One of the most distinguished men that resided in this township was David Rittenhouse. He was the oldest son of Mathias Rittenhouse, and was born April 8, 1732, at his father's place on the Wissahickon creek, near Germantown. While David was an infant, his father, with his family, removed to a farm he had purchased in this township. The place is a short distance east of the Norriton church, on the turnpike.
An excellent article on David Rittenhouse appeared in the May (1882) number of Harpers' Magazine, extracts from which we quote here:
"At the age of eight years he made a complete water-mill in miniature. At seventeen he made a wooden clock, and afterward one in metal. Having thus tested his ability in an act in which he had never received instructions, he erected a building by the road-side and set up in business as a clock and mathematical instrument maker. His days were given to labor and his nights to study. He solved the most abstruse mathematical and astronomical problems, discovering the method of fluxions. At an early age he was master of a number of the languages, especially Latin and Greek. After three years of labor he constructed what he called an orrery. Around a brass sun revolved ivory or brass panels in elliptical orbits properly inclined towards each other, and with velocities varying as they approached their aphelia or perihelia. Jupiter and his satellites, Saturn with his rings, the moon and her phases and the exact time, quantity and duration of her eclipses, the eclipses of the sun and their appearance at any particular place on the earth, were all actually displayed in miniature. The relative situations of the members of the solar system at any period of time for five thousand years, backward or for-
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ward, could be shown in a moment. It is not difficult," says the writer, "to appreciate the enthusiasm with which this proof of a rare genius was received more than a century ago, but it is entertaining to interpret the expressions of it." "A most beautiful machine. It exhibits almost every motion in the as- tronomical world," wrote John Adams, who was always a little cautious about praising the work of other people. "There is not the like in Europe," said Dr. Gordon, the English historian. His friend, Thomas Jefferson, wrote, "A machine far surpass- ing in ingenuity of contrivance, accuracy and utility anything of the kind ever before constructed. He has not, indeed, made a world, but has by imitation approached nearer its maker than any man who has lived from the creation to this day." Two universities vied with each other for its possession, and it was finally purchased by Dr. Witherspoon, of Princeton College, for £300.
Wondering crowds went to see it, and after the Legisla- ture of Pennsylvania had viewed it in a body they passed a resolution giving Rittenhouse £300 as a testimony of their high sense of his mathematical genius, and entered into an agreement with him to have a still larger one made for which they were to pay £400.
Said a learned English author: "There is not another so- ciety" [alluding to the American Philosophical Society] "in the world that can boast of a member such as Mr. Rittenhouse, theorist enough to encounter the problem of determining from a few observations the orbit of a comet, and also mechanic enough to make with his own hands an equal altitude instru- ment, a transit telescope, and a time-piece."
He aided in fixing the boundaries between New York and Pennsylvania. In 1770 he prepared for publication by the American Philosophical Society a paper giving the method of ascertaining the true time of the sun's passing the meridian. that attracted the attention of the Saxon astronomer, Von Zach. In March, 1776, he was elected a member of the Assembly from the city of Philadelphia, and later a member of the con- vention which met July 15, 1776, and drafted the first consti-
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tution of Pennsylvania. He was Treasurer of the state, and appointed by Washington as the first Director of the Mint on April 14, 1792.
Between 1780 and 1796 he wrote no less than seventeen papers for the Philosophical Society upon optics, magnetism, electricity, meteors, logarithms and other mathematics, the im- provement of time-keepers, the expansion of wood by heat, as- tronomical observations upon comets, transits and eclipses, and similar abstruse topics. He succeeded Franklin as President of the American Philosophical Society, and was elected a Fel- low of the Academy of Arts and Science of Boston in 1782. The College of New Jersey gave him the honorary degree of Master of Arts in 1772 and Doctor of Laws in 1789. The College of William and Mary, in Virginia, gave him the hon- orary degree of Master of Arts in 1784. But the highest dis- tinction he ever received of this character, and the highest in the world then attainable by a man of science, was his election as a foreign member of the Royal Society of London in 1795.
No higher tribute was ever accorded to human rectitude than was offered to him by the author of the Declaration of Independence. "Nothing could give me more pleasure," wrote that statesman in a private letter to his daughter Mar- tha, "than your being much with that worthy family, wherein you will see the best examples of rational life and learn to imitate them."
We have in this township a number of places of business, the most extensive of which is the manufactory of cotton and woolen goods, known as the Trooper Mill, the firm being Joseph Shaw & Co. [The Trooper Mill has not been in use for a number of years, and is now fast crumbling into decay.] This mill is associated with the Blue Mill of Norris- town, another manufactory of the same kind of goods, and owned by the same firm. The two factories do a large business, and give employment to a number of men and women. James Shaw, who died April 26, 18SI, was for many years an active member of this firm, and gave his per- sonal supervision to the Trooper Mill. Mr. Shaw was a man
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of genius, thoroughly master of his business in all its details, and the great success of this company was largely due to his excellent judgment and business tact. He amassed a fortune in his business, and gave liberally of his means to religious and benevolent causes. He was chairman of the committee appointed to build the Centennial Presbyterian Church of Jef- fersonville, and contributed very largely of his means to its erection. His remains lie in the beautiful burying-ground by the side of this building.
Norriton has five public schools, all in a flourishing con- dition; two churches, the Centennial Presbyterian and the Norriton, the latter being the mother of all other- Presbyterian churches in the surrounding country. Sabbath-school is regularly held for religious instruction in several other places, with good attendance. The Centennial church, built in 1876, at a cost of $20,000, is very finely situated, commanding an extended view of the Schuylkill valley and the hills of Valley Forge. It is one of the handsomest and most substantial structures to be found in the rural districts.
Much might be written concerning the history of this township, but our paper has already grown too long, and we forbear to trespass further on your patience.
In closing we would advert to the fact that two hundred years ago the region we occupy was a densely wooded wilder- ness. Now we behold a country rich in soil, beautiful in scenery, dotted thickly with delightful homes, evidencing the highest state of prosperity and thrift. No wonder that Wash- ington exclaimed, when going from Valley Forge with a brother officer to Whitemarsh, when looking upon its magnifi- cent scenery and natural beauty, "Truly this is a country worth fighting for!"
What changes since the days of Penn! We can only speak of them to say that the boundaries of every science have been widened and greatly enlarged. The wonders of the distant heavens have been revealed through the powers of the telescope; new worlds and systems have been brought into view and given place on our maps; and we find the boundless
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space above filled up with worlds where we once thought there was but an empty void. We have been taught of the sublime march of the world and the unvarying laws that gov- ern it. Geology has demonstrated its immense age, and chem- istry analyzed its thousand substances. Electricity has encir- cled the earth with lightning zones, and continents are spanned with iron links of swiftness. Science has cabled the great ocean and made it the repository of man's communication. Truth and enlightenment have gained great victories over ignorance and error, and learning, with joyful steps, has trod- den an ignorant land. Our nation has passed through perils and critical periods under intense strains that would have destroyed any other government. The dark clouds of war, freighted with desolation and death, have come and gone, but our country still stands as a beacon light, the hope of the down-trodden and the oppressed of every clime, drawing its inspiration from the principles of Penn and the teachings of the Pilgrim Fathers and those noble men who indicted the immor- tal Declaration of Independence. And whatever may be said of our political systems, the tendency of the times is for a higher and better standard of excellence and character; and though we of the nineteenth century can be said to but behold the early morning of that bright day, future generations will gaze upon its midday splendor.
[The writer is indebted for much information to Scott's Historical Atlas of Montgomery County, Buck's History of Montgomery County, Watson's Annals of Philadelphia, old papers, etc.]
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By Dr. Hiram Corson.
Dr. Hiram Corson was appointed to respond to the toast " The Society of Friends" at a banquet of the Montgomery County Historical Society, February 22, 1882. He was not able to be present, but sent the following interesting paper, which was read on the occasion by his son, C. F. Corson, Esq :
I regret my inability to be with you this evening to take the part assigned me. I might with great propriety ask to be excus- ed from any reply on this occasion; first, because I am not and never was a member of the society of Friends, and also because an indisposition of several months' duration has quite unfitted me for its proper performance. But as every member should try to bear a part of the labor needed for success in the move- ment, and as I can look back on an unbroken line of my maternal Quaker ancestry, involving a period of two hundred years, and as I have had all my life daily social intercourse with Friends, I feel that I owe you thanks for assigning to me the pleasant duty of recording what I know of the part borne by them in the settlement of our state.
It is not right that evil should be done that good may come of it, but yet I often feel that to the terrible persecution of Friends in the "old country" do we owe the settlement of this portion of our state by a class of people unsurpassed at the time for their devotion to right principles and their oppo- sition to every species of "wrong and outrage with which earth was filled" at that time. What a blessing to us that the per- secution of our ancestors became so unendurable that they were willing to face the dangers of this (then) wilderness filled with a rude and savage people, rather than yield a single prin- ciple which they cherished, and which they had resolved to maintain. These were the people who first settled this region,
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and we may look back upon them with pride and not with regret, as may be done in some other states settled by men who left their country for their country's good, or by intol- erants, who having fled from persecution, became persecutors in turn.
William Penn, in a letter dated 25th, Eighth-month, 1681, said: "I eye the Lord in obtaining this country, and I desire that I may not be unworthy of his love, but do that which may answer his kind providence and serve his truth and peo- ple, that an example may be set up to the nations." And here we might pause to look around us for the fruits of that example set before the world by the early Friends in this region. They were examples to us in their opposition to slavery, to oaths, to intemperance, to all forms of taking human life, and in their earnest advocacy of the golden rule, "to do unto others as they would that others should do unto them." The influence of their example has modified the religious intolerance of New England and abolished slaveholding in Virginia, has stamped the name of Brotherly Love on our great city, and immortal- ized their principles of peace and justice in the name given by them to this great Commonwealth.
Prior to the time when this state was ceded to William Penn, the western part of New Jersey had been occupied by Quaker emigrants, on lands obtained from Edward Byllinge, a Friend to whom William Penn became a trustee. Some were there as early as 1675. During the next two or three years several vessels came to West Jersey with eight hundred emigrants, most of whom were Friends; so that in 1681, when Penn received his grant for forty thousand square miles of land, constituting this noble state, Friends in England were eager to escape from the cruelties practiced on them, and began at once to come over to get homes on the west side of the river Delaware, a land dedicated by William Penn to free- dom for all from religious persecution. In the next year, 1682. came the founder himself, and many Friends; men like him- self, devoted to furnishing homes for the persecuted, without regard to their religious belief or nationality. How great must
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have been the joy of those persecuted, and, at that time, despised people, to hear that there was a land of freedom to which they were invited, where they could get lands and homes almost without money and without price, and where they could worship without fear of molestation. The jails of England were filled with these suffering people, who before this time were helpless to avert the stripes and imprisonment to which they were daily subject. But then, at the invitation of their great leader, the exodus from oppression began. They came by families, came for peaceful homes, came never to return, came to establish communities devoted to the maintenance of those great principles which they believed to spring from that "Inner Light" with which the great Creator has endowed every human being to light up the path of duty. In speaking the sentiments of William Penn, we speak the sentiments of those people. And then these principles were to be tested.
The land had been ceded to William Penn by the King of Great Britain, but it was in possession of men who believed themselves to be owners. In the eastern states the rights of the natives had been wholly disregarded, and the land wrested from them by the sword; they were driven back mile by mile and their lands seized by white faced emigrants, professing Christians, and it was only natural that the Indians should believe these Quakers would pursue a similar policy. But such conduct was not in accord with the principles held by William Penn and the Friends who came with him. The world knows the rest. The treaty made by the Friends and Indians, without an oath and which never was broken, has been spoken of and honored in every land the world over.
Of all the Friends who came to settle here in response to the invitation of their great leader, there was not one but was in accord with him in his dealing with the children of the forest. And how cheering the result! From the day of the meeting under the great elm tree where they assured the Indians of their desire to live peacefully and deal honorably with them, there was no fear of harm from them, as the Friends sought out desirable places for homes in the wilderness adja-
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