USA > Pennsylvania > Montgomery County > Norristown > The Centennial celebration of Montgomery County : at Norristown, Pa., September 9,10,11,12, 1884 : an official record of its proceedings > Part 4
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had been erected over the Schuylkill, or any of our larger streams; but, instead, they had to be crossed either at fords or ferries. Not a town or a village within its entire area that at this time contained thirty-five houses. One public library alone, at Hatboro, founded in 1755, for which the books had to be imported from Lon- don, at this date contained five hundred and fifty volumes. Only two stage lines had been established; one from Bethlehem to Philadel- phia, started in 1763; the other from Reading, through Pottstown, to the city, in 1781, by Wil- liam Coleman. Each made but one weekly trip. The churches numbered about thirty-five, of which the Friends had seven; the Episcopa- lians, including Swedes' Church, three; Pres- byterians, three; Baptists, one; Methodists, one; and the twenty remaining churches be- longed to several German denominations, show- ing that the latter had now become pretty nu- merous in population.
From the aforesaid statement, we are led to consider as to what Montgomery county is to- day, though with only four hundred and fifty square miles of territory. In population and resources, without Philadelphia, it is the sixth county in the State, being only exceeded by Allegheny, Luzerne, Lancaster, Schuylkill, and Berks. It now possesses thirty townships, twelve
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boroughs, sixty-five election districts, one hun- dred and eighteen post offices, two hundred miles of turnpike, one hundred and sixty-six miles of railroad, with considerably over one hundred stations. Fourteen bridges span the Schuylkill, all built in less than three-fourths of a century. To strangers it should be mentioned, that the noble building in which the antiquarian exposition is held, was built from our own mar- ble, lime and iron, procured within a few miles of its site. Of the numerous manufactories, educational establishments, charitable institu- tions, and various improvements that abound, only an allusion can be made. We have in this goodly heritage of our forefathers two hundred and four inhabitants to the square mile, while, according to the latest statistics, Scotland, Den- mark and Portugal average but very little over half this number; Austria and Hungary have one hundred and forty-four; Bavaria, one hun- dred and seventy-four; and France, one hun- dred and eighty-three. The township of Chel- tenham, without any large villages, contains three hundred and ninety inhabitants to the square mile, approaching the most thickly set- tled countries. Such are our wonderful re- sources, and the general happiness of our peo- ple, that we cannot realize that we are densely peopled, which, in other and much older coun-
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tries, has so long been associated with wretch- edness, and, as they would have, arising from an inability to secure a sufficiency of food. What a subject is here for the people of Eu- rope to ponder on. Taken collectively, and considering the progress we have made since its first settlement, how eventually, and at no great distance of time, must we surpass in popu- lation and resources, not only the very best por- tions of Europe, but perhaps of any country on the face of the globe.
Within the small area of Montgomery county have lived and died distinguished persons. A Major General of the Revolutionary army, a Speaker of the first Congress of 1789, and three Governors of Pennsylvania, were born here. Among the distinguished dead may be men- tioned Nicholas Scull, John Lukens, Robert Loller, Nathaniel B. Boileau, Isaiah Lukens, Samuel and John Gummere, Benjamin Hallo- well, Job Roberts, Henry Funk, Henry Ernst Muhlenberg, Charles Philip Krauth, John and Daniel Hiester, Andrew Porter, John Bull, Frederick Antes, Henry Scheetz, William R. Smith, Jonathan Roberts, William Potts De- wees, William Collum, David R. Porter, Fran- cis R. Shunk, Joseph Foulke, and Alan W. Cor- son. They were also born here. Among our distinguished residents we can mention Charles
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Thomson, H. M. Muhlenberg, Samuel Miles, Sir William Keith, Thomas Gräme, Elizabeth Ferguson, Rowland Ellis, Christopher Dock, David Rittenhouse, John J. Audubon, Jacob Taylor, Benjamin Lay, Bird Wilson, Arthur St. Clair, and Lucretia Mott. Having no de- sire to be invidious, the distinguished living I shall pass by. But it is enough to say that in all the varied pursuits of life we find them, whether it is in mechanical skill and invention, in agri- culture, in the learned professions, or in any of the prevailing arts and sciences, there is talent to do us credit. Montgomery county has fur- nished gallant officers and men, not only in the Revolution, but in the war of 1812 and with Mexico. To the late rebellion it furnished its share again, and a monument in the neighbor- ing square contains the names of five hundred and forty-seven, that gave their lives in the ter- rible struggle that the Union of our forefathers might still be preserved and perpetuated. This goes to show a people eminently self-sacrificing and patriotic.
In conclusion, a few words more for our hon- ored county. In the long course now of two centuries, not an instance can be found that a white man or an Indian had here shed each other's blood. Mobs have never here pre- vailed, the most violent reformers have had
,
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their way, and no churches or other buildings have been destroyed under such temporary ex- citement. Though peopled by the English, Welsh, Germans, Swedes and Irish, speaking various languages, and holding different relig- ious and political views, they resolved to live here peaceably with each other, while they dili- gently labored to improve their possessions, till they have become as we now behold and enjoy them at this day. Let, then, the celebration of this centennial be regarded as a deserving me- morial and honor due to those, who have so long preceded us, and whom we should endeavor to follow in every good example.
William J. Buck
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"Festival Hymn" was rendered by the cho- rus, after which Mr. Fornance said :
Through the ability of one or more of its members, a family becomes noted. Among the prominent families of this county is one that has been prominent for several generations. Large in numbers, noted for force of character; many of its members have held the foremost rank in art, in literary pursuits, in scientific attainments, and in philanthropic works. It was proper that one of that family, the Hon. George N. Corson, of Norristown, should be invited to prepare, and read to us to-day, a poem suited to the occasion. He is here in response to that invitation.
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Mr. Corson read the following
POEM.
Backward through the tide of time we gaze This morning upon the dawning days Of our town and county, to thank God That our transatlantic fathers trod These bosky shores, to establish homes In the valleys where the Schuylkill roams, The Perkiomen and the Skippack sweep, Gulf and Valley creeks their vigils keep In the deep gulch and the deeper gorge Of the sacred shades of Valley Forge ! Where Wissahickon winding invites True lovers to scenes of rare delights, Where Mingo, Macoby and the Spack, Manatawny and the Pennypack, The Swamp creek and Tacony travel On sylvan beds of sand and gravel ; Where the Sanatoga springs to sink In the Schuylkill with the Arrowmink ; And where Stony creek comes romping down A life preserver to Norristown.
Our fathers surely were wiser men Than we are, for they were nearer Penn, And not afraid to make a nation, Found a State, or excite creation With a creed engrossed upon a scroll That gave liberty to man and soul ; To carve a county from an old one, Build a borough, aye, and a bold one, From a village straggling up and down Make a county seat of Norristown. Our people now, more is the pity, Afraid to make the town a city, Would waddle back, for fear of taxes, To tomahawks and battle-axes. We are proud of our sires, those great men
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Who made the new Republic just when The King was strongest and his power Felt in every clime, and every hour There was somewhere the gleam of the sun Ne'er setting on realms he ruled upon ! But are prouder far, if that can be, Of our fathers born this side the sea, Who fled not from oppression, but here Their own sires memories to revere, Their fame extend and their will obey, Just one hundred years ago to-day Carved a county below and above Out of the loins of Brotherly Love ! And such a county from such a race ! By the chance of birth with Heaven's grace We sons enjoy these vales and rivers So blest by gift and by the givers ; A double heritage more precious Than thrones and crowns to Princes specious.
For here is freedom, and here each man May contemplate the Creator's plan, Worship under his own vine and tree, Write, vote, speak and think and still be free ! One hundred thousand people make this A county, to-day where plenty is ! Where fruitful fields and exhaustless mines, Factories and schools and fruits and vines, The purest water and richest ground And all things we need on earth abound. If we have no seas, no lakes, no ocean, Neither have we wrecks or commotion Of the tornadoes ! We need no dykes Nor levees to bar the tide that strikes The rock-ribbed and shaded banks and shores Of each beautiful streamlet that pours Into the vast sea inviolate
The waters from lands they irrigate ! Content with wheat, corn, rye and grasses, Good men and women, boys and lasses, With products for the proudest table
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And horses for the richest stable, With farms far famed, well tilled, prolific, Homes of plenty and more pacific, We grow and live on these hills and plains Well satisfied with our modest gains ; With our mines of iron, marble, lime, With fruitage and food of every clime, With all birds, fowls, fishes, sheep and kine, And porcine mastodons just as fine ; And bless the parents that gave us birth On this favored spot of mother earth, Where schools are free, and the air serene ; Where summer's harvest and winter's sheen Fill the garners and bless the yeomen Along the Schuylkill, the Perkiomen, And through all the bounds of the bounty Bestowed by Montgomery county.
The changes wrought the century past, Not all for good, or destined to last, Have yet been smaller, it is believed, In what is lost than in that achieved. Tho' magnified by the common mind, These changes have left their mark behind. The stage-coach has given way to cars Now pulled by engines on iron bars, And in the canals and on the seas Boats pushed by steam ply with eel-like ease, As moved by the unseen hand that rules, And usurp the place of sails and mules. It would have made our forefathers laugh To have seen the talking telegraph, And would have transformed their flesh to stone To have heard that laugh by telephone. And surely they would have fled the land And left to the Indians, contraband, Their plows and yokes and scythes and sickles Could they have seen how the bicycles, Made of spinning wheels turned upside down, Are ridden by men through Norristown ! Poor spinning wheels, pig yokes, grain cradles,
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Flax brakes, drag rakes, and wooden ladles, Where are you? Oh ! dames and men of yore, Down the corridors of time, before, Could you have cast prophetic glances, You would have leaped at these advances ! To have seen us spinning and weaving, Plowing, and harvesting and sheaving, Threshing, milling, printing, and preaching, Aye, it is true preaching and teaching ; Do our washing, and churning of cream, And e'en hatching out chickens, by steam ! But our crops, our eggs, our clothes, our fur, Are not better than our fathers' were. Their houses were just as large and fine, And stronger with oak than ours with pine ; Their coats and jackets of sterner stuff Than our shoddy, with half wool enough, Made by modern machines for sewing Pretty seams, that part with our growing. The ancients-says St. John-had a coat Without seam and woven to the throat ; But this priceless suit has gone beneath, With the harrows of the wooden teeth. So, we lose in clothes, in iron gain, Make progress here with the hand and brain, And there in more ancient honored parts Pine with Phillips over the Lost Arts. In the wars of "twelve" and "forty-eight," As in the Rebellion born of hate In eighteen hundred and sixty-one, Our men in valor were ne'er outdone ; But on all the fields famed in story Won laurels for their deeds of glory, Were true to man and State and nation, True to that cause of toleration, Broad based in every institution By our laws and the Constitution.
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Pennsylvania ! We praise thee, because Thou art mother of peace, equal laws, Justice, equality among men, Freedom of conscience from denizen Or dynasty, priest, Pope or preacher ; Mother of love to every creature To which creation has given life And biding place in this world of strife ; Mother of pure charity, and truth, Of wisdom to eldest age and youth ; And through thee, thou gracious parent State, Two hundred years have enhanced the fate Of millions of our race and nation ; A century of growth and station, Prosperity, happiness, renown, To our county and our county town ; And on the escutcheon of the world, Thou hast to man everywhere unfurled Those VAST WORDS OF HOPE, immortal hence, VIRTUE, LIBERTY, INDEPENDENCE !!
George in Corsow
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The poem was followed by the "Hallelujah Chorus," effectively rendered by the vocalists, accompanied by the orchestra.
Mr. Fornance then said :
Nearly two centuries ago a German pioneer, Conrad Weiser, emigrated to America. He settled in what is now Berks county, near to the Montgomery county line. There, and through- out the eastern part of the State, was the scene of his labors, serving as Provincial Interpreter among the Indians, interposing to preserve peace between them and the early settlers. The mem- ory of his good works has long survived him. A descendant of his, of the fifth generation, a resident of our county, is here by invitation to address you. I have the honor of presenting him to you, the Rev. Dr. C. Z. Weiser, of East Greenville.
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Dr. Weiser delivered the following
ORATION.
Fellow-Citizens-The life of man is measured by the flight of years; the history of a province by the revolution of centuries ; the course of the world, by the cycle of the ages; and the ages of eternity, by the Creator Himself.
Montgomery county completes its primal round of one hundred years to-day. Like a century plant, our proud shire opens into bloom with a sound and a savor loud enough to fill the domain with a bracing melody and a pleasant flavor; drawing to its centre the masses from rural and from urban quarters, from thirty town- ships and twelve boroughs, like a magnet of great power. And beyond its borders, too, the music and the odor float.
Our twice venerable and bi-centennial neigh- bors, Philadelphia, Chester and Bucks (1682), like the three ancient Graces, discern the echo, and are with us to taste of the "feast of reason and the flow of soul."
The senior counties, Lancaster (1729), York (1749), Cumberland (1750), Berks and North- ampton (1752), Bedford (1771), Northumber- land (1772), Westmoreland (1773), Washing- ton (1781), Fayette (1783)-all are glad to hail Montgomery into the mystic guild of the cen- tenarians.
:
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Our twin sister, Franklin (1784), crosses the line with the province of Montgomery, arm-in- arm.
The junior counties are happy as well over their elder sister's majority, and speed her on with cheering words, that their own period of adolescence may grow speedily and beautifully less, when they, too, may wear the manly toga. Peers and compeers, you are welcome.
So live and so general an esprit du corps, per- vading the Commonwealth, renders it all the bet- ter to be here, and helps to swell Montgomery's jubilee to real grand proportions. Our proud shire is of age; has one hundred thousand in- habitants, five hundred thousand acres, and five hundred square miles of territory-old enough, and large enough, and rich enough, to rejoice alone. But it is "not good to be alone," espe- cially on a festive occasion. Mankind is man- kinned. Not only misery loves company, but joy as well. It is written on the big heart of humanity: "Whether one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it." That is St. Paul's commentary on the legend inscribed on our national escutcheon-E PLURIBUS UNUM.
Inasmuch, however, as it is meet and right to inquire into the reason of things, as far as
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mortals may, let us here and now ask, What means this gala day?
A sweet American singer tells us in flowing rhyme to "bury the dead past." But surely this is not Montgomery's funeral ! It were a lively corpse, indeed. It is an Eastertide. Some unseen power has touched the dry bones of its hills and dales, breathed upon them, and wrought the miracles of a resurrection. What an aroma collects around and diffuses from the shades and handiwork of our ancestors! Norristown is filled with shrines, as Athens once stood filled with altars and of gods. Our goodly disposed citi- zens are down on their knees, worshipping relics. Who does not pass by the new, the fresh, and the green, to tarry by the ancient, the gray- haired, and confess that "the old is better"?
But why is this great post-mortem? Why this grand review of the dead? Why this ma- nia for the vanished century?
Is it not a phenomenon, worth our study, that we should be so anxious to place our eyes in the back of our heads, just now? That we should, so simultaneously and unanimously, turn from the rising to the setting sun? That we should, one and all, slight the glorious future and the pro- lific present, to revere alone the "dead past" ?
This is the Sphinx that sits by the roadside, mutely challenging each one : "Solve me or die" !
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The answers vary even as the souls of men. "Many men of many minds." A conventional holiday will it prove to some. "Only this and nothing more." As the falls of Niagara sug- gest a goodly site to plant a mill, or the leaning tower at Pisa, to build a derrick, so, too, can these men see but an occasion to "eat and drink and die" in a centennial jubilee. Let us preserve a "boisterous silence" in the presence of souls so radically utilitarian or epicurean !
But is it not an event celebrated in honor of a departed ancestry? That were a healthy mo- tive, indeed. No son or society is on a wrong road so long as a sentiment so filial animates the bosom. Age is honorable.
Nevertheless, Montgomery's jubilee must be rested on a firmer base than a mere sentiment affords, be that never so noble. Otherwise, cer- tain perplexing queries might be propounded.
The thoughtful do not believe that "a little spark may kindle a great fire" unless a vast heap of combustibles is at hand. The occasion is not the cause of a great conflagration. And he that argues our jubilee on the basis of a sheer sentimentality, would place the stream far above its source. We make bold to declare that the centennial jubilee of Montgomery county does not rest as the "baseless fabric of an airy vision." Young America, least of all, will content itself
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with a ground so narrow. A class so progres- sive will cry out: "In honor of a departed an- cestry! Why must the fathers and the mothers be so loudly lauded? What is it that entitles them to such a glorification? An unsophisti- cated race !"
Our ancestry's record does seem very mea- gre aside of the prolific catalogue of to-day, and almost justifies such a disparagement. They never built an engine; they never launched a steamboat; they never surveyed a railroad; they never saw a telegraph; they never whispered in a telephone; they never rode a reaper; they never ran a sewing machine; they never walk- ed in electric light.
They never uttered the term "protoplasm" or "evolution." They never heard of the "sur- vival of the fittest." They believed in Adam as the progenitor of the human race. They de- spised the ape. They ate oysters without dis- cerning the blood of their sires within !
Does not that golden-mouthed but blear-eyed orator boldly declare: "This world was not worth living in fifty years ago"?
Under such a strong indictment, the less we talk of the wisdom of the fathers, the better; unless we may cast a more invulnerable coat of mail and build a more impregnable wall around them. What shall be the argument, then, by
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which the citizens of Montgomery county may successfully defend and maintain the propriety of their Centennial Jubilee?
I will answer. I will tell you :-
The jubilee instinct in mankind is the reason- able and satisfactory base on which every memo- rial act, either of an individual or social nature, finds room enough to stand
On this broad and lasting foundation, the countless apotheoses of the world may with- stand the assaults of the wise and of the fool- ish. This is a chief corner-stone on which men have ever built, and shall ever build their me- morial temples; not of "hay, straw and stub- ble," either, but of "gold, silver and precious stones."
To undertake to account for this disposition in man, is to enter the wide sphere of psychol- ogy, and tell why man is what he is. A theme too large and heavy to carry on a holiday!
To canonize consummated facts of by-gone ages, is an instinct of the race which ever did and ever will continue to come to the surface of human society among all nations, and at all stages of the world's march. To deny this pro- position is to antagonize history. The memory of man does not know of a time, or of a people, that did not grace itself with monumental deeds and memorial seasons. In the wake of the pri-
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mal Sabbath of God, when the miracle of crea- tion was first commemorated, festival days and jubilee songs bloomed along and flavored the great highway of time. The Orient, the Mid- dle Ages, and Modern Ages, all voice this race instinct. Account for it as we inay, we dare not ignore the fact.
Nor are these commemorative demonstra- tions to be regarded as frozen mausoleums, erected over dead and buried dust. They, like the singing Memnon, utter psalms, not requiem hymns. They are the incarnation of mankind's creed in an immortality. They are monuments, not mounds. They are both proofs and pro- phecies of man's sense of an everlasting life. It is history's way of protesting against a final nihilism. Rightly interpreted, that is what all the Bethel stones and Ebenezer altars declare, all along the track the race has broken. That is the language of pyramids, pillars and statues. With two faces, as it were, they look into the Pastand Future, and tell us of the "Golden Age" that was, and of the "Good time coming."
Tombs and epitaphs weary mortals ever crave at the end of their journey, cold and fri- gid as they seem. Like faithful sentinels, those white, sepulchral stones mark the graves of men. Even "merry England" grants an "ini- tial letter" over the grave of her Newgate felon.
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And even through the blazing ages of crema- tion an urn is used.
And so, too, does the nation and the race erect its countless "In Memoriams" over deeds and characters illustrious; and all the more so, since, like the grain of wheat, they fell into the earth that they fructify the more.
You search in vain through all the cemeteries of the world for the grave of lost hope interred.
The Egyptian Pharaoh commands his name to be chiseled in a solid rock, orders his body to be embalmed, and, lying down, exclaims : "Death, where is thy victory? Lo, I live for- ever !"
And, as the oldest civilization set the prece- dent, so have all successive layers continued to build. The horror of annihilation pervades all souls. A conscious rebellion, an irrepressible instinct protests against having one's being mea- sured by the brief space of an ephemeral exist- ence.
On that text history ever preaches its "ser- mons in stones." On that key all those pæans of humanity are ever set. Monuments are not dumb sentinels; nor are the songs of jubilee like campaign glees, which cloy in their sound- ing. They are rather rounds in the ladder of immortality, which the angels of our better na- ture have been building ever since the ancient
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patriarch saw a stairway between heaven and earth.
If we are silent, the "stones will cry out," declared Jesus of Nazareth.
Montgomery's centennial jubilee needs no words of justification, no defence; not even an apology. It does not confront us as a historical novice, an event, solitary or peculiar. It is but another building-stone that we bring for the walls of the temple of immortality, which is rising heavenward, since the creation of man "in the image of God." Nor will it prove a Babel tower, once more. "The Maker and Builder is God." The primal centenary jubilee of this province will challenge the regard of all thought- ful souls now living, and yet to live, within the province.
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