Part 11 (1/2)

Robert Morris, who came to this country when a child, served an apprentices.h.i.+p with a merchant, became a successful business man by his energy and integrity, and during the Revolution his fortune and unlimited commercial credit were superior to Congress itself. In the darkest days, when the army was unfed and unclothed, Was.h.i.+ngton could turn to his dear friend Robert Morris for help. He gave his immense means to his country, and died, in comparative poverty, in 1806, aged seventy-three years.

Gouverneur Morris, who wrote the first connected draft of the American Const.i.tution, was a Welshman.

Among those who fought in the Revolution may be found a long list of Welsh by nativity or descent:

GENERALS.

Charles Lee, Isaac Shelby, Anthony Wayne, Morgan Lewis, William R. Davie, Edward Stevens, Richard Winn, Daniel Morgan, John Cadwallader, Andrew Lewis, Otho H. Williams, John Thomas, Joseph Williams, James Reese.

COLONELS.

David Humphreys, Lambert Cadwallader, Richard Howell, Ethan Allen, Henry Lee, Thomas Marshall, James Williams (_killed at Bennington_).

CAPTAINS.

John Marshall (_afterwards Chief Justice_), Isaac Davis, Anthony Morris, Captain Rogers.

Besides these, there was a host of subordinate officers who could claim descent from the Welsh.

In the navy were Commodore Hopkins and others; and at a later period Commodores Rogers, Perry, Jacob Jones, and Ap Catesby Jones.

Dr. John Morgan was Surgeon-in-Chief of the American army, and one of the founders of the Philadelphia Medical School, the first of the kind established in America, and the beginning of the great University. He came from a Welsh family.

Among the divines were Revs. David Jones, Samuel Davie, David Williams, Morgan Edwards, and others. Perhaps the most distinguished of these was Mr. Jones. His ancestors came from Wales, and settled on the ”Welsh Tract” in Delaware county, Pa. He was on a mission among the Shawanese and Delaware Indians in 1772-73. In 1776 he was appointed chaplain to Colonel St. Clair's regiment, and was on duty at Ticonderoga when the enemy was momentarily expected from Crown Point. He delivered a characteristic discourse, which produced a powerful impression upon the troops. When with General Wayne, he saw an English dragoon alight and enter a house for refreshments. The chaplain went to the dragoon's horse, took the pistols from the holsters, went into the house, made him a prisoner, and marched him into camp: Wayne complimented him for his bravery. He was also with General Gates; also at the battles of Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth; with the army at Valley Forge, and in all subsequent campaigns to the surrender of Yorktown by Cornwallis.

At the age of seventy-six he served as chaplain in the War of 1812. He died in February, 1820, aged eighty-four.

Rev. Samuel Davies became President of Princeton College. When Was.h.i.+ngton was colonel, and after Braddock's defeat, Mr. Davies, who was addressing the volunteer company, used this language in allusion to Was.h.i.+ngton: ”I cannot but hope that Providence has. .h.i.therto preserved him in so signal a manner for some important service to his country.”

General Was.h.i.+ngton's family a.s.sociations were with the descendants of the Welsh. His wife, Martha, whom he called, familiarly ”Patsy,” was the grand-daughter of Rev. Orlando Jones, who came to Virginia from Wales.

Colonel Fielding Lewis, of Welsh descent, married Was.h.i.+ngton's sister; and his son, George Was.h.i.+ngton Lewis, was commander of the general's life-guard.

Elihu Yale, the founder of Yale College, Jonathan Edwards, Daniel Webster, Charles Davies the mathematician, and a long array of brilliant men and women who have adorned every station in American society, were of Welsh origin or descent. Mr. Webster, however, was descended only from his mother's side.

Seven Presidents of the United States have descended from the Welsh race,--John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and William Henry Harrison.

Chief-Justice John Marshall, the first to expound the Const.i.tution, was the grandson of a native of Wales; and, as if the office should continue in such a lineage, Chief-Justice Roger B. Taney was sprung from a family descended from the northern part of Wales.

William Penn, founder of the great State of Pennsylvania, Thomas Floyd, the first Governor of the colony, and Anthony Morris, the first mayor of the refined city of Philadelphia, were Welsh.

Oliver Evans, so famous for his inventions in high-pressure engines, by means of which all turbid streams could be successfully navigated, was born of a Welsh family near that city. It was found that the sediment of the water choked up or wore off the sliding-valves of the low-pressure engines. He was the third person who received a patent from the United States--Samuel Hopkins being the first--for his inventions, and concerning which President Jefferson remarked that they were ”too valuable to be covered by a patent, for they were such things that the people could not do without, once they were known.”

Mrs. De Witt Clinton was the daughter of Dr. Thomas Jones, the son of a Welsh physician whose father settled at Jamaica, Long Island, and who was widely known as Dr. John Jones. He was attached to the Revolutionary army as a surgeon, and a personal friend of Was.h.i.+ngton and Franklin. He was one of the founders of the New York Hospital, and a professor in the medical faculty in Columbia College at its inst.i.tution. He was the first successful lithotomist in the country. Mrs. Clinton was his grand-daughter, having Dr. Thomas Jones for her father, and a daughter of Philip Livingston, signer of the Declaration, for her mother. Maturin Livingston, a son of Philip, married a daughter of General Morgan Lewis. Of Mrs. Clinton it has been said that ”she was in every sense a remarkable woman,--not less for her strength of mind than for her n.o.ble good breeding, purity, and polish of manners. She was liberal and frank, and fully appreciated the great mind of her n.o.ble husband; and the harder the storms of personal and political strife blew upon him, the closer her affections twined around him, while she n.o.bly and devoutly cherished his memory to the last.”

Their services, in connection with those of almost every other land, have helped to lay the foundations, deep and broad, of the great American republic, whose majestic proportions are rising higher and still higher, commanding the wonder and admiration of all; but, while the later builders are at work, they will not forget to offer some souvenir in behalf of those who worked so wisely and so well.

The memory of ALL ”smells sweet, and blossoms in the dust.”

CHAPTER XVII.