whom many of the present family now living in Montgomery county are descended. It seems nearly incredible, and yet is authoritatively stated, that he made a wooden clock, untaught, so early as his eighteenth year, and presently built a workshop at his father's place and began the business of a clockmaker soon after. Not only did he master that art, but soon began to manufacture planetariums, for one of which, made for Princeton College, he received three hundred pounds. He had an observatory on the eminence above Providence Presbyterian Church, a locality which afforded a sweep of the heavens east and west of near fifty miles, and north and south half the distance. Here he and Franklin, who was a frequent visitor, studied astronomy, electricity and kindred subjects. "So industrious was he that with the aid of three or four books, before his twenty-fifth year, he was able to read the Principia of Newton in Latin, and it is asserted that he discovered the method of fluxions, usually attributed to Newton or Leibnitz." * In 1764 his father moved to another farm, giving the homestead to David, who, on the 20th of February, 1766, married Ellanor Coulston, daughter of Bernard Coulston, a farmer of the neighborhood, of which name there are many respectable families still residing in our county. He shortly after made at this place the celebrated orrery for Princeton College, before referred to, which was probably the first machine ever constructed in America to illustrate the motions of the orbs of the solar system. Dr. Gordon, who wrote in 1790, says there is not the like of it in Europe." I quote again from Buck: "In 1769 Rittenhouse was named one of the committee appointed by the American Philosophical Society to observe the transit of Venus over the sun's disk, which happened June 3d, of that year. His assistants were Rev. Dr. Wm. Smith, the Provost of the University, John Luken, SurGeneral of Pennsylvania, John Taylor, also a surveyor veyor and member of the Assembly from Chester county." From the date just named till the close of the Revolutionary war, he was frequently employed with others to settle boundary *Buck's History of Montgomery County. lines between neighboring States, and in 1770 he removed to Philadelphia. He held the office of Treasurer of the State from 1777 to 1789; and some dispute or question of liability between him as an officer of the State and the National government, led to suits being instituted against Elizabeth Sergeant and Esther Waters, executors of his estate, by a certain man named Gideon Omstead. These executors came before our Legislature several years after, praying for relief, as appears on the records of the executive department of the State. Rittenhouse, whose fame had become continental, as also world-wide, was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, at Boston, in 1782, and of the Royal Society of London, in 1795. He succeeded Dr. Franklin as President of the Philosophical Society, and held the office till his death in 1796. At the founding of the mint, he was appointed a director, but resigned in 1795 on account of ill health. His death, which occurred on the 26th of June of that year, terminated his useful life in his 64th year, and his remains lie buried in the cemetery of the Pine Street Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, and Dr. Benjamin Rush, by order of the Philosophical Society, pronounced an eulogium on his life and virtues, which has been published among its transactions. David Rittenhouse's fame abroad is that of a mathematician and astronomer; but at home he was more known as the great clockmaker, there being quite a number of his fabrication still in use in our county. CHARLES THOMSON. The above is one of the classic names of American history. The Secretary of nearly all the sessions of our Revolutionary Congress is so well known to everybody that it is hardly needful to write more of him than to state that he was born in Ireland in 1730, came over in 1741, enjoyed the confidence of all the "fathers," and lived in Lower Merion, where he died in 1824, at the age of 96. His remains were first interred at the Presbyterian grave yard near his residence, but afterwards removed to Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia. His life and part in the American Revolution is one of the earliest illustrations of the trueness of the Irish heart to the mandates of liberty as further shown through all our history; and that he should have held the one post of difficulty through all our struggle is the highest eulogy upon his integrity, zeal and fitness for the post. WILLIAM MOORE SMITH, [Contributed by Wm. J. Buck.] Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age, like as a shock of corn cometh in his season.-Job v, 26. The father of the subject of this notice was William Smith, a native of Aberdeen, Scotland, where he graduated at the University in 1747, and three years later came to America. He was considered one of the most accomplished scholars of Philadelphia, and it was through his exertions that the University there owes its origin, and he was elected its first Provost. He was early admitted to the ministry of the Episcopal Church, and of which he was a pastor for many years. He married Rebecca, daughter of William Moore, of Moore Hall, in Chester county, who was a descendant of Sir John Moore, of England. His eldest son, William Moore Smith, was born in Philadelphia, June 1st, 1759, and completed his studies at the college over which his father presided with such credit and usefulness. He studied law, which profession he followed with honor, profit and success. It appears he had inherited a taste for letters, for he was early distinguished for the extent and variety of his acquirements. In 1785 he collected twenty-five of his fugitive pieces and had them published under the title of " Poems on Several Occasions, Written in Pennsylvania," which were re-published the following year in London, by C. Dilly, in an octavo of 106 pages, and in Baltimore in 1804. These poems are not without merit and local interest, for in several of them he mentions the Schuylkill and fixes incidents on its banks. At the time that Montgomery county was formed from Philadelphia, the land where is now Norristown chiefly belonged to the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania, to whom it had been transferred by the Rev. Dr. Smith, the Provost. His son, William Moore Smith, however, became the final owner under certain reservations to that institution, and has the honor of having first laid it out as the town of Norris" into streets and lots. There were in all, in 1785, sixty-four town lots, bounded on the north by Airy street, east by Green alley, south by Lafayette street, and west by Cherry. This may be considered the original size of the town, which probably then did not contain eight dwellings. During his residence at Norristown, John Brown, a notorious offender, was executed for burglary on the 12th of April, 1788, of which he wrote a full account dated the following 5th of May, which was published in the Pennsylvania Archives. Near the close of the century he became general agent for British claims in America, provided for in the sixth article of Jay's Treaty, and in consequence visited England in 1803 to close his commission. After his return he retired from his professional practice to a residence near Philadelphia, where he died the 12th of March, 1821. His remains were interred by the side of his father in Laurel Hill Cemetery. Two sons survived him, William R. and Richard Penn Smith. The former was born in Montgomery county, August 31st, 1787, and became distinguished. He had accompanied his father as his private secretary to England, and in 1837 removed to Wisconsin, where the following year he published a work entitled "Observations on Wisconsin Territory," afterwards succeeded by a "History of Wisconsin," in four volumes, octavo. In 1853 he became Attorney General, and was also for many years President of the State Historical Society there. He died at Quincy, Illinois, August 29th, 1868. Richard Penn Smith was a noted literary man about the commencement of the present century, and lived in a fancy mansion at Schuylkill Falls. THE MUHLENBERGS.* Patriots have toiled in their country's cause- Montgomery county was fortunate in securing early in the past century the settlement of one of the most eminent Lutheran clergymen that ever Germany sent to the United States. The Rev. Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, the founder of the family, was born at Eimbeck, in Hanover, September, 1711. Entering the University of Gottingen in 1735, he passed to the theological school in 1737, and after graduating there went to the famous University of Halle; after perfecting himself in his studies there he was ordained to preach the gospel, and soon after started for America, where the want of a regularly educated Lutheran ministry was greatly felt. Accordingly, he set sail and landed in this country in 1742; came to Philadelphia and found a congregation gathered there, one at Trappe, and another at Swamp or New Hanover. He pushed into the country, and soon found it necessary to build churches for the small congregations already gathered. The Swamp people had a small log house of worship, but the Trappe congregation had none; but one was built the next year, 1743, which still stands a monument of the liberality of that rude age. Here, and at New Hanover, and Philadelphia, Muhlenberg gathered the scattered German emigrants, who had begun to throng into Eastern Pennsylvania about that time, and he broke to them the bread of life in their mother tongue. Two years after building the Trappe church he married Anna Maria, daughter of Col. Conrad Weiser, the celebrated Indian interpreter, taking up his residence at Trappe. Here there were born to him the following noted children: Peter, Frederick Augustus and Henry Ernst, who were all noted clergymen or civilians; also, Mary, intermarried with General Francis Swayne. Another daughter married Rev. John Shulze, and became the mother *For the material facts of the Muhlenberg family we are indebted to Buck's History of Montgomery County, 1859. |