next child is William, who is intermarried with Emily Owen, and they have two children, T. Howard and Hannah; he is a merchant, and with his family resides in Norristown. The next of the Bean family is Hannah, the wife of James H. Owen, of Cape May; they have one surviving child, Mary, united in marriage to Dr. M. W. Reeves, of New Jersey. The next child is Edwin A., who is married to Elizabeth Hood; they have one child, Wilmer M. The next is Colonel Theodore W., who is intermarried with Hannah, daughter of John Heebner; they have three children, William H., Mary L., and Lane S. Colonel Bean won his military title by gallant service in the cavalry during the late rebellion. Since then his patriotism and public spirit have been conspicuous in active co-operation in the movement to set apart Valley Forge as one of our national shrines. He delivered the historical address at the late centennial celebration held there. He has also written and published a "History of Valley Forge." The youngest of the WeberBean family is Anna L., who is the wife of Dr. Nathaniel Ritter, of Lehigh county; they have children, Ada, Effie, Ervin, Bertha, and Horace.

William Bean, whose family are above recorded, was a very prominent and influential citizen in his day. He was elected in 1841 by Democratic suffrage to the lower house of Assembly, and, according to usage, twice re-elected. He was born in 1788, and died January 29th, 1855, in his sixty-sixth year.

The fourth child of John Weber, the subject of this notice, bore the same name as his father. He was a prominent merchant of Philadelphia for several years, and owned a handsome farm near Jeffersonville, on which he erected a mill propelled by steam, which was afterwards changed to a cloth mill, and is now (1879) owned and operated by J. and J. Shaw & Co. John C. Weber died, a bachelor, on the 19th of September, 1860, aged sixty-one.

The youngest of John Weber's children was Joseph. He was a printer, and lived some years in Boston, Massachusetts, where he married. Subsequently he removed to Clermont, New Hampshire, where he publishes the Northern Advocate. He and his wife have two children, Joseph and Susan.

CHRISTOPHER RITTENHOUSE.

Love labor; for if thou dost not want it for food, thou mayst for physic. It is wholesome for thy body and good for thy mind.-William Penn.

The man who conducts an increasing business for nearly fifty years with quiet industry and steady perseverance, neither growing immensely rich nor becoming poor through time's vicissitudes, must possess qualities to attract at least the attention of the village biographer. Thus, reluctantly on the part of the subject of our notice, we have placed the above name among the noted business men.

Christopher Rittenhouse, son of David and Rachel Rittenhouse, was born in Norriton township, near Norristown, in 1806. His maternal grandfather was William Zimmerman, of the same township. When young he obtained a very limited school education, and at the proper age was apprenticed to Samuel Sloan to learn the wheelwrighting trade. On reaching his twenty-second year he set up business in Roxborough, Philadelphia county, where he remained till 1836, and then removed to Norristown. About this time he was married to Catharine Markle, and soon after began business at Main and Arch streets, where he now has his works. For a number of years he pursued his calling in connection with his brother Henry, who was a blacksmith. A few years later, about 1850, he abandoned the old business, associated with Frederick Gilbert, enlarged the buildings, and went extensively into the manufacture of agricultural machinery. This trade was driven with energy and success till about 1860, when the firm was dissolved, but the business continued by him and his sons. In 1868 another enlargement of the works took place by adding the foundry business, which was only an increased facility to the agricultural branch. By aid of his sons, who have also learned the latter art, he is now engaged in all the lighter descriptions of the foundry business, and doing a large machinery trade generally. Mr. Rittenhouse's horse-powers, threshers, and winnowing machines have been famous for several years. past. The concern is one of the oldest in Norristown.

Christopher and Catharine Rittenhouse have had six children: Mary, intermarried with John C. Snyder, Esq., of Norristown; Charles, George, William, Ella, and Frank. They all reside or work at home except William, who has a family, and . is employed as a machinist at the Pennsylvania Tack Works. The business establishment we have described, as built up by nearly fifty years of patient toil, may possibly descend as a family inheritance to the next generation.

The father of the subject of our notice was probably a cousin of David Rittenhouse, the astronomer and philosopher,. though the relationship is not claimed by Mr. R. The family was German, and the name was originally spelled Rittenhaus. Nearly all the grave-yards in our locality, connected with German sects, contain tomb-stones with this name chiseled upom them.

HON. HENRY P. ROSS, A. B.

Zeno says that a speaker should never let a word come out of his mouth that is not strongly tinctured with sense; so Phocion's oratory contained the most sense in the fewest words.—Plutarch's Life of Phocion.

There are very few, if any, mere civilians in Pennsylvania who have achieved so early in life as distinguished and enduring a reputation as Hon. Henry Pawling Ross, now Judge of the Montgomery county courts. He is the son of Hon. Thomas and Elizabeth Pawling Ross, of Doylestown, Bucks county, where he was born on the 16th of December, 1836. His father was a distinguished lawyer of that county and his mother the daughter of the late Hon. Levi Pawling, of Norristown, whose wife (Judge Ross' grandmother) was the daughter of Hon.. Joseph Hiester, of Reading, formerly Governor of the State. From the particular sketch in hand we turn aside to give a short history of the Ross family and its affiliations.

Its paternal head in this locality was Scotch-Irish, and early settled in eastern Pennsylvania. The first noted ancestor was Thomas Ross, an approved preacher among Friends in Sole

bury, Bucks county, where his son John, who became an eminent lawyer and Judge, was born in 1770. The latter studied law with his cousin, Thomas Ross, of West Chester, and after becoming a member of Congress was in 1818 appointed President Judge of the courts of Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Bucks counties. In 1830, because of his eminent ability, he was transferred by Governor Wolf to the bench of the Supreme Court, which position he held till the time of his death in January, 1834. He had married Mary Jenkins, of Jenkintown, Montgomery county, in 1795, and they had several children, Thomas Ross, the father of Henry P. Ross, being among the number. Thomas Ross, named doubtless after his paternal grandfather, the Quaker preacher, was born in Easton on the 3d of December, 1806. After receiving a good primary education he entered Princeton College, where he graduated with honor in 1825, and soon commenced the study of law under the tuition of his father, then Judge of the counties before stated. In 1829 he was admitted to the bar of Northampton county, but soon after removed to Doylestown, where in 1830 he was commissioned commonwealth's attorney by Hon. Philip S. Markley, then Attorney General of the State. While he held that post it was his duty to prosecute the ChapmanMina murder case, securing the conviction and execution of the Spaniard. The notoriety of that trial, and other law proceedings in which he soon engaged, gave him a high reputation as a lawyer, and he was put forward in 1848 as the Democratic candidate for Congress in the Sixth district, was elected, and returned the next term (1850-52). He died July 1st, 1865, in his fifty-ninth year.

Henry P. Ross' maternal ancestors are of English and German descent, and he derives his given name from his distinguished uncle, Dr. Henry D. W. Pawling, of King-of-Prussia. After receiving the usual elementary training, he entered Princeton College in 1853, and graduated in 1857, receiving the degree of Bachelor of Arts. Soon after completing a college course, having doubtless an aptitude for legal studies, inherited through two generations, he entered the office of his father to read law and enter upon the now family profession. He was

admitted December 16th, 1859. In 1862 he was taken up by the Democracy of his native county for District Attorney and elected, serving three years with great fidelity and efficiency. In 1864 and 1866 he was brought forward for Congress in like manner by his political friends in Bucks county, but not elected. In June, 1865, he was married to Mary Clifton, an accomplished young lady of Princeton, New Jersey. She died November 26th, 1873, leaving one surviving daughter. In 1864 and 1868 he represented in part the Democrats of the Sixth district in the national Presidential convention. In 1865 he was appointed Deputy Escheator General for Bucks county, and in 1869 elected Additional Law Judge for the Seventh district, composed of Bucks and Montgomery. Shortly after, the two counties being erected into separate districts, Judge Ross resigned the joint position in 1871, and was elected President Judge of the courts of Montgomery alone, which post he now fills. In 1875 he was married to Emily Genung, of Brooklyn, New York.

His eminent qualities as a Judge early drew public attention to him as a suitable incumbent for the bench of the Supreme Court, and at the Democratic convention in 1874 he was next to the highest candidate before it for that office. At the State convention at Erie in 1876 he was a very prominent candidate for Governor, coming very near a nomination. In 1878 public sentiment early began to manifest itself through the Democratic press of the State in favor of Judge Ross for the vacant seat on the Supreme bench. Accordingly the convention that met at Pittsburg in May nominated him for the place on the first ballot, and although he was not elected, owing to the divided state of parties, his vote in Bucks and Montgomery, where he is personally well known, was very complimentary, as the following figures show: In Montgomery-Dill, for Governor, 9164; Ross, for Supreme Judge, 9441; Ross ahead of Dill, 277 votes. So in Bucks county: Dill, 7552; Ross, 7827; the latter in advance of the former 275 votes. He thus led his ticket in the two home counties by five hundred and fifty-two

votes.

He is claimed as one of the founders of the English and clas