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he enlisted in the 9th Regiment, New York S. M. and was immdediately summoned to Washington, where his company (K) was equipped as a light battery. This command so distinguished itself by gallant and conspicuous service during the Peninsular Campaign, that the government conferred the rank of horse battery, and from the date of this change until the close of the war, the 6th Independent New York Horse Battery was the only volunteer command of its kind in the United States Army. The company first served under General Pattison, in Virginia, and was praised for its conduct at Harper's Ferry and Balls Bluff. From the command of General Pattison the battery passed under the control of General Hooker, and at Chancellorsville they were largely given the credit of saving the day, as it was this battery which checked, and finally stopped the onslaught of Stonewall Jackson, after breaking through the lines of the 11th and 12th Corps. The gallant New Yorkers received the personal thanks of the generals on the field of battle at the close of this most eventful day. Again at the battle of Malvern Hill, the first great artillery duel of the war, the New York Battery received additional honors. The first gun from the land forces in this fight was fired by George Browne's order, received through General Griffin. The discipline and heroic services of the battery caused it to be constantly employed in hazardous and danger

ous enterprises, and it was finally placed at the disposal of the gallant and intrepid Sheridan. It shared the dangers, marches, and fatigues of the campaign of the Wilderness, as well as that final and masterly maneuvre which terminated the great war. George Browne had enlisted as a private among the heroic band of men. He rose to be senior first lieutenant, commanding the battery at Kelly's Fort, the first great cavalry battle of the war. Several times he was offered a higher command, but preferred a subordinate rank in the veteran troop which had become so famous.

Just previous to the surrender of Lee, George Browne resigned his command and returned to civilian life, settling down to the ways of peace, and became a clerk with the banking firm of H. A. Stone & Son, of New York. Within a year he was

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member of the New York Exchange, and for years continued to share in the success and reverses of the Wall street folk. In 1873 he married, but had not as yet laid the foundation of his fortune. All good things seemed to come to him with his charming wife, Ella Haskell, second daughter of Leonidas Haskell, an early pioneer in California and native of Gloucester, Massachusetts, the fruits of the happy union being three sons. Early in 1882 George Browne retired from active business, having acquired an independent fortune, and resolved to travel. In May, 1882, he, with his family, visited England, Bel

gium and Holland, and in the winter of the same year took up his abode at Florence, Italy, visiting every point of interest in Italy. In 1883, they visited Paris, where they remained until 1885. Then removing to Dresden, a year's residence in Germany ended their sojourn in Europe, and their return to America was that their sons might have the benefits of American schooling. Immediately on returning to America George Browne accompanied the officers of the Northern Pacific Railroad on the yearly inspection of the road, and during his tour Mr. Browne made his first investment in the northwest, and at Tacoma. These purchases which he made in 1886 had increased in value so rapidly that with the contemplated improvements it became necessary for him to reside in Tacoma and give his personal attention. to the work. It was during a second visit that he became acquainted with Col. C. W. Griggs and Henry Hewitt, Jr., and that the great corporation of the St. Paul & Tacoma Lumber Company was formed.

Mr. Browne became secretary of the Company. Subsequently he was called to the presidency of the Tacoma Smelting and Refining Company, and one of the guiding spirits in every new and noble enterprise for

the city of Tacoma. He built the first suburban street car line, of which he was president.

Mr. Browne is a Republican in politics, and in 1889 was returned to the first State legislature as a representative from Tacoma. He was made chairman of one of the most important committees of the Housethat of the Tide Lands, and the satisfactory settlement of the question was, in a great measure, due to his tact, forbearance and business ability. Mr. Browne is still in the very prime of life, and is equally popular with the proletaire and with the literary, legal and financial circles. The hospitality of his house is worthy of the owner, and reminds the visitor of those courteous days that existed prior to the deluge of modern ideas. that have inundated the world.

It is unquestionably a pleasure to enjoy the characteristic, ardent greeting with which he meets his friends; the warm smile, the genial manners and address win at once. He is a happy man, and his best characteristic is that his whole being seems bent. on making others happy; his home in the "City of Destiny," is but an outward expression of his inward tastes and feelings.

P. A. O'FARRELL.

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ONE of the great storehouses of information in regard to the early settlement of this country, and the customs, habits and laws which prevailed, and the changes, vicissitudes, gradual expansion and development of an infant colony into a great and powerful commonwealth, is found in Hening's Statutes at Large of the State of Virginia. This storehouse, which has been so industriously ransacked and explored by the historian, the novelist and the jurist, still remains unexhausted, and teems with matters of the greatest interest.

Almost everything that has been written concerning the early settlements along the Atlantic, and especially of the adventurers who first took up their abode in Virginia, consists of a mere generalization, a chronicle of events in their order, but omits the thrilling incidents which a personal narrative would supply; which, if extended to the details of the plantation and embraced its laws, customs, habits, struggles and privations, would furnish a story the most marvelous and touching in the annals of the human race, a story abounding with all that is wild and wonderful, with all that is pathetic and animating.

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Bancroft, Robertson, Hildreth, Bryant, and all other historians, have given us distant but general views of the countries and States of which they treat, but it requires a microscope to bring out the whole truth.

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History has its foreground and its background, and it is principally in the management of its perspective. that one artist differs from another. Some events must be represented on a large scale, others diminished, the great majority will be lost in the dimness of the horizon, and a general idea of their joint effect will be given. by a few slight sketches."

The more incongruous the facts, the more they interest us in searching for their connection. We turn over the leaves of some old volumes of laws and find that statutes were passed about supplying ammunition to protect the community against hostile savages, against planting seeds in spring and gathering crops in autumn, about establishing a and founding a college, about punishing crimes and misdemeanors, and we smile at the minutia indulged in and the quaint language employed, and we fall to wondering at the wisdom and necessity of those laws; but we

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see in these things the development of a State. We read between the lines and fill out the narrative for ourselves. It is like an outline scrawled with a pen which seizes the marked features of a countenance and gives us a stronger idea of it than a bad painting in oils. Hening's statutes are outlines scrawled with a pen, but they exhibit the real facts in regard to the early settlement of Virginia in a much more striking manner than either Bancroft or any other historian has ever done.

Commencing with the first charter or letters patent which James I. issued to Sir Thomas Gates, Sir George Somers, and others in 1606, for two several colonies and plantations, to be made in Virginia and other parts and territories of America, and which was followed in 1609 by the organization of the Great London Company with the right, power and control over a vast and unknown region extending four hundred miles along the coast, two hundred miles north and two hundred miles south, reckoning from the starting point, extending three hundred leagues to sea, and thence westward to the Pacific Ocean; and coming down to the time within the memory of men still living, there will be found rich treasures of information, “relative to the state of society among the first settlers, their religi ous intolerance, the rise, progress and establishment of our civil institutions; and generally such political events as afford a lesson to posterity, of some

thing worthy to be imitated and something to be shunned."

Thomas Jefferson was, at a very early period in life, struck with the. importance of collecting all the charters and laws of Virginia relating to the early settlement of that plantation, and used all of his influence to have them collected, printed and published in consecutive order for the use of subsequent generations. He himself made a collection of all the early laws, which he arranged and indexed with his own hand, and in 1807, when he became President, turned them all over to W. W. Hening, who was authorized to publish all the charters and laws on the plan proposed by him years before. Mr. Hening, in giving an account of how the early laws came to be published, and of Jefferson's connection with the same, among other things, says: With men of liberal and large minds, it had long been a subject of serious regret that no legislative means were adopted for the preservation of our ancient laws so very essential to a correct view of our history, and on which so much property depended. The evil began to be so sensibly felt, as it respected questions of property, that the legislature, at the session of 1795, passed an act directing that all the laws and classes of laws, whether public or private, relating to lands, tenements or hereditaments within this commonwealth, at any time passed since the first settlement of Virginia, should be collected, and an edition of one thou

sand copies published. A committee consisting of George Wythe, John Brown, John Marshall, Bushrod Washington and John Wickham, was appointed, who, or any three of whom, were requested to carry the intention. of the legislature into effect.

Thomas Jefferson had long before this time made a most complete collection of all the laws that had ever been passed, and on the appointment of this committee, Judge Wythe addressed him a letter upon the subject, and he immediately placed all of the printed statutes which were in his possession at the disposal of the committee, and soon after, in a letter addressed to Mr. Wythe, dated Monticello, January 16th, 1795, explained how he came to make the collection, and his motives for so doing, which is so interesting in its character that we have copied it entire, and is as follows:

Monticello, Jan. 16, 1795.

In my letter which accompanied the box containing my collection of printed laws, I promised to send you by post a statement of the contents of that box.

On taking up the subject, I found it better to take a more general review of the whole of the laws I possess, as well manuscript as printed, as also of those which I do not possess, and suppose to be no longer extant. This general view you will have in the inclosed paper, whereof the articles stated to be printed constitute the contents of the box I sent you.

Those in MSS. were not sent, because not supposed to have been within your view, and because some of them will not bear removal, being so rotten that on turning over a leaf it sometimes falls into powder. These I preserve by wrapping and sewing them up in oiled cloth, so that neither air nor moisture can have access to them. Very early in the course of my researches into the laws of Virginia, I observed that many of them were already lost, and many more on the point of being lost, as existing only in single copies in the hands of careful or curious individuals, on whose death they would probably be used for waste paper. I set myself, therefore, to work to collect all which were then existing, in order that when the day should come in which the public should advert to the magnitude of their loss in these precious monuments of our prosperity and our history, a part of the regret might be spared by information that a portion has been saved from the wreck, which is worthy of their attention and preservation. In searching after these remains I spared neither time, trouble nor expense, and am of opinnion that scarcely any law escaped me which was in being as late as the year 1770, in the middle or southern part of the State. In the northern part, perhaps, something might still be found in the clerks' offices in the ancient counties, some of whose manuscript copies of the laws may possibly still exist which used to be

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