THANKS

THE FIRST NEW ENGLAND GIVING-In July, 1630, several hundred English-men, women, and childrenwere trying to live in huts and tents on or around the town hill in Charlestown (Massachusetts). They had recently escaped discomforts on the sea for privations on shore. Seven small vessels that had brought them from kindred and former homes lay in the river. Forests and wild lands, where there were men as wild, spread inland. There were no mines or great extents of fertile land, and there were few to welcome or to help them. Nearly all the inhabitants were Indians, so called. Along the coasts of what we name New England there were only scanty groups of countrymen in Maine perhaps five hundred persons; in Rhode Island and Connecticut were none; in Massachusetts were a few, but little more than those at Salem, Beverly, and Lynn, at Dorchester and Plymouth; there was one man on the neighboring peninsula of Boston, and on Noddle's Island, Samuel Maverick. July 8, 1630, they kept a public day of thanksgiving for their arrival, a day observed through all the plantation; one that might be called the first great New England Thanksgiving, and observed upon Town

Hill by probably the largest number of English that had yet been gathered on New England ground.-James F. Hunnewell's Century of Town Life.

WEATHERSFIELD BOW-In the appendix to Everett P. Wheeler's interesting little. monograph on "Sir William Pepperrell," we find the following: "Weathersfield Bow was one of those curious hamlets, common before the days of railroads, of which few now remain. The little village was almost sufficient to itself. The flocks and herds of the farmers provided them with meat; the skins were tanned in the village tannery, and made into shoes and boots by the village shoemaker; the wool of the sheep was spun and woven by the village housewives on hand-looms, and made by the village tailors into garments; the maple trees supplied sugar; the candles were tallow dips made from the fat of the cattle that had been slaughtered by the village. butcher; the wheat raised on the meadows was ground in the village grist-mill; and the houses were built from their own tall pines. When the railroad from Boston reached the opposite side of the river in 1849, all these local industries vanished, and the neighborhood became exclusively agricultural."

Editor of Magazine of American History: In Vol. V., page 446, of your magazine you make reference to The Saint Mémin Portraits," and suggest the publication of reproductions from the

copper plates; which I am sorry to see you have not been able to continue.

The Corcoran Gallery of Art possesses one of the two copies left by St. Mémin of his collection of engraved portraits,

"All choice proofs of his own selection," 819 in number. He wrote the names with his own hand beneath the portraits. An interesting little circular has been published by the gallery, which gives an account of the life and artistic career of St. Mémin. It states that he left France in 1790 an account of the revolutionthat he began his artistic career by taking views of New York, beautifully tinted, and his success led him to taking life size crayon portraits, in profile, on paper of a pinkish color. He invented a machine to do this with greater accuracy, and another to reduce the portraits to a small size for engraving."

There is in this city, in the possession of descendants, a life size crayon portrait, in profile, on paper of a pinkish color, of Capt. John G. Clark, who was in Paris about 1801 to 1803. They have also a reduced copy engraved after the style of St. Mémin. This reduced copy bears the following inscription: "Dess. p. "Dess. p. Fournier gr. p. Chrétien inv. du physionotrace rue honoré vis-a-vis l'oratoire Nos 45 et 133 à Paris."

Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, New Edition, thoroughly revised, edited by Robert Edmund Graves of the British Museum, London: George Bell and Sons, York Street, Covent Garden (Part 1, January, 1884), Part 3, has :

"Chrétien, Gilles Louis, a French musician, was born at Versailles in 1754. In 1787 he invented a machine called a 'physionotrace' with which he took portraits in profile from life, which were reduced to silhouettes, usually by Fouquet, and then engraved in aquatint by himself, L'Incorruptible Robespierre,'

ELIZABETH CANNING-In the Gentlemen's Magazine (Vol. XXIV.) we read: "This morning, May 30, 1754, Elizabeth Canning was brought to the Old Bailey to receive her sentence, one month imprisonment, and transportation for seven years;" further, July 31, Elizabeth Canning is ordered to be transported to some one of his Majesty's American colonies, and has been delivered to the merchant who contracted with the court, to be transported accordingly. In the Annual Register for 1761 (p. 179) there is this statement: Elizabeth Canning has arrived in England, and has received a legacy of £500 left her three years ago by an old lady in Newington Green.

For a half-century before the Revolution felons-convict were transported to America every year and almost every month. Their names are known or can be easily ascertained, but the place of their landing is seldom specified. Elizabeth Canning is one who was brought to New England. She returned there after obtaining her legacy. Her death was at Wethersfield in Connecticut in 1773. She had married Mr. Treat or a man of a name sounding like that. (Gentlemen's Magazine, Vol. LXXXIII. 2nd, p. 337.)

It will throw light on dark passages in our annals if some one-writing either to me, or to the Magazine of American History, will answer any or all of the following questions:

1. What sort of contracts were made for the transportation of convicts?

2. In what vessel did Elizabeth Canning come to New England?

3. How many other convicts came in the same ship?

4. What became of any of them?

5. What was the true and full name of her husband?

6. Was her marriage before the term of her transportation had expired?

7. Were transports a sort of white slaves? or what was their condition? JAMES D. BUTLER

MADISON, WISCONSIN.

PORTRAIT OF NATHANIEL PENDLETON Editor of Magazine of American History: May I ask through the pages of your publication if there is any likeness known to exist of Nathaniel Pendleton, who served upon the staff of General Greene in the Revolution, and was the second of Hamilton in the celebrated duel? C. P.

PHILADELPHIA.

Editor of the Magazine of American History: Will you or some of your readers kindly inform me as to the perLeaming or Leming of Connecticut, a sonal history and ancestry of Rev. Dr. member of the Church of England and a great Tory during the Revolution? He was known as "Bishop" Leaming. H. P. R.

ALBANY, Apr. 6th, '88.

THE MILITIA OF NEW JERSEY IN THE REVOLUTION [xix. 340]-The following letter written by Governor Livingston of New Jersey to Baron Steuben will be of interest in connection with the note on the Militia of New Jersey printed in the April number. It is copied from Yale in the Revolution, by Prof. Henry P. Johnston, page 120.

Raritan, 21st June, 1780. Dr. Baron :-I met your favor of yesterday on the road on my return from the Assembly. They have passed a more rigorous law for reducing the militia to military discipline; and the law for filling up our Brigade, I hope will also speedily have its effect. But it must be confessed that we are always too late

and generally begin to think of providing our quota when we ought to open the campaign. I am sorry to hear that our militia quit their posts before the expiration of their time. It is indeed enough to exhaust the patience of any officer who has the direction of them. But, my dear sir, there is a kind of passive as well as active fortitude that we must exercise on these occasions, General Washington, who has exhibited a thousand instances of that kind of suffering heroism, ought to animate us by all his illustrious example. Think not, my dear Baron, of resigning your present command; tho' in one sense an officer is in danger of reaping not but disgrace by commanding such a disorderly band; yet when it is duly considered how disorderly