compliments of Peyton Randolph, president of the Congress, and desired Mr. Thomson's immediate attendance at the session just assembling. Taking a hasty leave of his bride, he went at once to discharge his new office. As an amends for her curtailed bridal tour Congress voted Mrs. Thomson a present. It came in the form of a silver urn which has been proudly treasured ever since.

Mr. Thomson filled the secretaryship so ably that he continued to serve Congress in that capacity for fourteen years. During the Revolutionary struggle and the infancy of the young Republic no one had a better opportunity than he to know all the inmost details of all that occurred. He was strongly urged to put all this knowledge of secret history into permanent form. He began the task but saw, as he progressed, that the reputations of so many men, then invested with the halo of patriotism, would be hopelessly blasted that he gave up the undertaking in disgust and burned all his papers.

Charles Thomson continued master of Harriton till his death in 1824, after which the estate descended to Mrs. Levi Morris, a relative of Mrs. Thomson's, from whom it passed in time to the Vaux family, the present possessors.

EASTTOWN TOWNSHIP, CHESTER

WAYNE

AYNESBOROUGH is situated in the Township of Easttown and the County of Chester, within two miles of Paoli and four miles of Valley Forge. It was the countryseat of Captain Isaac Wayne, youngest son of Anthony Wayne who went from Yorkshire, England, to County Wicklow, Ireland, and commanded a troop of dragoons at the battle of the Boyne in the forces of William III. He emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1722 and, after spending two years examining the country, purchased sixteen hundred acres in Chester County and erected his house. There were four sons. Of these Isaac owned and cultivated the five hundred acres in Easttown Township still constituting Waynesborough. He also conducted a tannery and took an active part in the political controversies of the times, serving, too, as captain in the French and Indian War, having raised two companies to fight during 1755, 1757 and 1788. He was a tall, handsome man, of soldierly bearing, blunt in speech after the fashion of those much in garrison life, a good horseman, and a high liver, but temperate. accumulated a large estate and enlarged the house at Waynesborough considerably. It is built of brown irregular stone with white pointing and has a wing at each end. Over the doorway is a hood which is not horizontal. A carpenter who daily passed the house to his work was so disturbed by this hood that he offered to straighten

He

it free of charge, but as it was built that way, Major William Wayne refused. On the right of the hall is the parlour which is to-day in its original condition and just as it was when Lafayette visited the house in 1825. Over the beautiful mantel hang General Anthony Wayne's swords and pistols and sash, just above his portrait. Between the doorway into the parlour and the stairway in the rear of the hall are two folding, latticed doors attached to each wall and, back of these, one passes into what is now the living-room with its huge fireplace, on the one side, and the dining-room on the other. It was once the custom to draw the trunks of trees into the fireplace by means of horses and chains, there being an opening under the windows on each side of the room. Back of the house is a huge box-bush where the British soldiers imagined General Wayne had taken refuge on the night of the Paoli massacre, three miles away. Mrs. Wayne saw them coming down the road and exclaimed, "Here comes the General now," but it was not he. He was too busy with his duty as a soldier in getting his command away in safety and the pursuing redcoats, supposing he might be there in hiding, ran their swords through the old box-bush in vain.

The opponents of the Proprietary interests elected Captain Wayne to the Provincial Assembly several times and he is portrayed as one of the characters in the "Chronicles of Nathan Ben Saddi," 1758, one of the most spirited bits of literature the American Colonies produced. His activity against the Proprietary interests led him into a bitter quarrel with Judge Moore of Moore Hall, an old-time aristocrat and a pet of the Governour.