middle at the approach to the stairway. There are two rooms on each side and the kitchens are in a rear wing. The rooms and hallway are wainscotted in white panels to a chair-rail and there are high beautiful mantels in each room. All have fireplaces with iron firebacks and dark marble facings.

The property has come from its builder to his son, Norton Johnson, and from him to the only descendants, Dr. William N. Johnson and Miss Sallie W. Johnson, the latter living in the house.

INDIAN QUEEN LANE, GERMANTOWN
TURNER-ASHMEAD-HILL-LEE-CRAIG-SMITH

DARLTON is situated on the west side of Indian Queen Lane after crossing Wissahickon Avenue on the outskirts of lower Germantown. It lies upon a portion of a tract of five thousand acres which William Penn deeded to John and Ann Charlotte Lowther, who sold it in 1731 to Joseph Turner, and he in turn to John Ashmead. It next came into the possession of Mr. Henry Hill, during whose ownership were enacted the most interesting events in its history. This was about 1777, and it then consisted of a large tract of land partly in Roxborough and partly in Penn Township, situated upon an elevated plateau of several hundred acres east of the Schuylkill River, bounded on the north by School House Lane, on the east by a road dividing Germantown and Roxborough Townships known as Township Line Road, and sloping sharply on the west to the river. It extended southward from School House Lane on both sides of Indian Queen Lane, termed in early deeds " a road leading from Germantown to Schuylkill Falls alias Robert's Ferry," the house and farm buildings being in Roxborough Township.

Henry Hill, son of Doctor Richard Hill, was born in 1732 on his father's Maryland plantation. He was educated as a merchant and settled in Philadelphia, engaging extensively in the Madeira wine trade, his father having removed to that island in 1739. "Hill's Ma

deira " was widely known as one of the choicest brands in the Philadelphia market. Mr. Hill was justice of the peace in 1772, member of the Carpenters' Hall Conference of the Committee of Safety, 1775, and of the Constitutional Convention of 1776. He was an original member of the First City Troop, commanded a battalion of Associators in 1776, and in 1779 subscribed five thousand pounds to the Pennsylvania Bank, an institution organised for the purchase of provisions for the Continental Army. He was one of the original subscribers to the Bank of North America and a director from 1781 to 1792. From 1780 to 1784 he was a member of the Assembly, and the Executive Council from 1785 to 1788. He was a trustee of the Germantown Academy from 1784 until his death in 1798 and was President of the Board. His town house, which he built, was at the corner of Fourth and Union Streets, now De Lancey. This was in after years the residence of Doctor Philip Syng Physick. He married a daughter of Reese Meredith, whom he survived, and died of yellow fever September 15, 1798, leaving no issue.

It was about Mr. Hill's country house, not then called Carlton, that the Continental Army encamped in 1777 during the first week in August before the Battle of the Brandywine and also for two days in September of that year after the battle. In a letter from Washington to Edward Rutledge, dated Fishkill, October 5, 1778, he says: "In the month of August last year [1777] from the house of Henry Hill, near Germantown, where I was then encamped, I wrote you a long letter."

Lieutenant James McMichael, of the Pennsylvania Line, writes in his diary of the stir they made in the town: