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 207 
 
 .K74S7 MERAL 
 
 -™JMRY 
 KNOX 
 
 I 'S FAMILY 
 
 HiS MANOR 
 
 HIS MANOR HOUSE 
 
 AND HIS GUESTS 
 
 
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 ERAL HENRY_KNOX 
 
 
 HJ_S_JlAj>1_Lk-Y 
 HM_S MANOR 
 
 HISJVIAT^^ 
 
 AND HIS GUESTS 
 
 A PAPER READ BEFORE THE 12MO CLUB. ROCKLAND. MAINE 
 
 MARCH 3. 1902 
 
 BY LEWIS FREDERICK STARRETT 
 
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 ROCKLAND, MAINE 
 
 PUBLISHED BY HUSTON'S BOOKSTORE 
 
 1902 
 
 S 3 1 ^ I 
 
BOOKS AND ARTICLES CONSULTED IN 
 PREPARATION. 
 
 Eaton's Histories of Thomaston and 
 Warren. 
 
 Henry Knox. By Francis S. Drake. Roston, 
 1873. The materials in this book are stated to 
 have been mainly derived from the original 
 letters and papers in possession of the N. E. 
 Historic al and Genealogical Society to which 
 they were presented by Admiral Henry K. 
 Thatcher, Knox's grandson, and which All 56 
 large portfolios. 
 
 Henry Knox. By Noah Brooks. New York, 
 1900. 
 
 Article by Joseph W. Porter, of Bangor, in 
 the Bangor Historical Magazine, first quarterly 
 number, 1890.— " Memoir Gen. Henry Knox." 
 In connection with this article is published 
 the full text of the funeral address delivered 
 by Hon. Samuel Thatcher of Warren; also of 
 Gen. Knox's will. 
 
 Williamson's History of Maine. 
 
 Article " Louis Philippe in the United 
 States." by Jane Marsh Parker, in the Century 
 for September, 1901. 
 
 Hawthorne's American Note Books. Vol.1. 
 
 The Knox House. By Mary P. Thacher, 
 (Now Mrs. Higginson.) 
 
 The Cyclopedias. 
 
 For the two poems included I am indebted 
 to Mrs. Catherine P. Fowler of Poughkeepsie, 
 N. Y„ great-grand-daughter of Gen. Knox. 
 
Major General Henry Knox 
 
 From the portrait bj Gilbert Stuart. This portrait, which hung "n the walls 
 .it "Montpelier," "ii the disposal of the effects passer) into possession of the 
 citj "i Boston and i" mm in the Museum <>(' Fine Art". The mutilation of 
 Knox's left band Iscleverlj concealed hj the artist. 
 
GENERAL HENRY KNOX 
 
 THE ambition to be a large land- 
 ed proprietor is one which has 
 had a great fascination for men 
 of affairs. When it has been 
 gratified perhaps the gratifica- 
 tion has afforded as much pleasure as 
 has resulted from the gratification of 
 ambitions generally, but it has made 
 its possessor its victim often enough to 
 have originated a significant compound 
 word — land-poor. Perhaps to nobody 
 in Maine, did this word ever apply bet- 
 ter than to the great man who when he 
 lived here was easily the most distin- 
 guished citizen in the district which 
 was to be the state; and who gave his 
 name to the county in which we live. 
 
 Doubtless Knox would have been 
 happier in the years that followed his 
 retirement from public to private life, 
 if the ambition of which I speak had 
 let him, or he had let it, alone, but in 
 that case, doubtless also, he would not 
 have been our General Knox. 
 
 "We can conceive one reason why this 
 ambition appealed to the mind of Knox. 
 We know that when he married into 
 the family of the secretary of the royal 
 governor of His Majesty's province of 
 Massachusetts, the alliance was an ex- 
 ceedingly distasteful one to that fam- 
 ily. This same secretary was at the 
 time of the marriage, partly in his 
 wife's but to twice as great an extent 
 in his own right, owner of a controlling 
 interest in a tract of land larger than 
 some of the principalities of Europe. It 
 was unexplored land to be sure, and 
 probably neither he nor his had ever 
 seen any of it, but its importance in 
 the family tradition, was very likely 
 not lessened for that reason. When the 
 irony of fate made it possible for the 
 interloper to acquire the sole proprie- 
 torship of this same manor, we can 
 conceive that he may have had enough 
 of human nature in his composition to 
 have felt a certain satisfaction in the 
 acquisition. 
 
 General Waldo and the Waldo Patent 
 
 If without the Waldo Patent we 
 should not have had Knox, it is worth 
 our while to consider how the patent 
 came to be. 
 
 In 1620, the great Plymouth Compa- 
 ny which had chartered the pilgrim 
 colony which took its name, granted to 
 Thomas Leverett of Boston, England, 
 and to John Beauchamp of London, 
 Gentlemen, something over half a mil- 
 lion acres of land. The exact bounda- 
 
 ries are uncertain but it is certain that 
 we are on one of the acres. It is doubt- 
 ful whether Beauchamp even crossed 
 the ocean but his name got dropped on 
 a pretty point we know of where it has 
 stayed. Leverett got as near as Bos- 
 ton and his name was dropped on an- 
 other pretty point, but not so firmly but 
 that w T hen Jameson settled there it 
 came to be called Jameson's Point, by 
 which name it was known until a few 
 
IO 
 
 General Henry Knox 
 
 years ago we rechristened it Bay Point. 
 Leverett would not have been a bad 
 name for the point to have kept, for it 
 would have preserved to us the name 
 of one of the original patentees, and of 
 his grandson who was president of 
 Harvard, to whom the patent descend- 
 ed. Once during my incumbency of the 
 clerkship of the courts, a party to a 
 law suit started his title with this old 
 grant to Beauchamp and Leverett, and 
 in preparing the case for the Law 
 Court it was enjoined upon me to see 
 that it was represented in all the 
 quaintness of its spelling and verbiage. 
 A century after the grant was made 
 its validity was questioned, and, if 
 valid, there was more or less doubt as 
 to the land covered by it. It was not 
 the only patent of royal granting at 
 first, second or third hand, and where 
 lands were parcelled out in tracts, 
 measuring hundreds of miles on a side, 
 and no one concerned had been within 
 a thousand miles of the location it is 
 not strange that there should have 
 been conflict of claim. Jonathan Wal- 
 do, a Boston merchant, had acquired 
 an interest in the patent. He had a 
 son named Samuel, then a little rising 
 thirty years of age, the type of man to- 
 day called a hustler. This son got the 
 proprietors to make him their agent, 
 went to London, interviewed the great 
 ones, and made so good an impression 
 that he got the patent confirmed and 
 its bounds somewhat definitely denned. 
 His associates were so well pleased 
 with his success that he acquired the 
 title to most of the patent, and with 
 the exception of the territory now cov- 
 ered by the towns of Camden, Rock- 
 port, Hope and Appleton, which he set 
 off to his associates, he had all the ti- 
 tle that royal authority could give to 
 the land between Penobscot and Mus- 
 congus Bays on the shore, keeping its 
 
 width to a not clearly defined line 
 somewhere near where Bangor now 
 stands. Henceforth the words Mus- 
 congus and Lincolnshire as applied to 
 the patent (the latter given because 
 Leverett was a Lincolnshire man) were 
 dropped, and we read of the Waldo Pa- 
 tent. Mrs. Knox was the granddaugh- 
 ter of Samuel Waldo. 
 
 The facts so far related I get main- 
 ly from Eaton. He was exceedingly 
 careful and painstaking in the verifi- 
 cation of his statements. Years before 
 he wrote his histories he commenced 
 the collection of his material. When a 
 representative from Warren to the leg- 
 islature at Boston, which he was at 
 several different times, he improved 
 the opportunity to examine all access- 
 ible records, he was able to command 
 in his researches the services of his 
 friend, Sibley, the librarian of Har- 
 vard, with whom he corresponded as 
 long as he lived, and he was painstak- 
 ing and discriminating in preserving 
 the local testimony and traditions. Ev- 
 erybody who has written on Knox has 
 availed himself of the results of 
 his labors, appropriating the best of 
 his anecdotes, and some have given 
 him more or less credit, referring tohim 
 with a bit of patronage as "a 
 local historian," "the quaint old town 
 historian," or some such phrase. Mr. 
 Brooks has placed all lovers of Knox's 
 memory under large obligation for 
 what he has done to throw new light 
 on his career, and for reproducing 
 the valuable portraits and other illus- 
 trations not easily accessible, but it is 
 a little difficult to forgive him, with 
 Eaton's work at his hand, for so gross- 
 ly misstating the history of the pa- 
 tent. 
 
 He states (page 234) that Waldo 
 was in command of the forces raised 
 by Massachusetts for the reduction of 
 
General Henry Knox 
 
 ii 
 
 Louisburg in 1745, and prayed the king 
 for a grant of wild land in payment of 
 his services, which grant, not made in 
 his lifetime, was issued to his heirs 
 after his death and was the Waldo Pa- 
 tent. He might have found in Eaton's 
 Thomaston, Vol.1, Page 45, a full record 
 of a deed granted by Waldo out of the 
 patent ten years before Louisburg 
 was taken. Waldo's name is men- 
 tioned in connection with the expedi- 
 tion by Williamson and Eaton, but in 
 no other account of it which I have 
 read. The reason undoubtedly is that 
 they were treating of Maine matters, 
 and Waldo was the commander of the 
 Maine contingent, not, as Brooks seems 
 to have supposed, of the whole body of 
 Massachusetts troops which comprised 
 five-sixths of the whole force. He 
 doubtless served honorably, though 
 without previous military training, and 
 at least he gained from the expedition 
 his military title. 
 
 We of this locality have especial rea- 
 son to remember the name of Waldo, 
 from the fact of his having been the 
 first burner of lime in this vicinity, as 
 well as from the influence which he 
 had upon the settlement of south-cen- 
 tral Maine. For the last eighteen years 
 of his life his whole endeavors were di- 
 rected to the development of the terri- 
 tory embraced in his patent. He had a 
 skill in writing prospectuses which, 
 had he lived at a later day, would 
 have commended him to the favorable 
 consideration of a great railroad com- 
 pany with a land grant. He induced 
 Scotchmen, Scotch-Irishmen and Ger- 
 mans, all good stock for colonists, to 
 come hither. His name is perpetuated 
 in the name of the town which his Ger- 
 man settlers founded, Waldoborough. 
 He died in 1759, the famous year of 
 Wolfe's victory, to which event, had he 
 lived to see it, as a loyal subject of 
 
 King George, and an enthusiastic col- 
 onist under his flag, he would doubtles 
 and justly have attached a large sig- 
 nificance. His death occurred within 
 the limits of what is now the town of 
 Brewer, he having accompanied the 
 military expedition up the Penobscot, 
 which located the fort at the point 
 which has ever since borne the name 
 'Fort Point." He does not seem to 
 have been attached to this expedition 
 in a military capacity and was doubt- 
 less actuated largely by his personal in- 
 terest in accompanying it. Tradition 
 says that his last words were, "Here 
 are my bounds,' referring presumably 
 to the northerly bounds of the patent, 
 and that he had no sooner spoken 
 them than he fell dead of an apoplectic 
 stroke. They brought his remains 
 down to their newly built fort in the 
 vicinity of which they buried him. His 
 grave was unmarked and its location 
 was soon lost. Sixty-eight years after 
 his death, the Legislature of Maine, 
 thinking, perhaps, that he deserved 
 some monument, and being about to 
 incorporate a new county which in- 
 cluded the soil in which his remains 
 rested, and all or nearly all of the ter- 
 ritory in which had once been covered 
 by his patent, gave to it the name of 
 Waldo county. 
 
 Five years after Waldo's death, his 
 eldest son, Samuel, who by right of 
 primogeniture inherited two shares of 
 his estate, sold these two shares to 
 Flucker, Mrs. Knox's father. The oth- 
 er three shares descended one to Mrs. 
 Flucker.one to her brother Francis and 
 one to her sister, Mrs. Winslow, but 
 it does not appear that any particular 
 acts of proprietorship were exercised 
 by anybody after Waldo's death until 
 Knox's accession. Flucker presumably 
 left Boston when his master, Gage, did, 
 the removal being precipitated by the 
 
12 
 
 General Henry Knox 
 
 persuasive influence of the 12, 18 and 24 
 pounders that his rebel son-in-law had 
 brought down on ox-sleds from old 
 Fort Ti. In the company of loyal- 
 ists who then left were probably all 
 the descendants of the old proprietor, 
 Waldo, except that one who had es- 
 poused the people's cause and shared 
 her patriot husband's cares and to 
 
 some extent the dangers, like the true 
 wife she was. A year later she wrote 
 to her husband that she had learned 
 that "papa" was continuing to draw 
 his salary as secretary, and probably 
 he was allowed to do so as long as a 
 peg remained to hang a hope on that 
 the time might come when he could go 
 back to earn it. 
 
 Knox Comes to Thomaston 
 
 Knox having served his country no- 
 bly during the war, the period of the 
 establishment of the new government, 
 and the first administration under the 
 Constitution, retired from Washing- 
 ton's cabinet at the close of 1794. For 
 morathan three years previous he had 
 been securing the title tothepatent.and 
 perhaps the representatives of the 
 family over seas may have felt that it 
 was convenient to have a patriot in its 
 ranks when confiscation came to be the 
 order of the day. 
 
 In 1793, Knox commenced the build- 
 ing of his mansion. Eaton has pre- 
 served for us the name of the archi- 
 tect, Ebenezer Dunton of Boston. Af- 
 ter the mansion was built Dunton left 
 the place, deserting his wife, who be- 
 came the town's first milliner. But, if 
 an unfaithful husband, he must have 
 been a good architect. Enough of us 
 still living remember the symmetry of 
 the mansion, and the pictures which 
 have been preserved testify it to those 
 who cannot remember. Eaton 
 
 who must have seen it in all its beauty, 
 for he came to this locality two years 
 before Knox died, — writing while it was 
 still standing, says: "Nothing is now 
 to be seen of the piazzas, balconies, 
 balustrades and other ornaments of 
 the mansion." These seem all to have 
 disappeared before the first picture 
 was made, but the fine proportions 
 
 that the pictures reveal are a guaranty 
 that the skill which designed them 
 knew how to put the balconies, and the 
 like where they belonged, and make 
 them what they should be. $50,000 the 
 mansion cost says Eaton. Drake, and 
 Brooks after him, puts it at $15,000, and 
 say that the papers of Knox show it 
 at that amount. There was an im- 
 mense amount of fine work and skilful 
 carving and almost every thing had to 
 be done by hand, and much that wan 
 beyond the skill of the country at that 
 time to make must have been imported 
 and while Eaton's figures are doubt- 
 less too large the other sum named we 
 venture to think is considerably too 
 small. At Knox's death house and fur- 
 niture were appraised at $42,656. 
 
 It seems likely that the house was 
 built in faith of what the great landed 
 possessions were to yield, and this be- 
 ing an uncertain quantity it is not 
 strange that it proved to be a disap- 
 pointing one. That Knox had faith in 
 Maine land is shown by the fact that 
 he had been before he acquired the 
 Waldo Patent the promoter of even a 
 larger land scheme, to wit, the pur- 
 chase of 2,000,000 acres on the upper 
 Kennebec and in Hancock and Wash- 
 ington counties for $265,000, which he 
 and his associates sold to Hon. William 
 Bingham of Philadelphia from whom It 
 was known as the Bingham Purchase. 
 
General Henry Knox 
 
 13 
 
 Knox may have realized something 
 from this sale. If he did he may have 
 had ready money to put into the con- 
 struction of the house. The breaking 
 out of the war spoiled his book busi- 
 ness and during and after the war 
 when he was serving his country at a 
 large expense for a small salary he 
 could not have saved much. The fact 
 that he was able to negotiate so large 
 purchases shows that he had large 
 credit and his after experience makes 
 it more than probable that it was on 
 that same credit that he started his 
 operations. 
 
 Mr. Bingham was at one time U. S. 
 Senator from Pennsylvania- and there 
 was a very close intimacy between him 
 and Knox and between the two fami- 
 lies. Eaton says that it was because 
 of the French taste imbibed from Mrs. 
 Bingham that Mrs. Knox named the 
 mansion Montpelier. This intimacy 
 was the cause of at least one of the 
 eminent visitors of whom we shall 
 speak, and perhaps more than one, 
 having been drawn thither. 
 
 Knox and his family started from 
 Philadelphia for Thomaston, June 1, 
 1795, in a sloop which had evidently 
 been sent from here, or being that way 
 in course of business was chartered for 
 the removal of the distinguished party. 
 It could scarcely have afforded sump- 
 tuous accommodations, but the Gener- 
 al had roughed it in the army, and 
 Mrs. Knox though one of the most 
 highly bred and accomplished ladies in 
 the land, had shared some of his pri- 
 vations on occasion. How long they 
 were compelled to undergo the discom- 
 forts of the trip we do not know, but 
 we know something of what the man- 
 sion was and we know the location. 
 Its natural beauty must have been 
 great, and we may fairly assume that 
 what had been done had enhanced 
 
 without in any way marring it, and 
 can well believe that after the neces- 
 sarily wearisome journey, the new 
 place was fully appreciated by the 
 party who had come to it to make it 
 their home. Just when they arrived 
 we do not know but the mansion was 
 opened with the extension of the most 
 gracious hospitality for whomsoever 
 cared to come and partake thereof, on 
 July 4, 1795. 
 
 Gen. Knox was very much liked here 
 from the start. Mrs. Knox did not 
 succeed in pleasing the ladies whom 
 very likely she did not understand, 
 and who, I am very sure, did not un- 
 derstand her. She had been reared in 
 close relations to the family of a royal 
 governor, and had better opportunities 
 of learning what were the requirements 
 of the best society of the times, than 
 most, perhaps than any other of our 
 leading ladies, and her abilities and ac- 
 complishments had been given to the 
 service of the young republic in the es- 
 tablishment of the social order as it 
 was represented in the leading circles 
 of its capital city, which in large meas- 
 ure determined similar conditions in 
 other cities, and influenced them 
 throughout the land. After she came 
 here we are told that she was kind and 
 courteous to those whom she employed, 
 and the little girl whose task it was 
 to carry the supplies of butter for the 
 table of the mansion, has left it to be of 
 record that the great lady had always 
 a pleasant word for her. I do not 
 know whether any of the nine children 
 who died in childhood were living 
 when they came here. The oldest 
 daughter Lucy, who became Mrs. 
 Thatcher, was a young lady of 19; the 
 spoiled child Master Henry, who 
 amended his wayward courses too late 
 in life to be of service to the world, 
 was a boy of 15, and the youngest child 
 
'4 
 
 General Henry Knox 
 
 Caroline, who became Mrs. Swan and 
 afterward Mrs. Holmes, and of whom 
 the universal testimony Is that she was 
 
 the most gracious, charming and lov- 
 able of ladles, was a little miss of four. 
 
 An Eminent French Nobleman and Philanthropist 
 
 The first famous visitor to be men- 
 tioned is the Duke de La Rochefou- 
 cauld Liancourt. He figures in histo- 
 ry as a statesman and especially as a 
 philanthropist. At Montpelier Knox 
 and not he seems to have sustained the 
 latter role for Eaton preserves the re- 
 mark which he is credited with making 
 while there — "I have three dukedoms 
 in my hand and not a whole coat on 
 my back." Knox had met him at 
 Philadelphia, probably at Mr. Bing- 
 ham's, which seems to have been a 
 place where distinguished Frenchmen 
 who came to Philadelphia resorted. He 
 came to Montpelier twice, in 1795 and 
 again in 1796. He was three years 
 Knox's senior, 48 in 1795. When he was 
 22 he went to England and on his re- 
 turn established a model farm for the 
 instruction of his tenantry. We hear 
 so much of the abject condition of the 
 peasantry in France before the Revo- 
 lution that it is refreshing to find one 
 great lord who was interested to im- 
 prove it. Afterward he established a 
 school of arts and trades which devel- 
 oped into a permanent establishment. 
 After the Bastile was destroyed he was 
 for a time president of the National 
 Assembly, which shows us that though 
 holding a high hereditary position he 
 
 sympathized with the popular move- 
 ments. When it became apparent that 
 the king's life was in danger he used 
 his influence to save it and in conse- 
 quence had to fly to save his own, 
 which was the occasion of his coming 
 to America. He returned to Europe in 
 1799 and published an account of his 
 travels, which appears to have attract- 
 ed a good deal of attention. Eaton 
 quotes from the London Edition, 1799. 
 I find the statement in the American 
 Cyclopedia that it was published in five 
 volumes in Paris in 1800, from which it 
 may be inferred that he published in 
 London, in English, in 1799, and the 
 next year in Paris, in French. Among 
 the matters in which he is stated to 
 have taken an active interest are men- 
 tioned the introduction of vaccination; 
 the establishment of savings banks; 
 the abolition of the slave trade; and 
 the suppression of lotteries and gaming 
 houses. He received honors both from 
 Napoleon and Louis XVIII., though 
 the ministers of the latter deposed him 
 from his offices because of his liberal 
 sentiments. It is of interest to us to 
 find that such a man was enough in- 
 terested in Knox and his family to 
 come to Thomaston twice in success- 
 ive years to visit them. 
 
 A Party of Distinguished Visitors 
 
 At page 230 of his Vol. I, Eaton puts 
 in a foot-note an account of a visit to 
 Montpelier, which is one of the most 
 interesting items he anywhere records. 
 It has been a question with me why he 
 relegated it to a foot-note. I have 
 
 wondered if he felt somewhat in doubt 
 as to its authenticity, at first writing, 
 or if it came to his knowledge too late 
 to have a place in his text. He states 
 it on the authority of Mrs. Thatcher 
 and others whom he does not name. 
 
General Henry Knox 
 
 *5 
 
 Mrs. Thatcher lived until 1854, and was 
 a young lady of 21 at the time of the 
 event narrated in the foot-note, to wit, 
 in the summer in 1796. The visiting 
 party included some notable people. 
 Probably the reason of its coming was 
 that Mr. Bingham desired to look over 
 his Maine lands. There is every reason 
 to suppose that Maine was as much 
 more comfortable in the heat of sum- 
 mer than Philadelphia a hundred years 
 ago as now, and it was natural that 
 the senator's family should desire to 
 accompany him, and should take with 
 them their guests. Besides his wife 
 and two daughters, his immediate fam- 
 ily consisted of his wife's sister, Miss 
 Willing, who, the foot-note says, was 
 afterwards engaged to Louis Philippe. 
 The young gentlemen of the party 
 were all foreigners.one a titled French- 
 man, Viscount Troailles, brother-in-law 
 to the great Lafayette, and the other two 
 untitled Englishmen, of one of whom 
 we are only informed that his name 
 was Richards. The name of the other 
 was Alexander Baring, but he was des- 
 tined later to wear the title, Baron 
 Ashburton, and to make that one of 
 the Misses Bingham whom two years 
 later he married, Lady Ashburton, and 
 he was also destined later to become 
 the head of the great house of Baring 
 Brothers, the embarrassment of which 
 nearly a century later, started a finan- 
 cial panic that was world-wide in its 
 scope. 
 
 The Rev. Paul Coffin, D. D., dined at 
 Montpelier on Tuesday, August 15, 1796, 
 which was one of the days in the six 
 weeks. This gentleman was the town 
 minister of the town of Buxton in York 
 County, and was a man of sufficient 
 consequence to have been allowed to 
 name the town in which he lived and 
 also to have been named as one of the 
 first board of overseers of Bowdoin 
 
 College, in the act of the Massachu- 
 setts Legislature incorporating that in- 
 stitution. At this time he was on a 
 missionary tour, or perhaps it may 
 have been a tour to examine and report 
 in respect to the religious conditions 
 existing in the more easterly part of 
 the state. Eaton cites from his fourth 
 volume (presumably MS.) as preserved 
 by the Maine Historical Society, from 
 which it appears that on Sunday he 
 held the first religious service ever held 
 at Duck Trap, preaching to a congre- 
 gation of about 90, which was not a 
 bad beginning for Duck Trap. On Mon- 
 day he came down to "Cambden," 
 where "Squire McGlathery" treated 
 him with "true and simple politeness 
 and hospitality." On Tuesday he went 
 from Camden to Warren, where he was 
 the guest of Rev. Jonathan Huse, the 
 town minister, but, as we shall see, he 
 stopped on the way at Montpelier 
 where he dined. He mentions that the 
 house "had double piazzas all the way 
 round it" and "exceeded all that I had 
 seen," but he also says of it that "it 
 drew beyond all the ventilators I had 
 before seen. I was almost frozen be- 
 fore we took dinner and a plenty of 
 wine." If the house justified that re- 
 mark in August, one would say that it 
 must have been uncomfortable to live 
 in in a Maine winter. The minister's 
 blood must have been thin, or the Gen- 
 eral's money, put the figure where we 
 will, must have been wasted. Mr. Cof- 
 fin proceeds to tell us that "The Gen- 
 eral being absent in a Portland packet 
 with Mr. Bingham, I dined with Mrs. 
 Knox and her daughters and Mrs. 
 Bingham and her sister and daughter. 
 We had a merry dinner" [the dinner 
 and the wine evidently suited the rev- 
 erend gentleman better than the wait- 
 ing] "the little misses talking French 
 in a gay mood. Mrs. Bingham was sen- 
 
Genernl Henry Knox 
 
 slble, could talk of European politics, 
 and give the history of the late king of 
 Prance, etc." It will be observed that 
 
 Mr. Collin says nothing of the young 
 gentlemen of the party. Very likely 
 nothing was said to him about them, 
 but it may be fairly inferred that they 
 had gone "east" with Gen. Knox and 
 Mr. Bingham. Mr. Porter says that 
 Mr. Baring did accompany them, hav- 
 ing bought of Mr. Bingham, or bar- 
 gained with him for, an interest in his 
 purchase, and that the point "east" to 
 which they had gone was Gouldsboro, 
 to see Mr. David Cobb, Mr. Bingham's 
 manager. 
 
 In August, 1842, Baron Ashburton 
 concluded the negotiations which he, 
 as envoy extraordinary on the part of the 
 British government, had be nconducing 
 at the city of Washington.withnolessa 
 personage than the Hon. Daniel Web- 
 ster, then our Secretary of State, on 
 the part of the United States, by which 
 was terminated the bloodless Aroos- 
 took War of which some of us who are 
 oldest have heard our fathers speak. 
 While th^se great men were determining 
 the boundaries of Maine, is it not more 
 than likely that some reference was 
 made by the Baron to his six weeks' 
 summer tarry here forty-five years 
 agone, when his good wife was his lady 
 love, and to the family whose guests 
 they were, whose relations had been 
 so close with the family of Lady Ash- 
 burton? Of that family only the two 
 daughters were now living. The eldest, 
 Mrs. Thatcher, was a widow, her hus- 
 
 band having died a year before at 
 Bingham, Maine, the town which, be- 
 ing one of those carved out of his pur- 
 chase, bore tin' name of Lady Ashbur- 
 ton's father. The fact that Mr.Thatch- 
 er, who was a Harvard graduate and a 
 lawyer, settled there, may hint at the 
 close relations between the families 
 having been maintained. 
 
 Mr. Coffin spoke of the daughters of 
 Mrs. Knox and the daughter of Mrs. 
 Bingham, and this may indicate that 
 he mistook one of the Misses Bingham 
 for a daughter of his hostess, whose 
 younger daughter was then only a 
 child of five years. She had grown to 
 be a brilliant woman and after the 
 death of her first husband, who seems 
 to have done himself, her, or the fam- 
 ily little credit, she had married Hon. 
 John Holmes, ex-U. S. Senator from 
 Maine, a man of national reputation 
 whom Webster must have known well, 
 and perhaps he may have been able to 
 tell the Baron, if the latter did not 
 know it, that Holmes had gone with 
 her to live in the old mansion which 
 had become somewhat dilapidated and 
 was putting it to rights, and that again 
 its traditions were being measurably 
 kept up. I think I have hinted at an 
 opportunity for some one with a fair 
 degree of literary invention to write 
 an imaginary conversation between 
 two distinguished men with a larger 
 probability of dealing with a subject 
 that they may have touched upon than 
 is the case with some such conversa- 
 tions that have been similarly set down. 
 
 A Visitor Who Became King of France 
 
 But we must hasten to deal with the 
 two other distinguished foreigners who 
 Eaton say.--, and everybody who has 
 written since follows him in saying, 
 visited Montpelier— Tallyrand and 
 
 Louis Philippe. They are always men- 
 1 together, and this suggests the 
 question — Did they come together? 
 Eai li of them is an interesting charac- 
 ter. Louis Philippe, descended on the 
 
General Henry Knox 
 
 "7 
 
 paternal side from the brother of the 
 grand monarch Louis XIV. and on the 
 maternal side from the grand monarch 
 himself, was the son of that prince of 
 the blood who consented to doff his 
 royal name and be rechristened Phil- 
 ippe Egalite, (Philip Equality,) and, to 
 his shame, voted for the death of his 
 royal kinsman whom not long after he 
 followed to the guillotine. It was a line 
 of brilliant men, but as a rule neither 
 good nor safe ones from whom Louis 
 Philippe sprang. He appears to have 
 been a man of character as well as ca- 
 pacity. If he came to Montpelier it 
 seems certain that it must have been 
 in the latter part of 1797. He was a 
 man of fine presence, and though at 
 that time only 24 years old he had a 
 career as well as an ancestry behind 
 him. Born and reared in luxury in one 
 of the finest palaces in France, as a 
 boy he had followed his erratic father 
 into the revolutionary movement and 
 had served as doorkeeper in the fa- 
 mous Jacobin dub, and when yet only 
 19 years old had won great distinction 
 in the army of Republican France, in 
 the first campaign against her mon- 
 archical enemies, at the battle of Val- 
 my, and the great victory at Jemappes. 
 Even then he was spoken of as one 
 who might fill the throne some day, 
 and is credited with an avowed ambi- 
 tion in that direction. But in the mad 
 times that set in the French army 
 came to be a dangerous place for a 
 man of noble blood, and even more so 
 for one of the royal stock, and he 
 sought safety In flight. For a matter 
 of four years he was an exile and a 
 wanderer. He served for eight months, 
 under an assumed name, as professor 
 in an institution in Switzerland, hav- 
 ing gained his position by a competi- 
 tive examination. Then he changed his 
 alias and traveled over a great many 
 
 parts of Europe. He was in a hard 
 place, out of favor with monarchists 
 for having served in the republican ar- 
 my, and with republicans for having 
 deserted that service. Versatility had 
 been a characteristic of the house of 
 Orleans ,and this experience undoubt- 
 edly tended to make him a more than 
 ordinarily resourceful man. I remem- 
 ber of reading that when he was 75 
 years old and King of France, and when 
 the great revolutionary movement of 
 1848, the most conspicuous effect of 
 which was to sweep him from his 
 throne, was threatening the existing 
 order of things, he told a visitor that 
 he was the only monarch in Europe 
 who was fit to reign under the condi- 
 tions then existing. Whatever the 
 visitor may have thought of the truth 
 or taste of the remark, he felt that, in- 
 asmuch as it was made by a king, the 
 proper thing to be done was to make 
 an assenting reply which involved a 
 compliment, at hearing which the king 
 laughed and said, Oh, I don't mean 
 that, but the outlook for royalty is bad 
 just now, and I am the only man of 
 them who ever blacked his own boots, 
 and I can do it again." 
 
 When the madness of Jacobin rule 
 had passed away and the Directory 
 came into power, it found the two 
 younger brothers of the Duke in the 
 prison where they, two little boys too 
 small to be harmful to anybody, had 
 been thrown with their father, who 
 had been torn from them to die on the 
 guillotine. Their constitutions had 
 been broken by anxiety, confinement 
 and prison fare. The directors were at 
 a loss to know what to do with them. 
 They were afraid to let them go, and 
 especially were they uneasy at the fear 
 of what their brother.who was at large, 
 might be doing. Finally the proposi- 
 tion was made to their mother that if 
 
iS 
 
 General Henry Knox 
 
 she w»uld arrange that in the event of 
 the liberation of the two sons in prison 
 (whose confinement was none the ea- 
 sier to bear that the one was supposed 
 to be the Uuke of Montpensier and the 
 other the Count of Beaujelais) her 
 three sons should leave Europe and go 
 to America. Gladly the poor mother 
 agreed that they should do so, provided 
 she could find the wanderer, her eldest 
 born. Quite a hard time she had to 
 find him under his concealment of 
 place and name, but she set a trusted 
 agent to hunt for him, and at last he 
 was found and through the good offices 
 of Mr. Gouveneur Morris , who had 
 been U. S. Minister to France during 
 the Terror, a loan was effected, which 
 afforded the means to make the trip, 
 and October 25, 1796, Louis Philippe ar- 
 rived in Philadelphia, and a few days 
 after he arrived there his two brothers 
 sailed from France, and in the succeed- 
 ing February they joined him in Phil- 
 adelphia. The intervening three months 
 he spent in Philadelphia. The Bing- 
 ham family had been in France as we 
 have seen. They were people of refine- 
 ment and standing, and it would be 
 natural that he should become ac- 
 quainted with them. It must have been 
 at this time that he met Miss Willing. 
 This was the winter succeeding the 
 summer, six weeks of which she spent 
 at Thomaston. It was also the winter 
 preceding the autumn when Louis Phil- 
 ippe must have come here, if he came 
 at all. If it is true that an engage- 
 ment was contracted it may be as- 
 sumed that if it had not been broken, 
 this American lady might have lived to 
 be Queen of France, unless the Duke's 
 marriage with an untitled American 
 misht have been held to bar him from 
 the throne, and it would seem that we 
 are justified in thinking it would have 
 
 created no bar in the mind of the man, 
 who perhaps more than any other was 
 instrumental in calling him there, to 
 wit, Lafayette. The Century article 
 while it does not mention the name of 
 Bingham, does mention Miss Willing, 
 and in terms which rather negative the 
 idea that the affair between her and 
 Louis Philippe proceeded so far as an 
 engagement. It states that Mr.Orleans 
 as he was called, proposed for the hand 
 of the lady and was told by her father 
 that as an exile destitute of means he 
 was not a suitable match for her, and 
 that, should he recover his rights, she 
 would be no match for him, which re- 
 ply tends to show that Mr. Willing was 
 a clear-headed and sensible man, and 
 inclines us to think that his daughter 
 would not have disgraced a throne if 
 Fate had placed her on one, 
 
 A dozen years later than this Louis 
 Philippe married in the purple, a 
 daughter of the King of Sicily, and 
 reared a family who achieved no small 
 distinction. He. himself, was called to 
 the throne of France at the age of 57, 
 and for seventeen years was the most 
 conspicuous monarch in Europe. It 
 was in his reign that the remains of 
 the great Napoleon were brought from 
 St. Helena and buried in Paris, and his 
 son, the Prince of Joinville, command- 
 ed the squadron which brought them. 
 This same son, and two of his neph- 
 ews, the elder the Count of Paris and 
 heir of the house, served our country 
 in the War of the Rebellion on Me- 
 rcian's staff during the Peninsular 
 campaign, to the displeasure, as it is 
 understood, of Victor Hugo's Napoleon 
 the Little, who was then living at the 
 Tuileries. Another son, the Duke of 
 Aumale, attained the highest honor In 
 the domain of French scholarship, a 
 place in the Academy. 
 
General Henry Knox 
 
 l 9 
 
 The Most Prominent of French Statesmen 
 
 What was there behind and what 
 before Talleyrand when he visited 
 America? It does not seem to be defi- 
 nitely known when he did come but 
 he was a little rising 40 years old. He 
 was the eldest son of one of the great 
 French nobles. When he was 15 years 
 old a family council was held over him 
 and it was decided that because he was 
 a lame and sickly boy, his younger 
 brother should take his position as 
 head of the family and he should be 
 educated for the church. This shows 
 that family councils are not Infallible 
 for the weakling of this family lived to 
 be 84 years old. They destined him for 
 the church for which he was not at all 
 adapted because they thought him 
 unequal to the task of directing the 
 affairs and sustaining the dignity of 
 their house, and he directed the affairs 
 and sustained the dignity of the nation 
 for many years under conditions in 
 which there were no precedents to de- 
 termine the action best to be taken and 
 in a manner that won the admiration 
 of his contemporaries and gained for 
 him a place in history as one of the 
 ablest men of affairs who ever lived. 
 
 However, they had their way in the 
 bearinning and sent him to a clerical 
 school in which he attained the highest 
 honors, became a priest, and at once 
 commenced to bear great churchly re- 
 sponsibilities and to win high churchly 
 preferment. At the age of 34. just be- 
 forethe breakiner out of the Revolution 
 he was made Bishop of Auton, a place 
 worth $10,000 a year, a good deal of 
 money at that time. He was the only 
 prominent churchman who espoused 
 the revolutionary cause. He was elect- 
 ed to the Assembly, where he made a 
 notable report on public education, and 
 proposed and carried a law confiscat- 
 
 ing the church property. This law was 
 liked by the people but was naturally 
 unpopular with his brother clergymen. 
 Nevertheless, eight months later, he 
 led the 200 clergymen who celebrated 
 the mass, at the great ceremony of the 
 federation, the most magnificent of 
 spectacles, the spectators of which 
 were numbered by the hundreds of 
 thousands.many of whom believed that 
 a new era was being ushered in. That 
 was his last appearance as an ecclesi- 
 astic, and, later, the pope excommuni- 
 cated him. Late in his life he was re- 
 stored to the church but never to the 
 priesthood. He was the most intimate 
 friend of the great Mirabeau, and after 
 his death read to the assembly a 
 speech which Mirabeau had prepared 
 and left for him to read. As long as 
 the great contest was one of brains he 
 was a man to hold his own with the 
 rest, but when brains came to be at a 
 discount and ruffianism to be at a pre- 
 mium, it was the time for such a man 
 to go elsewhere, always provided he 
 could get away, and wait for the storm 
 to blow over. 
 
 Talleyrand did get away, and so it 
 was that he came to America. 
 It is stated that one reason why he in- 
 curred the displeasure of the radicals 
 was his friendship for Louis Philippe's 
 father. It seems certain that through 
 all his life he had a strong friendship 
 for the house of Orleans, and makes it 
 not unlikely that a place where he vis- 
 ited while in this country was one 
 where Louis Philippe mierht visit too. 
 After he went back to France he be- 
 came Minister of Foreign Affairs un- 
 der the Directory. In that capacity Na- 
 poleon found him acting when he came 
 into power and in that capacity he re- 
 tained him. Each of these men recog- 
 
30 
 
 General Henry Knox 
 
 nized in the other a man of ability, but 
 it is doubtful if either really at any time 
 had any great love for the other. Na- 
 poleon recognized the value of Talley- 
 rand's services to him by making him 
 Prince of Bonevento, and very proper- 
 ly, for while Talleyrand served him he 
 had no more efficient servant. When 
 the Russian expedition was projected 
 he prophesied his master's downfall. 
 He saw his prediction verified and at 
 the end did more than a little to bring 
 about the verification. The allies made 
 Louis XVIII. put him back in the pre- 
 miership, but he did not keep office 
 very long under the new master. The 
 Bourbons might possibly forgive the 
 blows he had dealt to the old heredita- 
 ry privileges, though they could not 
 forget them, for you know that one of 
 their characteristics was that they 
 never forgot anything, the other being 
 that they never learned anything, but 
 they could hardly be expected either to 
 forgive or forget his active participa- 
 tion in that most direct blow which Na- 
 poleon dealt against their house, the 
 execution of the Duke of Enghien, 
 which historians have .ather generally 
 agreed in condemning as a judicial 
 murder. But he had more power to 
 hurt the royal house than the house 
 
 had to hurt him and he had some- 
 thing to do with its making its final 
 exit off the royal stage. He was Lou- 
 is Philippe's confidential adviser when 
 the Revolution of 1830 came, and when 
 it had been determined that the out- 
 come of that Revolution should be to 
 put Louis Philippe on the throne he 
 offered Talleyrand his old position as 
 minister of Foreign Affairs. This, Tal- 
 leyrand, who had now come to be 75 
 years of age, declined, but accepted, at 
 a princely salary, the ministry to Eng- 
 land. It had been one point of disa- 
 greement beween him and Napoleon 
 that he had advised the endeavor to 
 secure friendly relations with Eng- 
 land, and if Napoleon had been will- 
 ing to accept his guidance on this 
 point he might perhaps have died Em- 
 peror. In his position as minister he 
 negotiated an important treaty, the 
 last conspicuous act of his public life. 
 He wrote, or had written, his memoirs, 
 and it is of record that at one time he 
 entrusted them to the care of Baron 
 Ashburton, which fact has a tendency 
 to show an intimacy with the Bing- 
 ham family strong enough to be car- 
 ried over into the later years of his 
 life. 
 
 Tour of the Princes : Did it Extend to Thomaston ? 
 
 The Century article, (which I com- 
 mend to the reading of any who have 
 not read it,) says that, in March, 1797, 
 the Orleans princes, after having lis- 
 tened to Washington's Farewell Ad- 
 dress and Adams' inaugural, made an 
 extended tour of the country which 
 was planned for them by no less a 
 personage than Washington. They 
 introduced each other as "Mr. Or- 
 leans," "Mr. Montpensier," and "Mr. 
 Beaujelais," and, unless they had oc- 
 
 casion to present letters which they 
 carried to some persons on the route, 
 no one knew of their rank. 
 
 In most of the country over which 
 they passed conditions were primitive. 
 They were happy in being free, out of 
 danger, and in each other's society, 
 and took the haps and mishaps of 
 travel as they came, making them- 
 selves at home in the kitchens of the 
 farmers, or the cabins of the hunters 
 or even the wigwams of the Indians, 
 
General Henry Knox 
 
 21 
 
 as well as enjoying the society of the 
 people of station and prominence to 
 whose houses their letters made them 
 welcome. It is worthy our note that 
 in speaking of one of the places where 
 they visited, the settlement on the 
 banks of the Susquehanna, made by 
 the French loyalists who escaped 
 from the Terror, the Century article 
 mentions that La Rochefoucauld had 
 been there two years before them, and 
 that it speaks of Mr. Baring, af- 
 terwards Lord Ashburton, meeting 
 them in the woods in New York, and 
 conducting and introducing them to 
 one of the families where they made a 
 stay. It states that after making the 
 long trip they went from Philadelphia 
 to New York as Talleyrand's guests, 
 and that on October 21, the Boston pa- 
 pers announced their arrival with Tal- 
 leyrand at that place, and that a little 
 later, they, with Talleyrand, made a 
 trip to Maine, stopping at Newbury- 
 port and Haverhill. At Gardiner it 
 says their host was General Henry 
 Dearborn, and that is all that is said 
 as to their stopping in Maine. General 
 Dearborn was then U. S. Marshal for 
 the District of Maine, and during the 
 time he so served was resident at 
 Gardiner. He had attained some dis- 
 tinction in the Revolutionary War.and 
 later than this was Secretary of War 
 in Jefferson's cabinet then served in 
 the War of 1812, and for a time was 
 the commander of the U. S. Army, or 
 at least its senior Major General, in 
 piping times of peace. But he was by 
 no means so great a man as Knox. 
 There were ties which seem to have 
 connected the travelers with the Bing- 
 ham family, the Knox's friends, and 
 inasmuch as Washington had planned 
 their southern and western trip, it is 
 natural that they should have talked 
 with him about their trip northward, 
 
 if they should make one, and certainly 
 there was nobody in New England to 
 whom Washington would be more like- 
 ly, and nobody in Maine to whom he 
 would be so likely to commend them 
 as to Knox. Being at Gardiner a trip 
 to Thomaston would be no more than 
 a day's easy horseback ride, and it 
 seems more than likely, on general 
 principles, laying aside the local tra- 
 dition, that Thomaston was their ob- 
 jective point in coming to Maine. 
 
 But on one point the Century article 
 is plainly in error. It seems certain 
 that this is the only time the Orleans 
 princes were ever in Maine, and it is 
 absolutely certain that Talleyrand 
 was not with them, for he accepted 
 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for 
 France under the Directory in July, 
 1797, and on December 5, 1797 ,he made 
 the address of welcome to Bonaparte 
 on his return from his first Italian 
 campaign. The princes started from 
 Boston November 5, returned again to 
 Boston and started from there for New 
 Orleans on December 10, and all this 
 time Talleyrand was in France. If he 
 came to Thomaston, and I have faith 
 in the testimony that he and Louis 
 Philippe were here, it must have been 
 earlier and I think it not unlikely that 
 the future premier was here two years 
 before the future king. If it be true 
 that the Boston papers of October 21, 
 1797, recorded their arrival in the town 
 together (bear in mind that then and 
 for more than a dozen years after it 
 was a town and had its selectmen) 
 they must have been in error as to 
 Talleyrand. It way have been a re- 
 porter's mistake. Possibly the faith- 
 ful valet of the Duke who had been his 
 inseparable attendant through his 
 years of vicissitude may by this time 
 have gained a look of sufficient impor- 
 tance to represent a statesman to the 
 
General Henry Knox 
 
 eye» of a reporter. Even in these days 
 reporters make mistakes and may 
 have done so in the early days of the 
 republic. 
 
 It is said that Talleyrand accumu- 
 lated wealth while in America. It 
 would hardly seem that he was here 
 long- enough to have gained much store 
 of worldly goods, but he appears to 
 have been a man who had an eye to 
 the main chance. The Maine timber 
 lands dazzled the eye of some of the 
 men whom he met, and he may have 
 come to Thomaston partly to see how 
 they looked. If he did he was wise 
 enough to make his investments else- 
 where. 
 
 And if Louis Philippe came here in 
 1797, are we to suppose that Montpe- 
 lier was honored by a visit, not from 
 one but from three, princes of royal 
 blood? If so, why did the local tra- 
 dition preserve the story of the visit 
 ©f one and not three? It is true that 
 Montpensier and Beaujelais, because 
 of the hardships they had undergone 
 when they should have been going to 
 school, did not live very long or ac- 
 
 complish very much, but they were j 
 princes all the same, and seem to have 
 been worthy young men of good abil- 
 ity. Perhaps they stopped at Gardiner 
 and Orleans rode across country ac- , 
 companied only by his valet. Their j 
 first journey had covered some 3,000 
 miles mostly made on horseback, it | 
 was getting late in the season, and ' 
 neither of them was strong. It is im- 
 pressed on my mind that his attach- 
 ment to Miss Willing was the reason 
 that made Louis Philippe persistent to 
 visit her friends, and the place where 
 she had spent the summer of the year 
 previous. When the course of love 
 stopped short of matrimony, the noble 
 lover when he sat down the record of 
 his journey may have been content to 
 let his memory take care of that part 
 of it which was associated with his 
 lady love, and that may be the reason 
 why the written record stops with 
 Gardiner. As for the place, Montpelier 
 may not have looked as well to him in 
 late November as it did to her in Au- 
 gust. 
 
 Hawthorne Calls at the Manor House 
 
 An American, who was destined later 
 to achieve eminence, made a visit to 
 Montpelier in August, 1837, of which he 
 has left a record. His name was Nathan- 
 iel Hawthorne. He came in the month 
 after the marriage of Mrs. Swan to 
 Mr. Holmes. Of course it was too 
 soon for him to get the benefit of any 
 of the improvements which Mr. Holmes 
 made. Hawthorne had graduated 
 from Bowdoin a dozen years before 
 and had been dabbling in literature 
 since his graduation, and had recently 
 collected some of his fugitive pieces in 
 a volume, and one of his college class- 
 mates, whose name was Henry Wads- 
 
 worth Longfellow, had written an ex- 
 ceedingly eulogistic review of the book, 
 which the author had very recently 
 read, and for it had written his thanks 
 to his friend. 
 
 He had another classmate named 
 Jonathan Cilley, who had been 
 one of the most intimate of his 
 college friends, who had settled a 
 Thomaston and gained distinction in 
 law and politics, and was now 
 Member of Congress from his 
 district. Apparently by acci- 
 
 dent, the two had met at Augusta for 
 the first time since graduation. This 
 Hawthorne sets down in his note book 
 
 is 
 
j B -js S£"1 
 
 to'J >. z 
 
General Henry Knox 
 
 25 
 
 under date of July 28. He then pro- 
 ceeds to write a critical analysis of 
 his friend's character which it is inter- 
 esting to compare with the biographi- 
 cal sketch which he published two 
 years later, after Cilley's tragical 
 death. He finishes with — "upon the 
 whole I have a very good liking for 
 
 him, and mean to go to to see 
 
 him." We should enjoy Haw- 
 thorne's note books better if some of 
 the omitted words could be supplied. 
 Under date of August 12 he records 
 that he "left Augusta a week ago for 
 
 ." A little further on we read: 
 
 "Walked with to see Gen. 
 
 Knox's old mansion, a large rusty- 
 looking edifice of wood with some 
 grandeur in the architecture." Haw- 
 thorne does not tell us any of the 
 stories which Eaton set down later, and 
 the writers after Eaton copied from him, 
 which attests the fact that for about 
 all we know that is interesting in re- 
 gard to this period of Knox's life we 
 are indebted to Eaton. Here is what 
 strikes me as the best thing that he 
 does say: 
 
 "The house and its vicinity and 
 the whole tract covered by Knox's 
 patent, may be taken as an illustration 
 of what must be the result of American 
 schemes of aristocracy. It is not forty 
 years since this house was built and 
 Knox was in all his glory; but now the 
 house is all in decay, while within a 
 stone's throw of it there is a street of 
 smart white edifices of one and two 
 stories which has been laid out where 
 Knox meant to have forests and 
 parks." Here is another statement 
 which he makes, the correctness of 
 which I have seen nothing which 
 tends to verify, but which I 
 think must be taken as an inference 
 he made from something which he 
 
 heard while on this visit to Thomas- 
 ton — "His [Knox's] way of raising 
 money was to give a mortgage on his 
 estate of a hundred thousand dollars at 
 a time, and receive that nominal 
 amount in goods which he would im- 
 mediately sell at auction for perhaps 
 thirty thousand." He says that the 
 General was personally very popular, 
 and so much of the local tradition as 
 he heard in relation to Mrs. Knox, evi- 
 dently tended to prejudice him against 
 her. 
 
 He speaks of her as " a haughty 
 English lady." I presume that her 
 father was born in England. Eaton 
 states that Gen. Waldo was born there 
 but his father did business in Boston 
 for the most of the active part of his 
 life, so that the Waldo family had 
 lived in America for three generations 
 before Mrs. Knox and had large inter- 
 ests here, and, as for her, she had 
 enough American blood in her veins to 
 make her loyal to the land in the na- 
 tion's birth-struggle. There is nothing 
 in his "Notes" to indicate that Haw- 
 thorne knew anything about Mrs. 
 Knox's ancestry. He wrote a brief 
 biography of Sir William Pepperell 
 which shows that he made a careful 
 study of the Louisburg expedition, but 
 in it he does not mention the name of 
 Waldo. For aught that appears he may 
 have thought that Mrs. Knox was Eng- 
 lish by birth. 
 
 He 6peaka of Mrs. Holmes 
 as "a mild, amiable woman." This 
 60unds very much like a negative 
 characterization, and is not such a one 
 as might have been expected from 
 Hawthorne, if we compare it with the 
 uniform testimony of those who knew 
 Mrs. Holmes. Mr. E. M. O'Brien, who 
 remembers her well, speaks of her as 
 the most charming lady whom he ever 
 
 r* 
 
26 
 
 General Henry Knox 
 
 met H<' tells me that his older broth- 
 er, Charles, whose untimely death was 
 greatly lamented, was a favorite of 
 hers as a boy, so much so that she 
 used to invite him to the mansion to 
 visit for days at a time. "When Mr. 
 Holmes came to Thomaston he made 
 repairs on and about the mansion, as I 
 have hinted, and Mr. O'Brien remem- 
 bers him and his wife as driving about 
 town to make calls in a coach which 
 had been the General's, which he had 
 got out and had renovated. He also 
 mentioned that Mr. Holmes served as 
 
 superintendent of the Congregational 
 Sunday school in which he (O'Brien) 
 was a boy pupil. The new era which 
 he Inaugurated at the mansion was 
 brought to an end by his sudden death 
 six years after his marriage. His wife 
 survived him eight years. 
 
 Hawthorne speaks of her as the only 
 survivor of Knox's children at the time 
 of his visit. In fact Mrs. Thatcher was 
 then living and lived seventeen years 
 after that, surviving Mrs. Holmes by 
 three years. 
 
 Tribute to Mrs. Thatcher's Memory 
 
 About a year after Mrs. Thatcher's 
 death, Mrs. Sarah F. Woodhull, whose 
 husband was for many years the hon- 
 ored pastor of the Congregational 
 church in Thomaston, and who was a • 
 long-time intimate friend of Mrs. 
 Holmes, Mrs. Thatcher and Mrs. 
 Thatcher's daughter, Mrs. Hyde, pub- 
 lished the following beautiful tribute: 
 
 To the Memory of the T.ate Mrs. Lucy F. K. 
 Thatcher of Thomaston, Eldest and Lasl S ir- 
 viving Child of Gen. Knox. 
 
 Dear, cherished friend, the grave doth hold thy 
 
 form. 
 But yet thou art not dead not lost to as. 
 Thy memory lives enshrined in loving hearts, 
 A blessing and a joy. Thine influence 
 Still is with us. tiiy christian life still sheds 
 A heavenlv fragrance on our pathway here. 
 God gave thee many gifts; hut thou didst lay 
 Them all in meekness down at Jesus' feet. 
 Though reared in princely halls among the great 
 And good of other times, and sharing all 
 The wealth of intellect, of fame and power, 
 Thy country in its early days could boast, 
 Thy soul maintained its innocence, and grew 
 In goodness, as the flowers unfold themselves 
 In beauty. Nur;ured amid troublous times 
 Thy heart could ne'er forget thy country's weal. 
 But ever through thy life her interests 
 Were thine, and 'twas thy daily prayer that she 
 Should hold a pure, a high renown, among 
 The nations of the earth ; that her fair fame 
 Should he unsullied by a single blot, 
 But now amid the scenes of private life, 
 
 As wife ami mothei . daughter, sister, friend, 
 l by virtues shone conspicuous and serene. 
 Woman's own destiny to suffer much 
 Was thine. How was tiiy heart with anguish 
 
 wrung 
 (Her the graves of all thy honored dead: 
 Thou the last one of the dear household band. 
 The untold sot rows of a widowed heart 
 With christian fortitude thou long didst bear, 
 Ami then thy DOhle son on the wide sea. 
 Whose late mi mystery is Bhrouded still 
 How thou didst mourn for him : Howthoudidst 
 
 grieve 
 For her thine eldest horn, whose life of faith 
 Ami patient toil, as a loved pastor's wife 
 Had often won the meed of grateful praise 
 Prom those who Could appreciate her worth. 
 Her many graceful deeds. How thou didst miss 
 Thy youngest flower, cut down in life's fair 
 
 "morn : 
 And when thou hadst come hack to live and die 
 In thine ancestral halls, thy childhood's home, 
 And memories of othor days began to bring 
 Their joys around thee, till thy verysoul 
 Thrilled to their sweetest tone in harmony. 
 Then as the loving child. on whom thine age 
 Did tondly lean, sickened, and droopeu, and 
 
 died. 
 How thy rent heart shivered and shook beneath 
 The of t* repeated stroke : 
 
 God gave thee grace 
 Si ill in simplicity and childish trust 
 To lean on Him in whom all fulness dwells. 
 And thou didst trim anew thy lamp, and fold 
 The wedding garment closer round thy form, 
 To wait the Bridegroom's call. 
 
 The summons came 
 And found thee ready, with thy lamp all bright, 
 The robe all pure and spotless. . 
 
General Henry Knox 
 
 Farewell, dear friend, 
 Revered and loved, as thou wast here below, 
 We would not call thee back from thy reward. 
 But we would follow thee to yon bright world, 
 And see the greeting of that am*el band. 
 The friends and kindred who have gone before, 
 And hear the music of their golden harps 
 Bidding thee welcome to seraphic joys. 
 And we would strive to live thy lite of faith. 
 ()t patience, gentleness and Christian love, 
 That when ok; - summons comes to meet our God, 
 We too may leave a memory behind. 
 As precious as thine own. 
 
 S. F. W. 
 Thomaston, Nov. 7, 1854. 
 
 Mrs. Thatcher was the only child of 
 the General who had children. Her de- 
 scendants now living', I think less than 
 a score in number, I am informed are 
 all people of worth and culture. As we 
 know, her oldest son, Henry Knox 
 Thatcher, served with great distinction 
 in the navy prior to and during the 
 War of the Rebellion, and attained to 
 the grade of Rear Admiral. 
 
 Statesman, Lawyer and Wit who Lived at Montpelier 
 
 In passing 1 may say a word about 
 Mr. Holmes. It was he who presented 
 to congress the memorial asking for 
 the admission of Maine as a state of 
 the Union. Ben: Perley Poore in his 
 reminiscences speaks of him as "the 
 humorous statesman of the north," and 
 says, "Ever on the watch for some un- 
 guarded expression by a southern 
 senator, no sooner would one be ut- 
 tered than he would pounce upon it and 
 place the speaker in a most uncom- 
 fortable position." For one exhibition 
 of his skill at repartee he will probably 
 be longer remembered than for any 
 serious work he ever did. The eccen- 
 tric John Randolph of Roanoke once 
 used the expression — "The political firm 
 of James Madison, Felix Grundy, John 
 Holmes and the Devil." Some years 
 after, during a debate in the senate, 
 John Tyler asked Mr. Holmes what 
 had become of Randolph's firm. Mr. 
 
 Holmes replied: "I will tell the gentle- 
 man. The first member is dead, the 
 second has gone into retirement, the 
 third now addresses you, and the 
 fourth has gone over to the Nullifiers 
 and is now electioneering among the 
 gentleman's constituents, so the part- 
 nership is legally dissolved." This was 
 certainly a clever retort, and though 
 the tilt may be in some sense said to 
 have been between north and south it 
 will be observed that the two eminent 
 men with whom Holmes was represent- 
 ed as associated were southerners, and 
 not only so but each was a native of 
 Randolph's own Old Dominion. The 
 other personality can better be design- 
 ated a cosmopolite than a northerner 
 or southerner. It is gratifying to learn 
 that Mr. Holmes severed relations with 
 him before becoming a Thomaston 
 Sunday school superintendent. 
 
 What Knox Failed To Do and What He Did 
 
 It is not strange that Knox's land 
 venture proved a failure. He had 
 spent his life in the service of his coun- 
 try, and in that service had gained a 
 reputation for honesty and capacity 
 which gave him a credit which was 
 
 very large for the times. But his train- 
 ing gave him no special 'fitness for the 
 task before him, and the magnitude of 
 his operations made their success de- 
 pend on the fidelity of such agents as 
 he might secure. To get trustworthy 
 
2S 
 
 General Henry Knox 
 
 agents who had such experience and 
 capacity as would have been requisite 
 to make his projects successful would 
 have been well-nigh impossible. There 
 was but one resource which might pos- 
 sibly have saved him from failure and 
 that was to sell land. He made one 
 sale for $200,000, nominally at least, to 
 Thorndike, Sears and Prescott which is 
 set forth in the Wiscasset Registry. 
 Whether there was anything connected 
 with this sale which was the founda- 
 tion of the statement I have quoted 
 from Hawthorne I do not know. Mr. 
 Porter says that had he lived the 
 chances were that he would have been 
 able to sell enough land to relieve 
 his necessities. It would seem that 10 
 years of experience might have sufficed 
 to teach him that this part of the 
 United States was no place for the 
 establishment of a grand seigniory. But 
 whatever may have been his plans, or 
 however time would have dealt with 
 them had his life been spared, his sudden 
 death at the comparatively early age of 
 56 put an end to them, and as to wheth- 
 er a longer life would have afforded 
 him the opportunity of retrievinghisem- 
 barrassed fortunes, or only have sub- 
 jected him to a larger experience of 
 trouble, we may speculate but cannot 
 know. 
 
 But we do know, that before Knox 
 came to us, he had done enough to 
 have established his permanent fame. 
 He was at the head of the artillery 
 arm of the service during the Revolu- 
 tionary war, and one of Washington's 
 most trusted counsellors in military 
 matters. He managed the war office 
 under the old confederacy during the 
 interim between the close of the war 
 and the adoption of the constitution. 
 He was the first secretary of war under 
 the new government in which capacity 
 
 he organized the regular army, and, 
 there being no navy, and the war af- 
 faira of the nation by sea as well as 
 land being under his charge, he was 
 instrumental in securing the building 
 of the ships of which Old Ironsides was 
 the most famous, which, after he waa 
 gone, sustained the prestige of the 
 country in what has been called the 
 Second War of Independence. He sat 
 at Washington's council-board with 
 Jefferson and Hamilton, and was one 
 of the closest friends of Lafayette and 
 Greene, and, above all, of him who was 
 "first in war, first in peace and first in 
 the hearts of his countrymen." The 
 fame of the man of whom these things 
 are written is secure beyond all possi- 
 bility of change, or chance, or criticism. 
 The remains of Knox and his family 
 rest in a lot about 12x15 feet in the vil- 
 . lage cemetery. A few years ago the 
 General's great-grand-daughter, Mrs. 
 Fowler, had a handsome granite curb- 
 ing put round the lot and the old fam- 
 ily monument raised upon a granite 
 base with chiselled edges, the whole be- 
 ing done in excellent taste; and the lot 
 has no longer an uncared-for look. The 
 monument is of very dark marble; the 
 portion devoted to the inscriptions is 
 square and is surmounted by a pyra- 
 midal top which rises to about the 
 height of nine feet. On the southern 
 face is the inscription in honor of the 
 General; on the western are the names, 
 date of death and age at death of Mrs. 
 Knox and Mrs. Holmes; on the eastern 
 the same of Henry Knox, the son ,Mr. 
 Swan and Mrs. Thatcher, and on the 
 north are the names of the nine chil- 
 dren who died in infancy and early 
 childhood. Two stones of light marble 
 stand one at the east and one at the 
 west of the monument. On that at the 
 west is graven the names of Mr. 
 
General Henry Knox 
 
 29 
 
 Thatcher and Mrs. Hyde, and on that 
 at the east the name of James Swan 
 Thatcher, lost at sea in the U. S. 
 schooner Grampus in March, 1843. The 
 view in Brooks' book is an excellent 
 representation of the lot. 
 
 The following little poem was written 
 by Mr. Holmes. The dedication is evi- 
 dently to Mrs. Swan. Since he speaks 
 of himself as "a stranger or one little 
 known" to her who a little more than a 
 year later became his wife, it is not im- 
 probable that the kindly sentiments 
 which it expresses may have had an 
 influence in attracting each to the 
 other. 
 
 Lines Written at the Tomb of Gen. Henry Knox 
 and Dedicated to His Daughter by a Visitor. 
 
 In peaceful slumbers with his kindred dead 
 
 A patriot hero here reclines his head, 
 
 For freedom's sake had Heaven preserved his 
 
 life. 
 Amid the cannon's roar— the battle's strife; 
 The brave— the good— e'en Washington's com- 
 peer, 
 
 The soldier, statesman now lies mouldering here. 
 The heirs of freedom long will consecrate 
 This spot so sacred to a name so great ; 
 Here often will be shed the grateful tear 
 Where sleeps the brave whose name's to free- 
 dom dear. 
 And is it here— here in this silent tomb. 
 The patriot-warrior finds his final home? 
 '•His final home?" O no, the triumph's short. 
 Which death has gained e'en o'er his mortal 
 
 part. 
 This mouldering form will renovated rise 
 To join his fellow patriots in the skies— 
 The soul redeemed, united and restored, 
 ■\V ill realize its Infinite reward. 
 And you. his perfect emblem, here are left, 
 Of almost all your dearest friends bereft ; 
 I. though a stranger or one scarcely known, 
 Yet claim a kindred spirit with your own — 
 Kindred in having seen the peace and strife. 
 The joys and sorrows of this checkered life ; 
 Kindred in its alternate hopes and fears ; 
 Kindred in its successive smiles and tears ; 
 Kindred in sweet reflections on the past; 
 Kindred to see bereavements come so fast; 
 Kindred in fine in hope religion gives 
 The cheering thought that "our Redeemer 
 
 lives;" 
 Kindred in faith that (all our sins forgiven) 
 8uch kindred souls will rest, at last, in Heaven. 
 
 J. H. 
 Thomaston, May 27, 1836. 
 
 The Bell That Paul Revere Made For Knox 
 
 After the tomb, the bell in the tower 
 of the old church on Mill River Hill is 
 more intimately connected with Knox's 
 memory than anything in our vicinity. 
 This bell was made by the patriot, 
 Paul Revere, and for the making Knox 
 paid him a little over four hundred dol- 
 lars, as the receipted bill in the Knox 
 papers testifies. After serving the pub- 
 lic until fifteen years and more after 
 the General's death the bell cracked, 
 and was recast at the Revere works 
 four years after Paul Revere died. 
 What was the original inscription is 
 not known but it included a motto 
 which General Knox wrote. N The let- 
 tering now on it is: 
 
 <$> <$> 
 
 <£>- 
 
 REVERE BOSTON, 1822. | 
 <J> 
 
 The first casting was probably done 
 under Paul Revere's personal supervi- 
 sion. The establishment (still in exist- 
 ence which grew from the business he 
 started had undoubtedly its small be- 
 ginning when the master supervised 
 personally all the work that he did not 
 himself do. We may fancy Paul Re- 
 vere watching the molten metal for our 
 bell as Schiller represents his master- 
 founder as doing. 
 
 "That the tough bell-metal going 
 Through the mold be rigbtly flowing; 
 That in substance clear abounding 
 Pure and full the bell be sounding." 
 
 When its voice cracked (as a singer's 
 voice will sometimes) it was taken 
 back to its birthplace to be made good 
 as new (as cannot be done with a sing- 
 er's cracked voice) and the tone that 
 
3<> 
 
 General Henry Knox 
 
 Paul Revere gave It at its birth was 
 given back to it, and in that tone it has 
 
 spoken as often as it has been asked to 
 speak as the years have passed. 
 
 What and Where Should the Knox Monument Be 
 
 I hope, as do we all, for the success 
 of the effort that our congressman is 
 making to secure an appropriation for 
 a monument to our hero. In view of 
 the possibility of such success, I have 
 my suggestion to make. 
 
 I would not have the monument built 
 over the General's resting-place. The 
 one that has done duty there these 
 many years has associations too sacred 
 to allow of its disturbance. The work 
 that was lately done for it by loving 
 hands was well done; let no other 
 hands be laid upon it. 
 
 There has been too much of change 
 at and about the site of the old man- 
 sion to make that the best place for the 
 monument we hope to have. 
 
 If we find that we may have one and 
 if neither of these places is the place 
 for it, where shall we put it and what 
 sort of monument shall it be? I would 
 have it of the best design with suitable 
 inscriptions, and of no other material 
 than the best Knox county granite, and 
 as the best does not come from any one 
 quarry I would have it from that one 
 of our best quarries, whose proprietors 
 would give us the most suitably dress- 
 ed granite for the money. I would have 
 it built on the site of the old church 
 where Gen. Knox worshipped, in the 
 form of a bell-tower; and in the bell- 
 chamber I would have the Paul Revere 
 bell hung. The church has gone to 
 ruin, and there is nothing about it that 
 would make it specially worth saving 
 were it in better repair than it is. It 
 makes little difference how soon it 
 comes down, and I would have the bell 
 taken down as soon as might be, and 
 
 put where it is safe from the menace of 
 the fire-bug or the vandal. 
 
 If there be no prospect of a monu- 
 ment in the immediate future, if suffi- 
 cient means could be raised — and about 
 this there ought to be no question — I 
 would have the site secured, and from 
 the stout timbers of the old church, 
 such timbers as do not now grow any- 
 where hereabout, I would have a 
 structure erected, of symmetrical pro- 
 portions, with shingled walls stained 
 into tasteful colors, to keep the place 
 and be a temporary home for the bell. 
 
 One has but to climb to the old bel- 
 fry, to see that it commands the finest 
 vii w that the town affords. In the dis- 
 tance in one direction are the moun- 
 tains and in the other is the sea, and 
 coursing its way through its broad val- 
 ley is the river that carries the waters 
 that gush from the springs on the side 
 of the one to their home in the bosom 
 of the other. 
 
 I would have the old bell sound from 
 its place as often as should be best cal- 
 culated to afford a patriotic inspiration. 
 It should ring loud and clear on the na- 
 tion's birthday; on the birthday of the 
 Father of his Country; on the birthday 
 of the great martyr President; when- 
 ever a great event should occur, or a 
 great man should come our way; not 
 ofter enough to cheapen its voice, nor 
 yet so seldom as to let us forget that 
 we have it. 
 
 On the night of the eighteenth of 
 April, it might well ring in memory of 
 the famous ride that its maker took, 
 which was the precursor of the war in 
 which General Knox won his renown: 
 
General Henry Knox 
 
 .V 
 
 "The fate <>; si nation was riding that night. 
 And the spark struck out by that steed in his 
 
 flight 
 Kindled the land into flame with ilra heat." 
 
 Finally, I would have the bell ring 
 loudest, clearest and longest upon July 
 25, the birthday of him who paid its 
 
 maker for its making, who was one of 
 the greatest of the Revolutionary 
 heroes, and who is dear to us, as no 
 other of them can be, because he was, 
 and, being immortal, is, our own Gen- 
 eral Knox. 
 
 AFTERWARD 
 
 After the publication of the foregoing 
 in the Courier-Gazette, Mrs. Fowler, 
 who had read it, sent me a copy from 
 a paper in her possession, as she said, 
 "In my grandmother's [Mrs. Thatch- 
 er's] unmistakable handwriting, which, 
 I think, affords a strong presumption 
 that Louis Philippe did not visit Mont- 
 pelier." She states that this paper is 
 part of the copy which Mrs. Thatcher 
 preserved of a statement which she 
 made at the request of Mrs. Ellett, who 
 wrote a book entitled Famous Women, 
 Mrs. Knox being one of the characters 
 treated. Mrs. Fowler says that she has 
 a copy of a letter which was written by 
 Mrs. Thatcher to her son, in which Mrs. 
 Thatcher says that Mrs. Ellett had ask- 
 ed her for reminiscences, and had ex- 
 pressed regrets that she had made mis- 
 statements and had promised to correct 
 them in later editions. This statement 
 was undoubtedly written in answer to 
 that request and after the publication 
 of the first edition of that work, as it 
 commences — "Your communication, my 
 dear madam, enclosing the new me- 
 moir of my mother," etc. A part of the 
 paper has been lost which explains the 
 abrupt ending of the reference to the 
 Orleans princes, which is as follows: 
 
 "It is well known that Louis Philippe 
 was also a temporary resident in our 
 country, and during his sojourn here, 
 he and his two younger brothers were 
 frequent visitors at my father's in Bos- 
 ton. 
 
 "He was at that time an interesting 
 young man, interesting in himself, but 
 far more so from his peculiar situation. 
 
 "His father was decidedly the richest 
 man in France, perhaps in Europe, yet 
 these sons were cast upon our shores 
 without the means of supplying their 
 actual wants, and Louis Philippe him- 
 self was compelled to employ his tal- 
 ents in teaching to minister to his 
 necessities. 
 
 "The conduct of these young men in 
 their adversity was extremely credit- 
 able to them. They had been hurled 
 from a high elevation and no doubt felt 
 it keenly, but it was the situation of 
 their mother and sister to whom they 
 were strongly attached that weighed 
 most heavily on their spirits. They 
 were still in the power of the Jacobins 
 of Paris and they trembled for their 
 fate. 
 
 "Never shall I forget the delight ex- 
 pressed in their countenances when 
 they came one day to dine at my fath- 
 
3 3 
 
 General Henry Knox 
 
 er's — tore the trholored lace cockades 
 which they had hitherto worn from 
 their hats and trampled them under 
 their feet, saying that they had just 
 learned the escape of these beloved 
 relatives into Spain and should 
 now * * *" 
 
 I had not supposed that Gen. Knox 
 had a house in Boston, after he re- 
 moved to Thomaston, but it occurred to 
 me, upon reading the above, that if he 
 had such a house in 1797, Eaton might 
 have misunderstood Mrs. Thatcher's 
 reference to a visit made at that house 
 to one made at Montpelier. I accord- 
 ingly wrote to Mrs. Fowler, asking if 
 she had any knowledge upon that point. 
 In reply to that question she wrote: 
 
 "I have lying before me two letters 
 from General to Mrs. Knox, addressed 
 to her at 16 Franklin Place, Boston, 
 both written in August, 1797. Knox 
 was in Maine, but expressed the hope 
 of being soon united to his family, and 
 said that imperative engagements 
 would compel him to be in Boston by 
 the 10th or 15th of September." 
 
 I think the foregoing makes it prob- 
 able that a mistake was made by 
 Eaton, and perpetuated by Knox's bi- 
 ographers as to the place at which 
 Louis Philippe was Gen. Knox's guest. 
 It does not follow that a similar mis- 
 take was made as to where the General 
 entertained Talleyrand, but if he had a 
 house in Boston, at that time, when- 
 ever it was, such may have been the 
 fact. 
 
 Mrs. Fowler's letter mentioned that 
 the remainder of the paper contained a 
 reference to her grandmother's meeting 
 with La Fayette upon his last visit to 
 America, in 1825. Thinking that this 
 would be of much interest to all who 
 cherish the Knox traditions, I request- 
 ed her to send me a copy of that part 
 
 also, with which request she kindly 
 complied. It is as follows: 
 
 "With the career for instance of our 
 Country's friend and benefactor La 
 Fayette she [Mrs. Knox] was conver- 
 sant from its commencement and al- 
 though history has preserved all of the 
 prominent events of his life and traits 
 of his character yet there were doubt- 
 less many minutiae relative to both, 
 which could only be known by those in 
 the habit of frequent intercourse with 
 him. With respect to this interesting 
 man I can testify to the strong regret 
 he expressed during his last visit to our 
 Country that he could not have had the 
 satisfaction of renewing his acquaint- 
 ance with my mother who had been re- 
 moved to another world the year pre- 
 vious to his visit. 
 
 "It was to me a great satisfaction to 
 converse with him of my parents and 
 to listen to his expressions of interest 
 in those so dear to me. The memory 
 of this man was wonderful. It would 
 seem that he never forgot any person 
 or event that had occurred in his long 
 life. He even recollected my name and 
 having seen me as a child during the 
 year succeeding the war when he vis- 
 ited the Country and found my parents 
 residing in Boston. He reminded me 
 of his having on a former visit officiated 
 as godfather to my brother under some- 
 what peculiar circumstances, himself 
 being a Roman Catholic, Gen'l Green 
 the other godfather having been a 
 Quaker, my mother being an Episco- 
 palian and my father a Presbyterian. 
 This variety of denominations combined 
 in the ceremony had I suppose im- 
 pressed it on his mind. I told him it 
 would be happy indeed if Christians 
 were always thus united. This same 
 brother also visited him in Portland 
 and we were both received, for our pa- 
 
General Henry Knox 
 
 33 
 
 rents' sakes.with a warmth of affection 
 most gratifying to our hearts. I asked 
 him on this occasion if he was not 
 wearied with the perpetual motion in 
 which they kept him. 'Oh, no,' said 
 he, 'my mind is so happy,' laying his 
 hand on his heart, 'that I am uncon- 
 scious of fatigue," and truly never had 
 man more cause to be gratified with the 
 spontaneous homage of a Nation, an 
 homage so evidently from the heart 
 that its sincerity could not be for a mo- 
 ment doubted. It seemed to refute the 
 oft repeated assertion that Republics 
 have no gratitude. He told me during 
 this interview that it was his wish and 
 intention to return and finish his days 
 among us — but a different destiny 
 awaited him; his public services were 
 not yet terminated and he believed him- 
 self to be conferring a blessing on his 
 native land in placing over them a 
 citizen king. If the result disappointed 
 his expectations his conduct was none 
 the less true and patriotic. Although 
 he may have erred in judgment the dis- 
 interestedness of his motives can hard- 
 ly be questioned. He will be found I 
 think throughout his career to have 
 been actuated by a sincere love of lib- 
 erty and a desire to promote the best 
 good of his fellow creatures." 
 
 In the letter in which Mrs. Fowler en- 
 closed the foregoing she says — "I am 
 quite sure that I have in my possession 
 a letter from Mrs. Thatcher to her son, 
 Henry, in which she writes of going 
 with her husband from Maine to Bos- 
 ton on purposes to greet La Fayette, 
 but I am unable now to find the letter." 
 It seems probable, therefore, that Mrs. 
 Thatcher met La Fayette, at this time, 
 in Boston, and that her brother, Hen- 
 ry Jackson Knox, met him in Portland. 
 
 I am sure that these extracts from 
 Mrs. Thatcher's pen will be valued for 
 
 the interest of the subject matter, and 
 also as the expression of one who lived 
 in this locality within the memory of 
 many still living, and who perhaps to 
 a larger extent than any other person 
 who was ever resident hereabout, had 
 been privileged to meet on familiar 
 terms personages who cast great fig- 
 ures upon the screen of history. Not 
 written for publication, but only to 
 supply data for another's use, they are 
 alike admirable in spirit and expres- 
 sion, and go to show that the high tri- 
 bute of Mrs. Woodhull was worthily 
 paid. The concluding paragraph is of 
 interest, too, in showing that Mrs. 
 Thatcher had followed the career of 
 him whom she had first known when 
 she was a young lady and he an exiled 
 prince, and that, now that his eventful 
 career had led him to the thron? of his 
 ancestors, she was disappointed in the 
 way he was filling it. 
 
 I close with another brief quotation 
 from Mrs. Fowler's letter: 
 
 "I will mention a matter which is of 
 no great consequence to the world at 
 large, but which is of interest to me. It 
 would seem from Mr. Brooks that the 
 connection between my family and 
 John Knox was not perfectly known 
 but to be presumed from their coming 
 from the same part of Scotland. I have 
 a genealogical table which gives every 
 link in the chain between me and the 
 father of John Knox." 
 
 Carlyle's wide reading, keen discrim- 
 ination, careful thought and sturdy 
 honesty made him a competent judge 
 of reputations, and when he set him- 
 self to the task of selecting a choice 
 company of the world's greatest heroes, 
 it was John Knox whom he took as the 
 representative of his own country, say- 
 ing of him: * * * "himself a brave and 
 remarkable man, but still more impor- 
 
34 
 
 General Henry Knox 
 
 tant as chief priest and founder, which 
 one may consider him to be.of the faith 
 that became Scotland's, New Eng- 
 land's, Oliver Cromwell's. * * * Scotch 
 literature and thought, Scotch indus- 
 try; James Watt, David Hume, Walter 
 Siott, Robert Burns; I find Knox and 
 the Reformation acting in the heart's 
 core of every one of these persons and 
 phenomena; I And that without the 
 Reformation they would not have been. 
 * * * He is the one Scotchman to 
 
 whom, of all others, his country and 
 the world owe a debt." 
 
 Has not the great-granddaughter of 
 Henry Knox the right to be proud that 
 she can trace a line of descent through 
 the American patriot to the father of 
 the Scotch reformer, and may not we 
 who by virtue of our inheritance in the 
 land where Henry Knox lived and 
 which he loved have an interest in his 
 name and fame, appropriate a little 
 share of pride in the line of his de- 
 scent?