the Susquehannah. The savages escaped, but their towns at Great Island and Myanaquie,' with great quantities of provisions, were destroyed.

On the 12th of July, 1774, a meeting of the citizens of the county of Cumberland was held at Carlisle, at which spirited resolutions were passed, expressing sympathy with the oppressed people of Boston, and appointing a county committee of correspondence; of this committee, Colonel Armstrong was a prominent member. His name also appears at the head of a committee in a letter addressed to Benjamin Franklin, President of the Committee of Safety, sitting at Philadelphia, expressing the desire and ability, if authorized, to raise a complete battalion in Cumberland County. On February 29, 1776, of the six brigadier generals elected by Congress, Colonel Armstrong was the first. He was at the same time directed to repair to South Carolina and take command of the forces in that colony. He arrived at Charleston, in April, and assumed command of the troops there assembled, to defend that city from the threatened attack by the British fleet under Sir Peter Parker, which appeared off the Carolina coast on May 31. On June 4, Major-General Charles Lee, commander of the Southern Department, arrived and took the command. He retained General Armstrong, with eighteen hundred men, at Haddrell's Point, about a mile from the Fort on Sullivan's Island. Its commander, Colonel Moultrie, was placed by General Lee under the immediate orders of General Armstrong. The British fleet bombarded the fort for ten hours on the 28th of June, and were completely defeated. They attacked no other point. Thenceforward the fort was called Fort Moultrie, in honor of its gallant commander.

On the 4th of April, 1777, General Armstrong resigned his commission in the Continental service, and on the day following, he was appointed first Brigadier-General of the State of Pennsylvania. On June 5th, the Supreme Executive Council of the State appointed and commissioned him Major-General and Commander of the State troops. General Washington

At the junction of Kettle Creek with the west branch of the Susquehannah.

wrote to General Armstrong on the 4th of July expressing "his pleasure at this honorable mark of distinction conferred upon him by the State."

During the summer of this year, he was actively engaged directing and erecting and maintaining defensive works at Billingsport and other points on the Delaware River, and in frequent conferences with the State Council, at Philadelphia.

On September 11th, at the Battle of Brandywine, the State troops under his command were posted at the Ford, two miles below Chad's, but had no opportunity of directly engaging in that memorable conflict. After the retreat of the American army, his division was employed along the Schuylkill River throwing up redoubts. At the Battle of Germantown, on October 4th, General Armstrong was ordered by the Commander-in-Chief to attack with his forces the Hessian troops covering the left flank of the enemy-as a diversion; a service gallantly and successfully executed.

On the 19th of the same month, he was ordered to Philadelphia, to take command of the militia in case of an invasion.

On the 20th of November, 1778, he was elected by the General Assembly of Pennsylvania, a member of Congress for the years 1779 and 1780. He was again elected for the same office for the years 1787 and 1788; with this last service his public career closed.

In the summer of 1779, a stockade fort was erected at Kittanning by a detachment of troops under LieutenantColonel Stephen Bayard, who named it "Fort Armstrong," by order of Colonel Brodhead commanding at Fort Pitt, and in the year 1800 a new county was there formed, and also named Armstrong in honor of the general. The present handsome and flourishing town of Kittanning is the county seat. His youngest son, who bore his name, was secretary of war under Madison.

General Armstrong was a member of the Presbyterian denomination, and was most prominent in establishing the first church built in Carlisle in 1757. His death occurred in that town, on March 9, 1795, and there in the old buryingground his remains repose.

COLONEL JOHN NIXON.

BY CHARLES HENRY HART.

(Centennial Collection.)

When I accepted the invitation, I had the honor of receiving in October, 1875, from the Committee on the Restoration of Independence Hall, to prepare a memoir of the life of John Nixon to be presented at the meeting of American literati, requested to assemble in Independence Chamber on July 2, 1876, the centennial anniversary of the adoption of the "Resolutions respecting Independency," I was doubtful if I should be able to fulfil my engagement, so little was known of his public services. That he was a merchant highly esteemed; the second president of the Bank of North America, and had read and proclaimed publicly to the people for the first time the Declaration of Independence, were the only prominent facts known even to his descendants. It seemed as if the limited "two pages of fool's cap" could not be supplied. But careful and laborious investigation among published and unpublished archives, revealed incident after incident throwing light upon his important career, until at last when the rough material was sifted and shaped into its present form, the improbable two pages had been duplicated a dozen times. It is presented in its extended size, so that those who come after us may be made fully acquainted with the life and services of one of the country's early and pure patriots.

John Nixon, who read and proclaimed publicly to the people for the first time the Declaration of Independence, was born in the city of Philadelphia, in the year 1733. The exact date of his birth is uncertain, but on April 17, 1734–35 (O. S.), when two years old, he was baptized at Christ Church by the rector. His father, Richard Nixon, is believed to have been a native of Wexford, County Wexford, Ireland, but if so, when he came to this country is unknown. That he was a born

Irishman has been sought to be established from the fact that his son, the subject of this memoir, was, as will be seen later, a member of "The Friendly Sons of St. Patrick," a social society formed in 1771, whose prerequisite to membership was being descended from an Irish parent in the first degree, or to have been a native of Ireland, or a descendant of a former member; but, as a mother is a parent as well as a father, she might have been the one of Celtic birth and not he. This view is strengthened by the fact that there is an heirloom in the family, in the shape of an old and very large sea chest with these initials on the top in brass nails, G. a not uncommon method with the early emigrants to this country for denoting and memorizing the period of their departure from their homes, and the arrangement of the letters would show that the initial of the surname was "N,” while "G" and "S" represented respectively the Christian names of the emigrant husband and wife.

N.

S. 1686.

The earliest mention we have of Richard Nixon is the record of his marriage to Sarah Bowles at Christ Church, by the Rev. Archibald Cummings, on January 7, 1727-28 (O. S.). He was a prominent merchant and shipper, and in 1738 purchased the property on Front Street, below Pine, extending into the Delaware River, afterwards known for nearly a century as Nixon's Wharf. In 1742, he was chosen a member of the Common Council of Philadelphia, which position he continued to hold until his death. Pending the French and Spanish War, which was ended by the Peace of Aix La Chapelle, concluded on the 7th of October, 1748, Franklin urged upon the citizens to associate together for the purposes of defence, and two regiments of "Associators" were accordingly formed, one for the city and the other for the county, which were divided into companies, one for each ward and township, and of the Dock Ward Company, in the City Regiment, Richard Nixon was chosen captain. The Dock Ward at this time was, and continued up to the present century, the most important and influential ward in the city. He was a prominent member of Christ Protestant Episcopal Church, Philadelphia, and one of the vestrymen during the years 1745, 1746, and 1747. He

had four children, all of whom were baptized there, and three of them who died in infancy were buried in its ground, where he himself found a resting place also on the 6th of December, 1749 (O. S.). His personal property after his decease was appraised at £20,000, a no inconsiderable sum in those days. His wife survived him many years, dying July 25, 1785, at the advanced age of eighty years, and was buried at Christ Church, where reposed the remains of her husband.

John Nixon, the only child who survived his father, and the subject of this notice, early took a leading interest in public affairs. In March, 1756, at the age of twenty-three, during the excitement of the French War, he was chosen by a majority of votes of the freemen of Dock Ward, Lieutenant of the Dock Ward Company, "in the stead of Mr. Thomas Willing, the late lieutenant of said company, who was pleased to resign his commission." This company was a sort of home guard, and doubtless the same as the one formed in 1747, of which his father was the first captain. He succeeded to the business of his father, at the old place on Front Street, with Nixon's wharf in the rear, adjoining the warehouses of Willing & Morris, the most considerable merchants in the province or indeed in the colonies. His first transaction of which we have any knowledge is one which, with the light of modern ideas, is not calculated to be looked upon with favor. We find him in March, 1761, with Willing, Morris, & Co., and other prominent merchants of the city, signing and presenting to the Assembly of Pennsylvania, a remonstrance to a petition that had been presented the previous month by citizens of Philadelphia against the importation of slaves, and in consequence of which a bill had been prepared laying a duty of £10 per head on each negro brought from abroad. The importers, in their remonstrance to the bill, represented that the province was suffering great inconvenience for want of servants, and "an advantage may be gained by the introduction of slaves, which will likewise be a means of reducing the exorbitant price of labor and in all probabilities bring our commodities to their usual prices." They represent that they have “embarked in the trade" of importing negroes through