her return. An Indian then threw a tomahawk, which girl and buried itself in the railing of the stairway, whe visible. The girl fled to the upper room, having told General had gone to alarm the town. The raiders co until the sound of the General's voice above appeared to some of his followers outside. Then they fled with cured, and with three of the General's guards, and they of Canada. None of the stolen plate was ever return was afterward used in Canada with the comment, "Th eral Schuyler's house." Attempts were also made to o Vechten and other prominent officers, the leaders being Bettys and Thomas Lovela cuted.

At the foot of the stairc an apartment in the northmain building. It was the eral Schuyler, where he enter handsomely, after the surrer the remark: "You show though I have done you m staircase itself is protected and white balustrades, carv ously twisted designs. A s leads to a square landing. more lead to the rear part of the building on the wes flight leads to a second square landing on the south, wh brings one to the floor above. The upper hall is long and the ceilings are not as high. Everywhere we see ings and cornices, the heavy doors painted to resem deeply recessed window-casings that offer inviting se brass knobs and locks which were so common three gen heavy pine floors are good for centuries to come, althou grooved for electric bells and cut for gas-pipes. The west opens into an entry, and thence to a small chambe and on the other to a stairway that leads into the at study the architectural science which framed so heavy hand-wrought timbers and made it fast with wooden p

On the northern side of the upper hall there are tw bers. The one at the southeast corner, directly o room, is famed as that in which General Burgoyn

General Schuyler was

his officers slept when they were prisoners of war. renowned for his hospitality. During the early part of the Revolution he entertained Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase, and Charles Carroll, delegates from Congress with a mission to persuade the Canadians

ChCarroll of Surreliton

to join the Americans. Carroll gave a Marylander's view of General Schuyler in these words: "He behaved to us with great civility; lives in pretty style; has two daughters (Betsy and Peggy), lively, agreeable, black-eyed girls." The three commissioners were escorted to the summer home in Saratoga and entertained there also. When Lady Harriet Ack

land and the Baroness Riedesel, with her children, ha the defeat of Burgoyne, General Schuyler sent Col Schuyler to announce their arrival as his guests. The Albany as victors, but they were captivated by the ch the Schuyler mansion. The generosity of the host opposition and welcomed General Gates, even when th remove him by all the arts in his power. La Faye Rochambeau, and a long list of eminent Americans en position of the host and shared his bounty. Thithe with a letter of introduction from New York; and he, of the General before undertaking the practice of law strangely did he repay that hospitality! Washington months of the war, came hither with Governor Clinton on his way to view the Northern battle-fields and to ex able topography of the country.

But, in spite of all these pleasing associations, the General Schuyler's life began to show itself. His daug wife of the Patroon, died. Then, after a brief interval, ter of Colonel John Van Rensselaer, of Claverack, and Kitty Van Rensselaer," also left him. His powerful bu already become somewhat bent when a further blow was of Hamilton. It was the third trial in less than three ilton returned to the old family mansion, but her father months.

The mansion and grounds, after a few years, passed of the heirs, and they have remained outside of the They are now offered for sale "to manufacturers," and it the grounds "will be divided to suit purchasers." The the house must soon live in memory only, unless the S private individual shall prevent its destruction. But no the reminiscences of all that is patriotic to an American the scenes of the Revolution; and no mere razing of a b the sweet and kindly influences that emanated from the it was the home of General Philip Schuyler and his beau

Frederic G. Me

A BUSINESS FIRM IN THE REVOLUTION

BARNABAS DEANE & CO.

Silas Deane was born in Groton, Connecticut, where his grandfather, John Dean, had settled, on a formal invitation from the town, in 1712, to practice his trade as a smith. Silas, the eldest son of John, inherited the homestead and the trade, and earned money to send his son and namesake to Yale College. Silas, the younger, graduated in 1758; taught school for a while; then married Mrs. Mehetable Webb, a prosperous widow of Wethersfield, and established himself in a profitable business there as a merchant and general trader. His father died in 1760. Silas Deane found employment at Wethersfield and in Hartford for his younger brothers, Barnabas and two or three others, who became masters and part-owners of vessels employed in the coasting trade and in voyages to the West Indies and Surinam. By a second marriage, with a daughter of Col. Gurdon Saltonstall, of New London, Silas Deane made further advance in social position and political influence. In the spring of 1773 he was chosen one of the Committee for Correspondence for Connecticut, and soon became widely known as an able, zealous and most efficient promoter of measures for the union of the Colonies and of preparations for resistance to Great Britain. In July, 1774, he was appointed a delegate to the Congress at Philadelphia. His subsequent career belongs to history--though history seems to have cared little for the trust. It has not yet thoroughly wiped out the unfounded suspicions of his integrity and patriotism: it has persistently ignored or barely admitted the "great and important services which as his colleague and constant friend, Dr. Franklin, testified-he rendered to his country, as "a faithful, active, and able minister" to France it has not even been at the pains of ascertaining the date or the place of his death. * More than fifty years after he died in obscurity and poverty-having been to the last refused an opportunity of disproving the

*He died, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 1789, about two o'clock in the afternoon, on board the Boston packet ship on which he had, a few hours previously, embarked for America. See Dr. Edward Bancroft's letter to Dr. Priestley, in Priestley's "Familiar Letters to the Inhabitants of Birmingham," pt. v., p. 54, and the Gentleman's Magazine, for September, 1789 (vol. lviii., p. 866). The biographical dictionaries, encyclopædias, etc., either omit the precise date or fix it as August 23d, "at Deal."

VOL. XII.-No. 1.--2

slander which had branded him a defaulter-Congress made grudging atonement for national ingratitude and injustice by paying to his heirs, without interest, the large balance which an examination of his accounts with the Treasury showed to have been due him since 1778.

When Mr. Deane went to the Congress in the summer of 1774, he intrusted the management of his business at Wethersfield and Hartford to his brother Barnabas. The latter had served an apprenticeship to trade, as master and supercargo in several voyages to the southern colonies and the West Indies, in some of which Col. Jeremiah Wadsworth of Hartford had an interest. He had a good reputation for ability and patriotism, and in April, 1775, he was chosen lieutenant of the Wethersfield company of volunteers, commanded by Capt. John Chester, that marched for Boston after receiving the news of the fighting at Concord and Lexington. When the expedition against Ticonderoga, which was planned at Hartford and of which Silas Deane was one of the chief managers, had succeeded in the capture of the fort and of Crown Point, Lieut. Deane was sent as one of the Connecticut commissioners to provide supplies for the garrison. He was, subsequently, often employed in similar services, by appointment of the Governor and council or by contract with the colonial commissaries. In 1779 he was a thriving merchant, in fair way to a fortune.

The firm of Barnabas Deane & Co. was formed in March or April, 1779, a firm which owes its historical interest to its silent partners rather than to its nominal head. Its origin is briefly mentioned in the last chapter of G. W. Greene's Life of Major-Gen. Nathaniel Greene (vol. iii., p. 518). The expenses of General Greene's position and the irregularity of his pay, had, as his biographer states, made serious inroads upon his small fortune, during the first years of the war: "As quartermaster-general his position was materially changed. How reluctantly he accepted that office, how generously he offered to conduct the military department of it for a year without any other compensation than his regular pay as major-general and the expenses of his military family, has already been seen. But having accepted it, what was he to do with the profits? There were no stocks to invest them in. The government credit was running low. To keep them by him in continental bills which were depreciating daily, involved a present sacrifice of the interest, and a prospective sacrifice of the principal. Nor had he time to give to private business, with such a weight of public business upon his mind. Under these circumstances he formed with Colonel Wadsworth, commissary-general, the firm under the name of Barnabas Deane & Co., he and Wadsworth supplying the greater part of the capital, and Deane undertaking the active management of the business."