portance also went down. There was no panic after the war of 1812. There was a depression of business, which increased from 1812 or 1813 up to 1819 or 1820. Specie payments were suspended in August and September, 1814, and from that time for many years paper money and a shinplaster circulation formed the money circulation-notes being put out for as small sums as six and a quarter cents. The Mexican war took place in 1846-48, and there was no panic during that period or for some time afterward. In fact, gold was more plentiful then than it ever was before or has been since. There were panics in 1857 and in 1873.

The Presbyterian Church, corner of Coates and Second streets (p. 481), was erected in 180-. My father was then in the counting-house of Robert Ralston, who was the chief instrument in having it built. My father collected most of the money subscribed toward it, and most of the pew-rents. It was opened by a sermon from Dr. Green. It was at first in connection with the Second Presbyterian Church, whose ministers, Dr. Sproat, Dr. Green, and afterward Dr. Janeway, preached alternately in the "Campington Church," and then in this till Rev. Mr. Patterson was called as its pastor. This house was sold and pulled down to make place for the stores now standing on the old site, the congregation having built the new church on Redwood street, where Mr. Patterson preached, died, and is buried-in front of it.

Coates's Burial-ground, p. 482.—In the year 1746, William Coates owned two hundred and fifty-six acres of land in one body, and appropriated a small portion of the tract as a place of deposit of the mortal remains of his immediate family and their descendants. "The spot chosen for the graveyard was well secluded from the gaze of men, being surrounded with hickory woods on either side, and hence the primitive name of Coates street, which was the southern boundary of the original plot, was Hickory lane, as may be seen by inspecting deeds on record. William Coates and wife were the first to occupy the spot, and their immediate posterity" "for several generations." Although William Coates gave the whole area of Brown street to the public as a gratuity, his burial-ground was made the subject of so many county charges that it was levied on by the sheriff and ordered to be sold for the debt. "The property finally, under order of the court, was sold for over $12,000, although its full value in 1746 was not probably $50." "After paying the debt the proceeds were divided among the heirs of the proprietor, so as to leave $2000 to erect a monument over the remains of Coates and his wife." The remains have been removed and houses erected, so that the "thousands who pass along Third and Brown streets will be as ignorant of Coates's burying-ground as if it had never been." Some soldiers were buried here during

the Revolution who died of small-pox, etc., which accounts for military buttons being occasionally found here.

South End, p. 483.-The planting of cannon along the streets near the wharves has been a custom in this country from the time whereof "the memory of man runneth not to the contrary." We presume there is no person, however old, in Philadelphia who does not remember the cannon along the wharves from his earliest childhood. We have seen views of the Delaware front taken before 1790 in which cannon are plainly visible. They were probably used in merchant-ships and privateers during the Revolution, the war of 1812, and afterward. They were sold as old iron, and, being less destructible than wooden posts, were sold to City Councils and to the district commissioners, and placed where they now are.

Anthony Cuthbert (p. 484), now dead many years. His son Allen, who was living in 1856, had a silver cup which was formerly fastened by a chain to a pump up town, which belonged to the Wilkins family to which he was connected, and has descended down to him through about two hundred years, having the names of all the parties through whom it descended to him engraved on it. He had also the balance-wheel of Fitch's steam engine. He owned a portion of the wharves between Lombard and South, where were once his father's, McCall's, and other ship-yards.

Western Commons, p. 485.-Fifty years ago there was a small market-house on Broad street, extending from the north side of Chestnut street to Centre Square. It was known as the "Sunday Market," and was used for the sale of provisions on the morning of that day until eight o'clock. On the west side of Broad street were six or eight dwellings, which have since been taken. down or altered. They were at that time principally occupied by Irish hand-loom check-weavers. Porter, who was hung on Bush Hill for being concerned in robbing the Kenderton and Reading mail-coaches, at one time boarded and worked at that business in one of them. Mr. Frederick Helmbold kept a hotel and a public horse-market-where a horse could be purchased from one dollar to a thousand dollars-at the south-east corner of Market street and Centre Square. The old Tivoli Theatre was on the opposite side of Market street, about where the Golden Horse Tavern now is. The Bolivar House or Garden was at the north-west corner of the square and Market street. The buildings were at the back end of a grass-plot, toward Filbert street, extending to Schuylkill Eighth (now Fifteenth) street. The lot was surrounded by Lombardy poplar trees. It was quite a resort for nine-pin, shuffle-board, and quoit players. It was kept by a Mr. Evans. The old Centre building was used as a watch-house and as a dépôt for oil burned in the street-lamps. When the building was taken down in 1828, a portion of the old marble in it was re-dressed, and was used in erecting the front of the Unitarian Church, corner of Tenth and Locust streets.

FIFTY YEARS AGO

IN THE SOUTH-WESTERN PART OF THE CITY.

A contributor to the Sunday Dispatch wrote as follows about Moyamensing:

How well I remember the long, dusty walk, fifty years agoabout the year 1830-over the unpaved streets, past the old Almshouse, which occupied the whole square between Tenth and Eleventh and Spruce and Pine streets! How often have I peeped through a knot-hole in the old whitewashed fence to see the living curiosity of those days-an "idiot with a horse's head"! Then down Eleventh, by the "Black Lodge"❞—a building below Pine street celebrated for holding grand balls and parties for ladies and gentlemen not considered by any means respectable to Lombard street, where I looked at the city carpenter-shops. They were upon the south side of that street, on a lot running from Tenth to Eleventh street, and they occupied in depth at least one-third of the square to South street. The remainder of the square was enclosed with a low, dilapidated board fence. Adjoining the carpenter-shop there was an old whitewashed frame stable, which was opposite Johnson's inkfactory. There was an old graveyard on the south side of Lombard street, which extended from Ninth to Tenth street. Here the skulls and bones of the dead were kicked about the street during the process of digging cellars for a row of houses afterward built upon the lot. I remember that an old man happened to be passing at the time, and he said to the laborers, "Some years ago an aged Revolutionary hero died in the poor-house and was buried with the honors of war. His grave was just about where you are digging; I shall wait and see you remove it." In a few moments a coffin was exposed. "That's it! that's it!" said the old gentleman; and the lid was removed, but no soldier was to be seen. The coffin contained two logs of wood. "Well! well!" said the old man, "this is the way we are taxed to bury wood. What wickedness! what wickedness!" And he passed on.

On the south-east corner of Tenth street and the first little street below Lombard there stood an old whitewashed two-story frame house. This was the schoolhouse of Billy O'Morrin. On the north-east corner of South and Tenth streets, there was a double yellow frame tavern. On the opposite (south-east) .orner of South street, running through to Shippen, and occupying onethird of the square toward Ninth, was "Lebanon." The South street front, and Tenth street for about one hundred feet to a

shed, were enclosed by an open fence; a row of elm trees was inside, and another row was on the line of the curb on Tenth street. From this point to Shippen street there was a high board fence, and large buttonwood trees were growing on both sides of the road. The first building was a two-story brick, which stood about eighteen feet back from the line of Tenth street. Attached to it, on the same line on the south, there was a one-story frame house, with a door that opened under the shed, which reached to Tenth street, where there was a gateway opening on said street opposite to a pump. From this door in the frame house there was another gate in the shed and a brick pavement five feet wide, which led around to the front door of the brick house, which was the main entrance of the hotel. On the east of this brick house there was a two-story frame building, and another, making the fourth, connecting all in one square building, with communicating doors and staircases inside and out. On the east side of this cluster of houses, near the northern line, a door opened under a huge "candle tree," which shaded this part of the yard. Behind this tree there was a high open fence, which ran across some forty feet or more to a brick house three stories high, built on the east line of the property, but facing the other buildings. There was a large double gateway in the fence close to the house on the east, which, when closed, separated the garden from the front yard. This yard was used for stabling, having sheds and posts for fastening horses. Attached to this brick house there was a long row of sheds, composing a souphouse, kitchen, wash-house, shuffle-board, and tenpin-alleys. În the soup-house there was a door which opened on a large vacant lot, where the poor of the district of Moyamensing were supplied through the winter season with soup, bread, and wood. The flower-garden was back of the main buildings, between the row of sheds and Tenth street. It consisted of two pieces of ground neatly enclosed with a low, open paling fence. The gardens were prettily laid out with gravelled walks and beds of flowers. Large clusters of lilacs, snowballs, and a variety of fruit trees were growing there. Beyond these two little gardens there was an open green space nicely shaded with white mulberry, a few willows, and a row of high cherry trees. On the back end of the lot, back of the tenpin-alley, there stood a famous old locust tree, measuring twenty-four feet around the base

In

From the main entrance to the brick house (first referred to) there was a gravelled walk five feet wide extending to the gate, about fifty feet north, on South street, several plank steps above the grade. Over this gate there was, forty years ago, a plain sign "Lebanon." Over the door in the brick house was a halfcircle sign. The letters were in gold, and the background was painted blue sprinkled with glass dust. Twenty feet to the east of the steps there was a large oak tree which stood on the foot

way. It had attached to a limb, reaching out to the street, portions of an old-and no doubt the original-sign.

Leaving Lebanon and passing out the gate on Shippen street, we noticed several blue frames on the opposite side of that street, and a little row of blue frames fronting on Ninth street near Fitzwater. The other part of this square was enclosed with a post-and-rail fence, where cattle were grazing. With the exception of a row of houses on Tenth street, this lot is now surrounded by the brick wall and iron railing which enclose Ronaldson's Cemetery. On South street, between Tenth and Eleventh, south side, about halfway between the two streets, there was also a little row of frame houses, stabling, etc. One of these frames was the "Wren's Nest." Over the doorway a square sign was nailed to the house, upon which was a tolerably well-executed picture of a wren perched on the top of a little house-like box, holding in its bill a worm, while a brood of young birds were stretching their open mouths out of the doorway of the bird-house. This tavern or shop was noted for selling cordials, sweetened wines, and beer at one cent per glass. The other portion of this square, except Jacob Sherman's carpenter-shop on Eleventh street, was partly enclosed, and had upon it, near to Shippen street, a large, deep pond of water, where the idle boys of the neighborhood floated about on rafts in summer-time and skated in winter.

Beyond Shippen street, extending from Tenth street west to Thirteenth and south to Christian, was a small farm. A board fence surrounded it. In the centre there stood a yellow frame house, with outbuildings, cow-sheds, stables, a pump, and watertroughs for cattle.

A crowd of fifty or one hundred persons once assembled near a little one-story stone house surrounded by decayed apple trees to the east of Tenth street, where Catharine street now crosses, to witness two dirty negro wenches fight out an old quarrel. They "stripped to the buff," having nothing on them but skirts tied around their waists. They took their positions by the side of their seconds (two negro men) inside of a ring composed of negroes and Irish, and began the battle. Such thumping, scratching, and pulling were never surpassed. Several times they separated, took long drinks of gin, and then returned to their brutal work, until they cut and bit each other most frightfully, and until the blood was flowing from their many wounds. Finally, they clenched and fell to the earth, tearing each other like savages. One of them then, in an agonizing voice, cried, "Enough! enough!" They were then lifted up and assisted by their friends to clothe themselves, after which they moved off toward their miserable dens in Small street. After witnessing this horrid sight I crossed over the common to Tidmarsh (now Carpenter) street. A whitewashed fence ran along the south side from Eleventh street to beyond the line of Tenth. On the line