JEREMIAH SULLIVAN BLACK.

1810-1883.

BY

MARGARET CENTER KLINGELSMITH,

Librarian of the Biddle Memorial Law Library of the University of

Pennsylvania.

HE Mountain Cavalry of Somerset, Pennsylva

TH

nia, were to have a celebration and oration on the Fourth of July, 1830. This little town of about one thousand inhabitants lay between the peaks of the Blue Ridge and the Alleghany mountains, surrounded by peculiarly wild and beautiful scenery. It was situated in a cold and rugged region, which had given of its own nature to the race who lived there, for out of it had come many men of certain marked characteristics who had become known as the "Frosty sons of Thunder." Sons also of the men of '76 they were, to whom the events of those historic days were familiar household tales, heard a hundred times from the lips of the men who had lived in, and were a part of, them. So when they looked about for the man among them all who could best put into words all the feelings which rose in them at the thought of the days when men were lifted above the struggle for the daily living and

died for an idea, they found the man they sought in the grandson of a captain of the Revolution. From the lips and at the home of that grandfather he had heard the tales and absorbed the spirit of that earlier time. Born January 10th, 1810, he was but twenty years of age, yet had already been admitted to the bar. During his student years he had attracted the attention and won the respect of the townspeople by his contributions to the local newspapers; contributions so remarkable in tone and execution that it was natural to turn to their author to fill the place of orator on the great day. Scotch, Irish, and German blood flowed in the veins of the youthful speaker, but the swift alchemy of American life had fused these elements into a character that-unformed as yet was to become absolutely, typically American, and to the men of the mountain who listened to him that day he gave a speech full of American vigor and hopefulness, prophetic both of what he was to become, and of the future of that country he was to serve-perhaps to save-in her time of greatest need.

The ancestors of Jeremiah Sullivan Black had come from Ireland and from Germany. They cleared land and settled upon it; they found a wilderness and they left, if not a paradise, at least as beautiful, as fertile, as pleasing a countryside as one need care to look upon. From them he inherited a love for farming which was a real passion, and to which he gave the devotion of a lifetime. From