Phinney, of Newburg; and graduated at Rutgers' College, New Brunswick, in the summer of 1837. It was while he was in this institution, that an extraordinary revival of religion took place ;* in the progress of which, Dr. B. became personally interested in the matter, and united with the Presbyterian church, under the care of Rev. Joseph H. Jones. He is at this time a member of the Sixth Church of Philadelphia, enjoying the same excellent ministry. Pursuing the study of medicine here, under the direction of Dr. William Harris, and in attendance upon the lectures delivered in the University of Pennsylvania, he took his medical degree in 1839.

In our day, it does not suffice to open an office, advertise, and then sit down to wait for business. Dr. B. took the wiser course of having something to do from the first, even if it presently brought nothing in. He accordingly obtained a suburban district of the City Dispensary, walked his daily rounds, and had at least the satisfaction of healing the sick poor. Where there is diligence, determination, and real fitness for the work, the walks of the profession in good time melt into a figure of speech, and the rising doctor finds himself in a cab. An important auxiliary to the courses of medical lectures in our city, is found in schools or classes of examination, founded by voluntary association of physicians, generally of the younger, always of the more industrious, sort. In one of these Dr. B. took a part; and the "quizzing class" which his partnership established, was well attended, and inferior to none in reputation.

On entering into married life, Dr. B. settled himself in a house in Spruce street near Broad, and had been there about eighteen months, when he was elected, by the board of managers, chief resident physician to the Blockley Hospital of the city and county of Philadelphia. The compliment of the choice is not lessened by the handsome compensation annexed to the office, which Dr. B. accepted, and in which he is now wholly engaged.

They have two children: 1. WILLIAM Harris, born July 29, 1845; 2. CLARA, born January 4, 1847.

* Of which an interesting narrative, drawn up by Rev. Dr. Jones, was published.

K

2. ROBERT Patterson, was born November 15, 1822. His preparatory classical studies were pursued at Mr. Engles's school, from whence he entered the University of Pennsylvania, and graduated in the summer of 1841. His medical course was completed by a degree in the same Institution, in the spring of 1844. He was directly chosen resident surgeon in Wills' Hospital; and at the expiration of the term (one year) was elected to the same post in the Pennsylvania Hospital, and re-elected the year following. Such a tour of practice and experience is justly considered an important sequence to the taking of a degree; and those situations, though the compensation is merely that of free residence, are eagerly contended for, and subject necessarily to rapid rotation. He has commenced practice in this city, with favourable prospects.

3. Of JOHN Campbell we have more to say, because his course is finished. He was born in Chester county, the 3d of May, 1824. Those who visited at his father's house within a few years after, will remember a chubby, ruddy little fellow, not very lively, and compared with the others, not bright; but of a good disposition, and singularly incapable of fear. He was ten years old when the family came to the city, and was put to the same school with his elder brother. His progress in learning was rather discouraging, until after his entering college, where he seemed to take a new impulse; and while the professors were gratified, the parents were animated, to observe that his lessons, especially mathematical, were comprehended, relished, and mastered. Meanwhile he had grown up a fine lad, of agreeable countenance and behaviour, and in disposition unaffected, frank and ardent. The question began to be revolved, for what profession shall we fit him? what is to be his career in life?-a question, the solution of which was already anticipated by higher counsels.

In the summer of 1841, being then seventeen years of age, John was taken with measles, not in a serious form; from which he recovered sufficiently to be abroad. Being fond of swimming, he ventured out to the Schuylkill river, and went in; became exhausted and chilled; returned home, and to his bed, no more to rise from it. An attack of dysentery, too malignant to be met by any remedy of medicine, soon left him in a hopeless case; and the young man, who had hoped by that time to have been in his col

lege class again, was overheard in the sad soliloquy-" this day I must die." The religious impressions which he had received a few months before, during a revival, and which had partly faded, were now powerfully revived; he blamed his own backwardness on that occasion; but there was satisfactory ground to believe that his spiritual exercises were those of a renewed heart. After much suffering, he expired, June 30, 1844; and his remains were deposited in Laurel Hill Cemetery. Thus (vanity of vanities!) some are called to die, just as they are learning to live.

4. MARY Fisher, born November 27, 1826; 5. MATILDA Moore, born April 24, 1829; and 6. WILLIAM Wirt, born December 20, 1831, are with their parents. The first is a member of the church which the family attend. The last is in the Sophomore class in Pennsylvania University.

VI. Thus we have given account of five of the children of Robert Patterson the second, and their descendants; we come now to MARTHA, of whom not much can be recorded. She was born about 1745, and emigrated hither with her parents. While on the passage, an attachment sprung up between her and another young emigrant, named Boyd, to whom she was married, soon after their arrival. They settled near Camden, South Carolina. In the revolutionary war, Boyd took up arms against the mother country, and joined an American company at the time when South Carolina was in the possession of the British. Taking occasion to visit his family, a troop of tories surrounded the house, and himself and one child were murdered. His wife and a female servant escaped; and for them remained the painful task of digging a grave, and interring the dead, without any help. Martha bore it with the spirit of a Christian heroine. Writing of the event to her father's family, and borrowing a figure from the loom (with which, as well as the plough, they were all familiar) she used this remarkable expression:-"The pattern of my chequered web would not have been complete, without those two red stripes.”

She was afterwards married to a person named Norton, and had children; but we have no further information, either of her or them.

VII. ELIZABETH died unmarried, in the summer or fall of 1777, nearly at the same time with her father, and at his house in Abington. She must have been 29 or 30 years of age, at her death.

She is well spoken of, especially for piety; it was to her instructions that Nancy Bias* (a name familiar to all of us) owed her religious impressions; for which she was ever held in the most grateful remembrance.

VIII. JOSEPH was born March 20, 1752. The events of his life were varied and interesting, and himself a remarkable man. From a printed memoir, contained in an Extra of the Pittsburg Christian Herald, of the date of March 17, 1832, written by Rev. Dr. Swift, and from other authentic materials, we condense the following sketch, which, however imperfect, is as large as will be consistent with our general plan.

The first we hear of him, after the initial event, is his running alongside of his father at the plough, inquiring, and hearing the explanation, of the way in which sinners may be saved. The docile lad of ten years could understand and feel it all; and its effects began to be shown by his joining with some other children in a prayer-meeting, held in the secret places of a thorn hedge.

The next important circumstance was his marriage, February 27, 1772; an early one, for both parties, as Joseph was not quite twenty, and Jane Moak was short of eighteen. If in this he ran the risk of uniting himself with one who was not yet pious,† it must have been through the force of an early and strong attachment, a conviction of the suitableness of the match in all other respects, and a hope that they would soon be of the same mind in that particular also. A year had scarcely elapsed, before they resolved to seek their fortune in the new world; following in this respect the example of his elder brother, and anticipating other members of the family. They arrived at Philadelphia early in 1773; and after a short stay in Pennsylvania, settled in Saratoga county, New York. The arrival of his parents the next year, led him to return

*

Nancy Bias, originally a redemptioner from Ireland, was domesticated in our Patterson family for many years. It was to please her that the last child of Robert and Amy Patterson was named Elizabeth; better known to us by her second name, Matilda.

"Blessed be God, that ever his free grace has provided you a better, though a second husband. What a pity that the worst should have been the first; and the infinitely better, kept years standing disregarded." (Letter to his wife, Feb. 1786.)

to Pennsylvania; and from that time until the commencement of the war, he was chiefly employed in teaching school near Germantown. Entering heartily into the republican feeling, he stood amongst the crowd which listened to the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence, at the State-house door; gave up his school; and took a tour of duty as a common soldier. What other narrow escapes he had, we are not informed; but as he was praying one day in a rough shed where the troops were quartered, the rifle of a neighbouring soldier went off by accident, and shivered a board just in the line of his person; a circumstance which doubtless added something to his petitions, and to his unusually clear impressions of the particular providence of God. This last was one of the strongest points in his character, as we shall have occasion to show.

He left the army in 1777, and removed westward to York county; and two years later, still farther west, to the wilderness of Washington county. This latter emigration was made up of a number of pious families from York. A rude church was erected in the woods; but the settlers, held in jeopardy of their lives by crafty and cruel Indians, could not even venture to the house of God without the accompaniment of loaded rifles.

In the fall of 1785, he being then thirty-three years old, it was advised by the Presbytery of Redstone, that he should qualify himself for the gospel ministry. The advice was a sufficient testimony to his fitness, and he took it as a sufficient indication of his duty. In company with a few others, he engaged in a course of preparatory study with Rev. Joseph Smith, a pastor and competent instructor living in the same county, though not in the same neighbourhood. If a man were not sometimes sundered from his wife and children, we might be left without that particular kind of record, both of facts and of character, which is generally the most intimate and accurate. The letters which Mr. Patterson wrote home, at this time, have been preserved,* and bear testimony to

* A transcript of these, and of some others, is in possession of his nephew and namesake, Mr. Joseph P. Engles, of this city, to whom I am indebted for the perusal of them.