8 SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD 



body David Rittenhouse was chairman and Samuel Potts 

 treasurer. The land along the Schuylkill river was divided 

 among the associates, one of them being Samuel Baird, 

 probably appointed through Thomas Potts to superintend 

 the mining or to lay out the boundary lines, as he was by 

 profession a surveyor. The death of Thomas Potts, 

 about 1785, was a great blow to the company. In order 

 to meet the need of funds an act was passed authorizing 

 a lottery of $42,000.00 which was drawn in 1788, but the 

 Nicholases, Delany, and Samuel Baird appear to have 

 become discouraged and before the patents were issued 

 had sold out their rights to William and Luke Morris, 

 in 1788. 



The family of Rebecca Potts Baird owned the region 

 in which the Continental army was encamped in the 

 winter of 1778. The Valley Forge was the property of 

 her brother-in-law, Colonel Dewees, in whose home at 

 this time she was living, while Washington occupied the 

 home of her cousin on the opposite side of Valley Creek. 

 During that long winter Mrs. Washington taught her 

 how to knit, and gave her a set of silver knitting needles 

 which were often shown to her youthful grandson. She 

 was the granddaughter of William Pyewell, of Phila- 

 delphia, one of the earliest wardens of Christ Church, 

 Philadelphia, and also of Thomas Potts (i), who came from 

 Wales to Scranton, Pennsylvania, early in the eighteenth 

 century and was a pioneer in the mining industry of the 

 colony. 



Professor Baird's mother belonged to an old Phila- 

 delphia family; on the one side, as descended from 

 Nicholas Scull, the friend of Franklin, a member of the 



