I9I2.] BALCH— SOME FORMER MEMBERS. 591 



his garden. When the War for Independence broke out, he took 

 sides with the colonists and having gained in his youth a knowledge 

 of surgery, he ofifered his services to the cause, and served all 

 through the trying winter at Valley Forge, as surgeon to the First 

 Pennsylvania Line, having received his commission from Anthony 

 Wayne. He died at Philadelphia, in 1831, having been a notable 

 figure in the life of the city. 



Another divine who was a member, was the Rev. John Wither- 

 spoon, of the Church of Scotland; he was elected on April 21, 1769. 

 President of the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University, 

 Witherspoon not only impressed his mark upon the youth of many 

 of the leading men of our country in his work at the head of a 

 great institution of learning, but also took an active part in the 

 events, both in his own colony of New Jers'ey and in those of the 

 Confederation, that secured our admission to the brotherhood of 

 nations. Born at Yester, near Edinburgh, Scotland, February 5, 

 1722, the son of a pastor of the Scottish Church, and descended 

 through his mother from John Knox, Witherspoon was educated 

 at the University of Edinburgh, and became a minister of the 

 Churchof Scotland in 1745 at Perth. Of an active and literary turn 

 of mind, he published in 1764 a work on " Regeneration," and three 

 volumes of "Essays" ; he received the same year the degree of D.D. 

 from the University of Aberdeen. Calls came to him from Dundee, 

 Dublin, Rotterdam and the College of New Jersey, all of which he 

 declined. A few years afterwards, however, he accepted a renewed 

 invitation from the College of New Jersey to become its president, 

 and after publishing two volumes of sermons, he sailed for the New 

 World in May, 1768. His inaugural address at Princeton on August 

 17 of the same year, of the union of piety with science, was deliv- 

 ered in Latin. At once he set himself to the task of developing the 

 college. He raised money, procured books and instruments, among 

 the latter the first orrery made by Rittenhouse. He said he had 

 " become an American the moment he landed." Certainly, no one 

 was more resolute in the cause of liberty. In 1774, just before the 

 beginning of the active strife between the colonies and the mother 

 land, he issued in Philadelphia a work on " Considerations on the 



