260 BALCH — THE FIRST "ASSEMBLY ACCOUNT." [April 18, 



THE FIRST '^\SSEMBLY ACCOUNT" 

 —PHILADELPHIA, 1748. 



BY THOMAS WILLING BALCH. 

 {Read April IS, ld02,) 



John Swift, a Manager and the Treasurer of the First Assemblies, 

 was the eldest child of John Swift and Mary White, his wife, of 

 London. He was born in 1720. He went to England together 

 with his younger brother, Joseph Swift, where they visited their 

 uncle, John White, of Croydon, now a part of London. Return- 

 ing to America in 1747 he was, as a merchant of Philadelphia, very 

 successful. He was a member of the Common Council from 1757 

 to 1776, and Collector of the Port of Philadelphia from 1762 to 

 1772. During the latter part of his life he lived at ''Croydon 

 Lodge," in Bucks County, where he died in 1802 and was buried 

 in Christ Church burying ground, Philadelphia, January 14, 1803. 



The Philadelphia Assemblies began in 1748, only five years after 

 the organization of this Society, They are, I believe, the oldest 

 dancing organization in the country, their only serious rival, the 

 Saint-Cecelia Society, of Charleston, dating from several years 

 later. During the winter of 1748, six Assemblies were given under 

 the management of four Directors : Lynford Lardner, John Inglis, 

 John Wallace and John Swift. There is a tradition in the Swift 

 family that the first meeting at which the Assemblies originated 

 was held at John Swift's house. There were fifty-nine subscribers 

 in all, and as an invitation was extended to the families of every 

 head of a family who subscribed, probably some two hundred 

 persons were eligible to attend the dances. The subscription was 

 two pounds sterling. In 1879, ^^' Charles Swift Riche Hildeburn, 

 a descendant of John Swift, the Manager and the Treasurer, and 

 Mr. Richard Penn Lardner, a descendant of the first Lynford 

 Lardner, the Manager, presented to the Historical Society of Penn- 

 sylvania two documents intimately connected with the First Assem- 

 blies. Mr. Hildeburn gave the rules to govern the dances, and 

 Mr. Lardner gave the list of the original subscribers. 



A third manuscript relic of those gay festivities is the account 

 book kept by John Swift. It descended through the lineal descend- 

 ants of John Swift to that learned and accomplished antiquarian 

 and bibliophile, the late Mr. Hildeburn, a member of this Society. 



