LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE 



OF THE 



REV. WILLIAM SMITH, D. D. 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 



Dr. Smith Preaches in the Churches near the Valley Forge — His Cat- 

 tle AND Horses are taken for the Army, but Restitution or Com- 

 pensation IS Honorably made by Order of General Washington — 

 Makes Observations, along with Rittenhouse and other Men of 

 Science, on an Eclipse of the Sun — Preaches on St. John's Day, before 

 Washington and the Society of Free Masons. 



As the reader will remember, the last chapter of Volume I. of 

 this work left the British in the possession of Philadelphia, and 

 Dr. Smith and part of his family residing on Barbadoes Island, 

 seventeen miles above the city, within an hour's ride of the Valley 

 Forge. On some occasions during the winter he preached in the 

 churches in the Valley and at Radnor ; both churches, as all others 

 in the State, having been vacated permanently or temporarily b\- 

 their rectors. The Rev. Mr. White, afterwards the Bishop, who 

 was chaplain of Congress at Yorktown, the Rev. Mr. Blackunell, 

 afterwards the well-known Dr. Blackwell, who was chaplain to the 

 First Pennsylvania Regiment and surgeon to one of the regiments 

 at the Valley Forge, and my ancestor. Dr. Smith, were, at this 

 time, I presume, the only three Episcopal clergymen in the State. 

 Mr. Currie, in Chester county, had been for some time pretty much 

 superannuated, and was now, I think, not in the Commonwealth. 

 Mr. White was with the Congress, during the occupation, at York- 

 town. Mr. Blackwell, in his double office of spiritual and bodily 

 physician, was closely occupied on the hills and in the huts of the. 



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