APPENDIX. 469 



viction entertained in America of the impolitic and unjust character 

 of the ministerial measures. He was subsequently elected to represent 

 the important county just above named in the Provincial Convention 

 of New York, a body which exercised great influence at this crisis and 

 afterwards. While attending to his public duties in New York, his 

 estates on Long Island were seized by the commander of the British 

 forces, which had recently proved victorious in that region, and con- 

 fiscated. "At the venerable stone house in Ravenswood," says the 

 annalist of Newtown, Mr. Riker, writing a. d. 1852, "may still be seen 

 the mark of the broad arrow {^) branded upon the front door by the 

 British, denoting that it was the property of a rebel, and as such confis- 

 cated to the Crown. Colonel Blackwell, however, recovered his estates 

 a short time before his death ; an event which occurred October 23, 

 1780, and which," says Mr. Riker, "the privations and pecuniary 

 losses he suffered from the enemy are believed to have hastened."* 



Colonel Blackwell married Frances, daughter of Joseph Sackett, Esq., 

 of Queen's county, one of the Justices under the Crown for the Court 

 of Common Pleas, and Hannah, his wife, daughter of Richard Alsop. 

 By this marriage he had issue, the immediate subject of our notice. 



The Rev. Robert Blackwell, D. D., was born May 6, 1748. We 

 have no certain knowledge where he received his primary education ; 

 probably in part at the English and classical school, which we have just 

 mentioned that his father was instrumental in establishing. From the 

 work of the Rev. Samuel Davies Alexander, entitled "Princeton Col- 

 lege during the Eighteenth Century," we learn that he was graduated 

 in the venerable college just named, with a bachelor's degree, a. d. 1768. 

 King's College conferred on him, a. d. 1770, the same degree, and 

 Princeton again the Master's, a. d. 17S2. He seems to have been im- 

 bued with serious impressions from early years. His first studies, how- 

 ever, were apparently towards physic. 



There was no theological school of the Church of England in the 

 colonies. It is probable that Mr. Blackwell may have read divinity 

 imder the care of Dr. Samuel Auchmuty, Rector of Trinity Church, 

 New York, or possibly under that of Mr. Seabury. While reading 

 divinity he appears to have passed about two years as a tutor in the 

 family of Colonel Frederick Philipse, a man of pre-eminent social im- 

 portance in the colony of New York, partly in virtue of merits all his 

 own, and partly from the vast wealth and political importance of his 

 father, long a representative in the General Assembly of the colony, 

 and proprietor by hereditary title of the Yonkers plantation, the whole 



* Annals, 354-358 ; 175-181; 194. 



