476 APPENDIX. 



"Merlin" — British sliips of war — encountering our navy, ex])lockd in 

 the midst of the engagement. 



What part in the rupture of the British Empire Mr. Blackwell took, 

 may be surmised from the i)art which we have already said was taken 

 by his father, Col. Jacob Blackwell, in New York, and from the indig- 

 nities and injury suffered by him from the British invaders on Long 

 Island. The mission at Gloucester was of course at an end. The 

 Church of England in America had been laid prostrate by the war. 

 Not to be useless in his sacred office, Mr. Blackwell joined the Ameri- 

 can army as a Chaplain. He had preached before it, however, anterior 

 to his official connection with it. The venerable annalist of Phila- 

 delphia, John Fanning Watson, in a letter before me, dated June 23, 

 1854, says: 



Dr. Robert Blackwell was once settled as a minister at an Episcopal church between 

 Haddonfield and Mount Holly,* and while there preached a sermon to the American 

 troops at Haddonfield, as was once told me by an elderly lady, one of his parishioners, 

 who said it was much approved. 



Mr. Blackwell followed the fortunes of our war through the gloomy 

 winter of 1777-78, exercising the double office of both Chaplain and 

 Surgeon to the suffering troops at the Valley Forge. An original cer- 

 tificate in the handwriting of Brigadier-General Anthony Wayne thus 

 testifies to the fact, and shows that the surgical attainments of his 

 youth came — though, probably, in a way little anticipated by him when 

 acquiring them — to excellent and most Christian results. It thus reads: 



I do certify that Dr. Robert Blackwell was Chaplain to the First Pennsylvania 

 Brigade, and Surgeon to one of the regiments in the year 1778, and that he took and 

 subscribed the oath as directed by Congress before me at the Valley Forge, in common 

 with other officers of the Line. 



Given at Philadelphia, this loth October, 1783. 



Anthony Wayne, B. G. 



[Endorsed in Dr. Blackwell's handwriting.] 



General Wayne's Certificate that R. B. hath taken the oath of allegiance. 



We have no record testimony how long Dr. Blackwell's connection 

 with the army continued. As he was with it both as Chaplain and 

 Surgeon — "an officer of the Line" — in the year 1778, and at the Valley 

 Forge, we may assume, alrnost with certainty, that he followed it on its 

 sudden departure from Pennsylvania to overtake the flying British, 

 and was with it at Monmouth, and afterwards. Indeed, in the absence 

 of anything whatever to show that he left it before, the presumption 



* Cole's Church answers this description. 



