132 FACTS RELATING TO GROTON, MASSACHUSETTS. 



Season is late & this a work of great importance, I entreat & request, 

 that you will use the utmost dispatch, attention and fidelity in the 

 execution of it. The necessity of acting with a proper degree of 

 caution & secresy is too apparent to need recommendation. 



You will keep an Account of your expences, and upon your return, 

 will be rewarded in a suitable manner for the fatigue of your Journey 

 & the services you render your country, by conducting & discharg- 

 ing this business with expedition & fidelity. 



Given under my hand this 24 day of Nov' 1775 



G° Washington 

 [Modern indorsement] 



Autograph of Washington, Commission of Moses Child, 1775 



DAVID HENRY FELCH. 



David Henry Felch is the fourth son of Benjamin 

 Franklin and Mary Elizabeth (Bennett) Felch, and was born 

 at Groton, on September 19, 1856. He attended school at 

 Lawrence Academy, first, in the year 1868, during the latter 

 part of the preceptorship of the Reverend William Pope 

 Aiken; and, later, at the opening of the present main build- 

 ing in the autumn of 187 1, where he was under the charge of 

 the Reverend James Fletcher. On July 4, 1868, the former 

 building, a structure of wood known as the Academy, was 

 burned to the ground. This was replaced by the present 

 brick-and-stone edifice, which was dedicated with appropriate 

 services, on June 29, 1871. Mr. Felch graduated at Lawrence 

 Academy in 1872, after which he passed one term at Phillips 

 Academy, Andover, and later a short time at Phillips Exeter 

 Academy. Next he entered Bowdoin College where he 

 graduated in the Class of 1874. Subsequently for a short 

 period of time he was employed by the American Express 

 Company, after which he studied law in the office of Charles 

 Sidney Hayden, of Fitchburg, later Mayor of that city, and 

 he also took a year's course at the Harvard Law School. He 

 was admitted to the bar in 1880, and immediately afterward 

 went west, establishing himself as a lawyer at Cheney in the 



