The Three Secretaries 159 



who was the first to discover the valuable properties of an- 

 thracite coal, and who interested Franklin and Rittenhouse 

 in devising methods for its use as a fuel. Samuel Baird's 

 father, Thomas Baird, was of Scotch- Irish origin ; he came 

 to the colony before the middle of the century, and following 

 the current of westward travel, settled as a frontiersman in 

 the beautiful Cumberland Valley, near the present site of 

 Chambersburg, the westernmost of the Pennsylvania settle- 

 ments, and at the very verge of civilization. His wife, Mary 

 Douglass, was of the same race. At the close of the Revolu- 

 tion, her husband having died, she, with all her children but 

 the eldest son, joined the train of emigrants which for a quar- 

 ter of a century she had seen wending westward past her 

 door, and removed to the new territory of Kentucky, and 

 later to Fort Vincennes, Indiana, where she was still living 

 in 1785. 



His father's mother, Rebecca Potts (1753-1830), was the 

 daughter of Thomas Potts (1721-62), of Colebrookdale, and 

 granddaughter of Thomas Potts, who came from Wales to 

 Germantown early in the eighteenth century, and was a 

 pioneer in the development of the American iron industry. 

 His descendants owned the region in which the Continental 

 Army was encamped in 1778. The Valley Forge belonged 

 to Colonel Dewees, the husband of Rebecca Potts' sister, in 

 whose house she was living at that time, while Washington 

 occupied the home of her uncle on the other side of Valley 

 Creek. During that long winter Mrs. Washington taught 

 her how to net, and gave her a silver netting-needle, still 

 treasured by the family. Her mother was the daughter of 

 William Pyewell (1685-1769), of Philadelphia, one of the 

 earliest wardens of Christ Church, and her grandmothers 

 were Magdelen Robeson, descended from Swedish colonists 

 on the Delaware, and Mary Rutter, of Huguenot origin. 



