ket©f^e§ ir^ ^PO§e 



f?o€>erf J^eriiLerSLine. 



S FAR as the writer can learn, this young soldier 

 was the only native of Bucks County who lost his 

 ^^ ^^^ life in the battle of Gettysburg. This, irrespective 

 ^considerations of kin and friendship, makes his short career 

 entitled to record; and there are other reasons for writing this. 

 Thousands of the voters of to-day were born since the war. 

 They know nothing of this terrible time, save as they hear of 

 it through the survivors of the struggle. They who were 

 opposed to the war, and those seekers for office who are anxious 

 to keep from their number such claimants for popular favor as 

 men who had saved their country from ruin, are telling these 

 young men that the war being over, the issues that brought it 

 on are dead, and recollections of the animosities of the strife 

 should be buried with it. This involves the forgetfulness of the 

 participants in that strife. The survivors of these are getting 

 fewer and fewer. Their deeds should not be hidden by plausible 

 platitudes. Three hundred thousand of their comrades Avent 

 down to death, without hope of reward, that we might have a 

 united country. Typical of these was Robert Kenderdine. 



He was born in 1841. In his school days, as well as after- 

 ward, he was a diligent student and reader. Before the age 

 of nineteen he was a writer of verses and descriptive prose, 

 and a participant in those debates which of old were common 

 at the cross-roads school houses, and in which, for his age and 



(317) 



