8 SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD 
body David Rittenhouse was chairman and Samuel Potts 
treasurer. The land along the Schuylkill river was divided 
among the associates, one of them being Samuel Baird, 
probably appointed through Thomas Potts to superintend 
the mining or to lay out the boundary lines, as he was by 
profession a surveyor. ‘The death of Thomas Potts, 
about 1785, was a great blow to the company. In order 
to meet the need of funds an act was passed authorizing 
a lottery of $42,000.00 which was drawn in 1788, but the 
Nicholases, Delany, and Samuel Baird appear to have 
become discouraged and before the patents were issued 
had sold out their rights to William and Luke Morris, 
in 1788. 
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The family of Rebecca Potts Baird owned the region 
in which the Continental army was encamped in the 
winter of 1778. The Valley Forge was the property of 
her brother-in-law, Colonel Dewees, in whose home at 
this time she was living, while Washington occupied the 
home of her cousin on the opposite side of Valley Creek. 
During that long winter Mrs. Washington taught her 
how to knit, and gave her a set of silver knitting needles 
which were often shown to her youthful grandson. She 
was the granddaughter of William Pyewell, of Phila- 
delphia, one of the earliest wardens of Christ Church, 
Philadelphia, and also of Thomas Potts (1), who came from 
Wales to Scranton, Pennsylvania, early in the eighteenth 
century and was a pioneer in the mining industry of the 
colony. 
Professor Baird’s mother belonged to an old Phila- 
delphia family; on the one side, as descended from 
Nicholas Scull, the friend of Franklin, a member of the 
