January, 1923 
Baron Steuben drilled, trained and re¬ 
organized the Continental Army, making 
it a well disciplined body of troops, 
I which later gave such good accounts of 
i itself. To-day some of the old breast¬ 
works and other remains of the Army’s 
; encampment and occupation are still to 
he seen. The house used by General 
Washington as his headquarters has 
been restored and is now a museum. In¬ 
cidentally it might be mentioned there is 
now at Valley Forge a beautiful Wash¬ 
ington Memorial Chapel, containing a 
mosaic of Washington, with thirteen 
memorial windows depicting American 
history, conceived and carried into ful¬ 
fillment by the Rev. W. Herbert Burk. 
An advertisement in the Pennsylvania 
Gazette of Feb. 2, 1791, four years 
after Gen. Washington visited “Widow 
Moore’s a-fishing,” tells about the an¬ 
cient homestead. It states: 
“Moore Hall. To be rented. Mansion 
House, farm and mill, in the township 
of Charlestown, in the county of Ches¬ 
ter, situated on the River Schuylkill, 
distant twenty-three miles from Phila¬ 
delphia. Two hundred acres. Mill on 
a never-failing stream called Pickering. 
Feb. 1, 1791.” 
The “Widow Moore’’ lived three 
miles from Valley Forge. Her husband, 
who died at the 
close of the War 
for Independence, 
was characterized 
as “the most con¬ 
spicuous and hero¬ 
ic figure in the 
county of Chester’’ 
in his day and 
generation. 
Now, let us con¬ 
cern ourselves for 
a moment with the 
fishing party, a 11 
old friends. 
There was Gou- 
verneur Morris, 
who resembled tbe 
first President so 
much that he 
stood as the model 
1 » for Houdon’s fig¬ 
ure of Washing¬ 
ton. When the 
Continental Army 
was at Valley 
Forge, Governeur 
Morris spent some 
time there as one 
of the committee 
that had been ap¬ 
pointed to exam¬ 
ine, with Gen. 
Washington, into 
the conditions of 
the troops. He 
was also chairman 
of the committee 
of five in 1779 whose duty it was to 
consider dispatches from the American 
commissioners in Europe, and whose 
report formed the basis of the treaty 
of peace. Moore calls him “the in¬ 
spired penman of the Federal Constitu- 
j tion.” 
Then there was Robert Morris, the 
financier of the War for Independence, 
who gave to the Government the full 
credit of the firm of Willing and Morris, 
“No good fisherman was ever a bad 
man, and history will bear out the 
assertion that the best Presidents 
have been the best fishermen.”'— 
From the dedication of “Washington 
as an Angler, with Extracts from 
His Diaries, 1787-1739,” by the late 
George H. Moore, librarian of the 
old Lenox Library of New York. 
at the beginning of the Revolution one 
of the largest and most prosperous 
among the commercial houses of the 
“City of Brotherly Love.” And Mrs. 
Robert Morris, whose beautiful smile 
Gilbert Stuart, the foremost painter of 
his time, preserved in a portrait. 
Another was General Philemon Dick¬ 
inson, whose country seat, “The Her¬ 
mitage,” was the resort of distinguished 
men who passed through Trenton. It 
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veloped against Gen. Washington, which 
threatened to be formidable. Conway 
wrote anonymous letters containing false 
assertions and spoke untruths against 
General Washington designed to injure 
him as Commander-in-Chief of the 
Continental Army. Cadwalader chal¬ 
lenged Conway, fought him, and shot 
him through the mouth. 
Conway fell on his face, but raised 
himself and remarked to his adversary: 
“You fire with most deliberation, Gen¬ 
eral, and certainly with a good deal of 
effect.” 
Conway, in what he thought were his 
last moments, wrote to Washington an 
apolog ; y “for having done, written, or 
said anything disagreeble to your Ex¬ 
cellency.” 
Colonel Samuel Ogden, another of the 
fishing party, was a worthy representa¬ 
tive of the grand army of the American 
Revolution, who helped to lay the foun¬ 
dation of the Republic. Of the last 
member of the fishing party, the “Widow 
Moore,” her husband, in his will, wrote 
of her—“happy woman, a pattern of her 
sex, and worthy the relationship she 
bears to the Right Honorable and noble 
family from whence she sprang.” 
It is regrettable 
that Washington 
did not write 
something about 
the fishing during 
that week, but dis¬ 
tinguished as the 
party was, no rec¬ 
ords are available. 
Did the party 
catch trout, black 
bass, rock bass, 
white perch, yel¬ 
low perch or pick¬ 
erel, or all of 
them ? 
But of another 
fishing trip de¬ 
scribed briefly by 
Washington, we 
have some side¬ 
lights. Let the 
Father of his 
Country he heard 
first. This fishing 
trip was made 
when General 
Washington was 
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Roosevelt and Dr. Lambert off for a bear hunt 
was this same Gen. Dickinson, who near 
Somerset Court House, N. J., Jan. 20, 
1777, with 400 raw troops wacled waist- 
deep through a river to make the at¬ 
tack, an attack that was successful. 
Dickinson was second to General John 
Cadwalader in his duel with General 
Thomas Conway. In 1778, a cabal de¬ 
on "great northern 
and western tour.” 
The scene was 
Portsmouth, N. H., 
the time, Nov. 2, 
1789. The fishing 
party went to the 
outer harbor be¬ 
yond the fort 
and the lighthouse, 
where, as he says himself: 
“Having lines, we proceeded to the 
Fishing Banks, a little without the Plar- 
bor, and fished for cod, but it not being 
a proper time of tide, we only caught 
two, with which, about 1 o’clock we re¬ 
turned to town.” 
Now Washington was a modest an- 
