On Sept. 5, 1774, delegates from twelve states (Georgia was not then represented) met at Philadelphia and organized what has since been commonly called the Continental Congress. The members were Delegates, and the voting on all questions was by States (Colonies), each State having one vote. The Delegate in charge was styled President of the Congress.

The Continental Congress was in session, at various times and places, until Mar. 2, 1789. One of its important acts was the drawing up, and adoption on July 4, 1776, of the Declaration of Independence, which was signed by "the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled."

Between Nov. 15, 1777, and July 9, 1778, the Continental Congress adopted "Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union between the States." These Articles gave to the Thirteen Colonies the name "The United States of America,' and the Articles, generally known as the First Constitution,

George Washington. Federalist, born on a Friday, Feb. 22 (Feb. 11, O.S.), 1732, died on Dec. 14, 1799, was the great grandson of Col. John Washington (1634-1677), who came from Yorkshire, England, and settled in 1657, or 1658, on a tract in Westmoreland County, Virginia, bordering the west shore of the Potomac River near its mouth. He bought, in 1665, a plantation on the Potomac River, between Bridges Creek and Pope's Creek, the latter named after Nathaniel Pope, whose daughter, Ann, was Col. John Washington's second wife.

The Washingtons had been aristocrats in England, adherents of the Stuarts, and when Charles I was beheaded, the Washingtons emigrated to America.

Col. John Washington had a son, Lawrence Washington, whose second son was Augustine Washington, born in 1694. Lawrence Washington's wife, Mildred Warner, was the daughter of Augustine Warner, Jr., and Mildred Reade, daughter of Col. George Reade and Elizabeth Martiau, who, in her turn, was the daughter of Nicholas Martiau, a French Huguenot, the first American ancestor of George Washington, born in France in 1591. came to Virginia in July, 1620, and died at Yorktown in 1657, of which place he was the original patentee. Queen Elizabeth of Great Britain is second cousin, six times removed, of George Washington, through descent from the Warners.

Augustine Washington by his first wife, Jane Butler, who died Nov. 24, 1729, had four children. His second wife, Mary Ball, whom he married March 6, 1731, bore, as her first child, George Washington, born, as was his father, at Wakefield, on Pope's Creek, fifty miles below Mount Vernon. That mansion burned down on Christmas Eve, 1780. Its location later was marked by a granite shaft, erected by Congress. A new brick house, modeled after the old one, was built on the site. and dedicated on Feb. 22, 1932. The reservation, by Act of Congress, has become the George Washington Birthplace National Monument, and is administered by the National Parks Service.

George's parents moved about 1735 to Mount Vernon. That mansion burned in 1739, and the present one was erected on the site. Augustine died April 12, 1743. There George Washington studied mathematics and became a surveyor in the employ of William Fairfax, father of Lawrence's wife and manager of the Virginia estate of his cousin, Lord Fairfax. George accompanied Lawrence to Barbados. West Indies, and got smallpox. After his return, he entered the military service of Virginia. He later served under Gen. Braddock in the war between the English and the French.

Washington took command of the Continental Army, at Cambridge, Mass., July 3, 1775; after winning the Revolutionary War, he took leave of the officers of his force, Dec. 4, 1783, at Fraunces Tavern, New York City, and formally resigned to Congress, Dec. 20, that year at Annapolis, Md., his commission as General and Commander-inChief. He had served without pay, and would accept only his actual expenses; from the date of his commission, June 20, 1775, to Dec. 13, 1783, his expenses totaled £14,500. Congress, on July 3, 1798, when war with France was imminent, again commissioned Washington as Lieutenant General and Commander-in-Chief, but hostilities were averted. In May, 1782, when Washington was at headquarters at Newburgh, N. Y., dissatisfaction in the army, especially among the officers, found expression in a letter to him from Brig. Gen.

his

remained in force until Mar. 4, 1789, when the Constitution of the United States was proclaimed in_effect. The Articles of Confederation, though adopted by the Continental Congress in 1778, were not ratified by all of the States, Maryland being the last to assent, until Mar. 1, 1781. The Articles designated Congress as "the United States in Congress Assembled." The Presidents of the Sessions of the Continental Congress after the Articles went into effect usually signed themselves "President of the United States in Congress Assembled."

These were: Thomas McKean, Del.; John Hansom, Md.; Elias Boudinot, N. J.; Thomas Mifflin, Pa.; Richard Henry Lee, Va.; Nathaniel Gorham, Mass.; Arthur St. Clair, Pa.; and Cyrus Griffin, Va. John Hancock was elected but did not serve.

George Washington was the first President under the Constitution. He was, the Department of State says, the "first president of the United States of America."

Lewis Nicola, indicating a disposition to change the form of government and make him King. He refused to countenance the movement, so it went no further. He established a Spy Service.

He was President of the Convention that drafted the Constitution in 1787.

The estate at Mt. Vernon, which George Washington inherited from his half-brother Lawrence, had been named by Lawrence in honor of the British Admiral, Lord Vernon, under whom Lawrence had served at the siege of Cartagena.

Washington's death was due to exposure on Dec. 12. 1799, in a storm while riding over his estate with his managers. He went to bed with a sore throat, followed by ague. He had signed his will on July 9, 1799. The end came about 10:20 P.M.. Saturday, Dec. 14, 1799. A vault was made for Washington's body under the dome of the Capitol at Washington, but the remains were interred at Mt. Vernon.

owning 70,000 acres of land in Virginia and 40.000 He was one of the wealthiest men in the country, acres in the near-west, which latter Congress gave him for his military service. His estate was valued at what would now exceed $5,000,000.

Washington owned, soon after his marriage, 317 slaves, some of whom belonged to his wife. He was a distiller (at his Dogue Run place), as well as a farmer. He was a man of powerful physique, 6 feet, 2 inches, in height, with sandy hair, blue eyes, and big hands and feet. He weighed 210 pounds when 40 years of age. He was not a prohibitionist, and attended horse shows and races, took part in card was a horseback rider, hunter and fisherman. He games, fox hunting. cock fighting, and was a regular theatre goer. After his inaugural in New York he was a first-nighter at the John St. playhouse. He was a book collector.

The Washington family in America were Episcopalians, and George Washington attended these services, at Alexandria, Va., at Philadelphia (where most of his official civil career was spent), and at New York City, where he had a family pew in St. Paul's Chapel, Broadway and Vesey St.

Washington's first inauguration was in Federal Hall, Wall and Nassau Sts., New York, April 30, 1789; his second, in Philadelphia.

Washington, with the unanimous approval of his Cabinet, in which sat Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, extended recognition to the improvised government of France-the Committee of Public Safety, with its Dantons and Robespierres.

On Sept. 17, 1796, Washington said in an address: "If we remain one people, under an efficient government, the period is not far off *** when we may choose peace or war, as our interest guided by justice, shall counsel.

Woodrow Wilson, in The President of the United States, wrote: "General Washington *** set an example which few of his successors seem to have followed. He made constant and intimate use of his colleagues in every matter that he handled, seeking their assistance and advice by letter when they were at a distance. It is well known that his greater state papers ... are full of the ideas and the very phrases of the men about him whom he most trusted. His rough drafts came back to him from Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Madison in great part rephrased and rewritten, in many passages reconceived and given a new color."

Parson Weems in his "I cannot tell a lie" anec

dote said the cherry tree was barked-not cut down, by young Washington.

Mrs. Washington, born in 1731, died in 1802, was a daughter of Col. John Dandridge, planter, of New Kent County, Va., and widow of Daniel Parke Custis, also a rich farmer of that county. Her marriage to Washington was on Jan. 6, 1759. General Washington had no children of his own His wife, who was small and plump, with dark hair and hazel eyes, had become, by her first union. the mother of four children, Martha Parke Custis, (Col.) John Parke Custis, and two who died in infancy.

Col. John Parke Custis (1753-1781) (grandson of the Governor of the Leeward Islands, who was assassinated), inherited from his father an estate of 1,000 acres at Arlington, Va., near Washington, where the National Cemetery is now located, and had four children-Eliza (1776-1832), who married Thomas Law; Martha, born in 1777, who became the wife of Thomas Peter; George Washington Parke Custis, who married Mary Lee Fitzhugh of Va., and whose daughter became the wife of Robert E. Lee, Confederate General; and Eleanor Parke Custis, who became the wife of Major Lawrence Lewis, son of Fielding Lewis, whose father, Fielding Lewis, 1725-1781, had married George Washington's sister, Elizabeth, and was a planter, owning half of the town of Fredericksburg, on the Rappahannock River.

John Adams, Federalist, who was born in that part of the ancient town of Braintree that is now the City of Quincy, Mass., Oct. 30, 1735, and died there July 4, 1826, was a great-grandson of Henry Adams, who came with his eight sons from Barton St. David, Somersetshire, England, in 1636. and settled on a grant of 40 acres.

John was the eldest son of John Adams, farmer, and of Susanna Boylston, daughter of Peter Boylston, of Brookline, Mass. He graduated at Harvard in 1755; taught school at Worcester; practised law at Boston; served in the State Legislature, and in the Revolutionary Provincial Congress of Massachusetts, and in the Continental Congress; was a signer of the Declaration of Independence: Commissioner to France, 1778, with Benjamin Franklin and Arthur Lee: Minister to Holland; helped to negotiate treaties in Europe; Minister to England 1785-1788; elected Vice-President in 1788, and again in 1792; chosen President in 1796. He was inaugurated at Philadelphia. Washington attended. The Federal party under Adams was opposed to the western expansion of the country, and the party began to lose grip in the succeeding administration of Jefferson when the latter acquired the Louisiana Territory in 1803 from France. The opposition to expansion was strong in New England. Adams was the first President to live in the White House. He was a Unitarian and was a cousin of Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, who also was a signer of the Declaration. He was an orator and a pamphleteer; a man of medium height, active, florid, and corpulent. He died on the same day as Jefferson, and was buried in a crypt under the First Parish Church at Quincy. The Library of Congress has many letters of both the Adamses.

Mrs. Adams (Abigal Smith), born in 1744, died in 1818, was a daughter of the Rev. William Smith, a Congregational minister of Weymouth, Mass. Her mother, Elizabeth Quincy, was a great-granddaughter of the Puritan divine, Thomas Shepard of Cambridge, Mass., and a great grand-niece of the Rev. John Norton, of Boston.

Thomas Jefferson, born April 13, 1743, died July 4, 1826, was of Welsh descent, according to an unsubstantiated tradition in his family (his grandfather dwelt at Uxbornés, in Chesterfield County, Va., southwest of Richmond), and is called the founder of what is now known as the Democratic Party. He was born at Shadwell, in Albemarle County, Va.. the third of ten children, two of whom died in infancy. His mother was a daughter of Isham Randolph, a rich Virginian. His father, Peter Jefferson, with the aid of 130 slaves, tilled a 1,900-acre tobacco and wheat plantation.

The President died at Monticello, which he had built from his own design. It was saved to his family by friends who satisfied the claims of his creditors, and is now a national shrine. He wrote his own epitaph, now on his tomb. It runs thus: "Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia."

In the Continental Congress treaties were proposed by which all of the land west of the crest of the Alleghany Mountains was to be divided between France and Spain, the latter to receive all south of the Ohio River. The treaties were defeated by Jefferson, with the aid of Patrick Henry and their associates.

Jefferson was a lawyer. He was a writer, not an orator. He served in the Virginia House of Burgesses with Washington and in the Continental Congress; succeeded Patrick Henry, in 1779, as Governor of Virginia; negotiated, in Europe, treaties with various countries; Secretary of State under Washington; elected Vice-President under John Adams; elected President in 1800, with Aaron Burr, his rival for the Presidency, as Vice-President: re-elected in 1804, with George Clinton as Vice-President. When Burr, who had killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel, became involved in the Blennerhasset expedition and was put on trial at Richmond, Va., in 1807, on a federal charge of treason, Jefferson let it be known to Chief Justice John Marshall that Burr should be found guilty. But Burr was acquitted, because no evidence had shown that he actually had levied war. Jefferson was hostile to the Supreme Court also, for the reason that, to his mind, the court under Marshall was disposed to build up the Federal power at the expense of the States.

In 1810, upon the demise of Associate Justice William Cushing, Jefferson wrote to Albert Gallatin: "I observe old Cushing is dead. At length then we have a chance of getting a Republican majority in the Supreme Court."

Jefferson is credited with decisive influence in giving the United States a definite turn to popular rather than aristocratic democracy. In 1804, when Napoleon had made himself Emperor, Jefferson remarked of France to John Quincy Adams that "it was very much to be wished that they could now return to the Constitution of 1789 and call back the Old Family," Jefferson was responsible for the Embargo and Non-Intercourse Acts of 1807. Jefferson, sometimes called, in his campaigns, "Long Tom," was tall, raw-boned, freckled and sandy, when, in 1760, he entered the College of William and Mary. He played the violin. He did not claim membership in any religious denomi

nation.

Jefferson was the first of the Presidents inAdams, drove out of Washington while Jefferson augurated at Washington. His predecessor, John was being inaugurated.

Mrs. Jefferson, born in 1748, died in 1782, tall, slim, vivacious, with brown eyes, was a daughter of John Wayles, a wealthy lawyer of Charles City County, Va. Her first husband was Bathurst Skelton, who died before she was twenty.

Of the six children of the Jeffersons only two, daughters, lived beyond infancy. Martha, 17721836, became the wife of Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr., afterward governor of Virginia; Mary (María), 1778-1804, was married to her cousin, J. W. Eppes.

Mrs. Jefferson died 19 years before her husband became President, and Mrs. Madison for a time acted as mistress of the White House. Levees were abolished as soon as Jefferson became President. Jefferson inherited through his wife from her father 40.000 acres of land and 135 slaves.

James Madison, Republican, was born March 16, 1751, at Port Conway, King George County, Va., and died June 28, 1836. at Montpelier, Orange Co., Va. He was a son of James Madison, descendant of John Madison, of England, who in 1653 took out a patent for land on Chesapeake Bay between the York and North Rivers. James Madison's paternal grandmother, Frances Taylor, of Orange County, had four brothers, one of whom was grandfather of President Zachary Taylor. Madison's mother was Nellie Conway, and he was oldest of 12 children.

Madison graduated at Princeton in 1771; studied law at Princeton one year; returned to Virginia, continued the study of law; helped draft the Virginia State Constitution, and was a member of the first State Lefislature; a delegate to the Contirental Congress; again a member of the Virginia Legislature; once more a delegate to the Continental Congress; served in the Federal Convention, and helped draw up, and signed, the Federal Constitution; drew up the Virginia Resolution against the alien and sedition laws; Secretary of State under Jefferson; President for two terms.

Madison was small in stature, neat in attire. quiet, polite and scholarly. He spent the latter part of his life on his estate at Montpelier. There he was buried. He was an Episcopalian.

Mrs. Madison, Dolly Payne, born in 1772, died in 1849, was raised as a Quaker, and was a daughter of John Payne of North Carolina. Her mother, Mary Coles, was a cousin of Patrick Henry. Her grandfather, Josias Payne, was a son of George Payne (or Paine) of Goochland County, Va. Her first husband, whom she married when nineteen, was John Todd. a Pennsylvania lawyer and Quaker, who died in 1793 at Philadelphia in a yellow fever epidemic. He left her one son, Payne Todd.

The first marriage in the White House was on March 11, 1811, and united Justice Thomas Todd,

of the U. S. Supreme Court, and Lucy Payne Washington, widow of Phillip Steptoe Washington (nephew of Dolly Payne.)

James Monroe, Republican, was born in Westmoreland County, Va., near the Potomac River, not far from Washington's birthplace, April 28, 1758, and died on July 4, 1831, at New York City. His ancestry was Scottish. The first Monroe in Virginia settled there in 1650. James was a son of Spence Monroe and Elizabeth Jones, sister of Judge Joseph Jones, a Virginia delegate to the Continental Congress.

He attended William and Mary College, but soon, with teachers and students, among the latter being John Marshall, left and joined the Revolutionary Army under George Washington, was wounded in action at Trenton, N. J., and fought at Harlem Heights, (N. Y. City) at White Plains, N. Y., and at Monmouth, N. J.

He served in the Virginia Legislature and in the Continental Congress; helped to draw up the Federal Constitution; served as United States Senator; Envoy to France, 1794 (recalled by President Washington); Governor of Virginia (1799-1802); Plenipotentiary to France (Jan.-July, 1803), and took part in the Louisiana Purchase; Minister to England (1803) and to Spain (1804); Secretary of State under Madison, and in 1814-15 also Secretary of War; President for two terms.

As President in 1823 he formulated the Monroe Doctrine, which declares against European aggrandizement in the three Americas.

His body was buried in the Marble Cemetery, Second Street, N. Y. City, but in 1858, the centenary of his birth, was interred in Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, Va. Monroe lived on his estate, Ash Lawn, in Albemarle County, Virginia, 5 miles from Charlottesville, 1799 to 1825, when he left the White House. While president, about 1823, he moved into a country home at Oak Hill, Loudon County, Va., (designed for him by Thomas Jefferson, and built by James Hoban, designer of the White House) and maintained it as his residence from 1825 to 1830, removing on his wife's death to New York City, to be near his two daughters, who were married and lived there. He had inherited the 1,800-acre Oak Hill estate from his uncle, Judge Joseph Jones. It was in the Autumn of 1823 that Monroe, during a vacation at Oak Hill, drew up his Monroe Doctrine message to Congress.

He had studied law, as well as politics, under the guidance of Thomas Jefferson, and in his earlier years practiced at Fredericksburg, Va. His office there has been restored and preserved. He was an Episcopalian.

Mrs. Monroe, Eliza or Elizabeth, born at N. Y. City in 1768, and died in 1830, was a daughter of former Capt. Lawrence Kortright of the British Army. While in France with Monroe, who was the American Minister, she secured the release from the prison, La Force, of Mme. de Lafayette, who hourly expected to be executed. One of Mrs. Monroe's sisters was the wife of M. Heyliger, Grand Chamberlain to the King of Denmark; another sister married Nicholas Gouverneur of N. Y. City. John Quincy Adams, a son of President John Adams, and likewise a Unitarian, was born in that part of the ancient town of Braintree that is now the City of Quincy, Mass., July 11, 1767, and died following a stroke of paralysis while in Congress at Washington, Feb. 23, 1848. His mother's grandfather was John Quincy. J. Q. Adams was educated in Europe, graduated at Harvard, and practiced law; was Minister to Holland, and to Portugal, under Washington; in his father's administration was Minister to Prussia; served in the Massachusetts Senate: in 1803 entered the United States Senate as a Federalist, then became a Republican and later a Whig.

Resigning from the Senate, he taught rhetoric at Harvard; Minister to Russia under Madison: took part in the peace treaty at Ghent: Minister to England; Secretary of State under Monroe, negotiated the Florida Purchase and took part in formulating the Monroe Doctrine; chosen President by the House of Representatives, though Gen. Jackson had got the highest number of electoral votes at the election-Jackson, 99; Adams, 84; Crawford, 41; Clay, 37. Soon after his Presidential term ended he was elected to the House of Representatives from Massachusetts as an Independent, and fought the slave power. He was buried at Quincy, Mass., in a crypt under the First Parish Church.

Mrs. John Quincy Adams (Louisa Catherine Johnson) born in London, Feb. 12, 1775, died in 1852, was a niece of Thomas Johnson of Maryland. Her father had lived abroad for years and by direction of Congress acted as American fiscal agent in France and later in England. Miss Johnson became the wife of Adams at London and was his

companion during his long diplomatic career in Europe.

Their children were: George Washington Adams, born at Berlin in 1801; John Q. Adams jr., born at Boston July 4, 1803; Charles Francis Adams, born at Boston in 1807; and Louisa Catherine Adams. born at St. Petersburg in 1811, and died there in 1812. Their son, C. F. Adams, lawyer, served in the Massachusetts Legislature; Free Soil candidate for Vice-President in 1848; served in Congress; Minister to England during the Civil War; President of the Geneva Board of Arbitration.

Andrew Jackson, Democrat, was born in the Lancaster district of the Waxhaw (New Lancaster County, S. C.), a pioneer settlement on the North Carolina-South Carolina line. Marquis James in his biography, "Andrew Jackson: The Border Captain," Indianapolis, 1933, makes an exhaustive study of the documents extant and declares the weight of evidence is that Jackson was born March 15, 1767, in the Crawford house then and now on the South Carolina side of the boundary which was then in dispute and was not determined until 1813. He died at his home, The Hermitage, near Nashville, Tenn., June 8, 1845.

He was a posthumous son of Andrew Jackson. who came over from North Ireland in 1765, and his mother was Elizabeth Hutchinson, also from Ireland. He studied law at Salisbury, N. C., practiced at Nashville, helped draw, in 1796, the Constitution of Tennessee; served in Congress, and in the U. S. Senate; resigned in 1798 to become a Tennessee of which he killed Charles Dickinson and was himSupreme Court Judge; fought several duels, in one insulted Mrs. Jackson. self severely wounded. Dickinson, it was said, had

In 1812 Jackson, "Old Hickory," headed 2,000 Creek Indians on the Tallapoosa River; in 1814 he troops against the British; in 1813 he defeated the became a Major-General in the army; defeated the British at Mobile, at Pensacola, and at New Orleans; seized Florida temporarily from the Spanish, and quelled Negro and Indian disorders there. In 1821, after the purchase of Florida, he was appointed Governor; in 1823 entered the U. S. Senate. In 1824 he got more electoral votes for President than J. Q. Adams, but the election was thrown into the House of Representatives, where Adams was chosen President by 13 States, with 7 States for Jackson, and 4 for Crawford. In 1828 Jackson was elected President, and re-elected in 1832.

He was shot at, in the Capitol at Washington, Jan. 29, 1835, by Richard Lawrence, a house painter. The weapon missed fire. Jackson was a Presbyterian, tall and thin. He was an enemy of the Bank of the United States, and finally, Čongress to the contrary notwithstanding, drove it out of existence. He sent federal troops to Charleston to scare South Carolina from its plan to nullify the national tariff laws.

Mrs. Jackson, born in Halifax County, Virginia, in 1767, was the daughter of Col. John Donelson, a surveyor who, in 1779, sold his ironworks in Pittsylvania County, Va., and settled in Kentucky, later removing to Tennessee. Her first husband, Capt. Lewis Robards, divorced her, after accusing Jackson, who married her, first, at Natchez in 1791. before the divorce was granted, and again in 1794, after the decree.

Mrs. Jackson died in 1828, before her husband went into the White House. She had no children. but Gen. Jackson adopted one of her sister's children, a boy, who was named Andrew Jackson jr. and who inherited the General's estate.

The mistresses of the White House in the Jackson Administration were his wife's niece, Emily, a slender brunette, who had married her cousin, Major A. J. Donelson, and Sarah York Jackson, a Philadelphia Quakeress, married to the President's adopted son.

Martin Van Buren, Democrat, was born at of asthma July 24, 1862. He was the first president Kinderhook, N. Y., Dec. 5, 1782, and died there of Independence, all his predecessors having been born as an American citizen after the Declaration born as British subjects. He was a son of Abraham Van Buren and Mary Hoes (originally spelled Goes), widow of a man named Van Alen. The late family was of Dutch origin. James J. Van Alen was his half-brother. The whole

Van Buren practiced law; was Surrogate of Columbia County, N. Y.; a State Senator, AttorneyGeneral of the State; re-entered the State Senate, became U. S. Senator in 1821, and resigned to become Governor of New York; Secretary of State under President Jackson: resigned in 1831 to be Minister to England but was not confirmed: elected Vice-President in 1832; in 1836, elected President; Free Soil candidate for President in 1848, but was defeated. He was a member of the Dutch Reformed Church.

Mrs. Van Buren, like her husband, was of Dutch

descent, was a blood relative of his mother, Mary Hoes, and was his classmate at the public school at Kinderhook, N. Y. She was born in 1783, and died in 1819.

1845.

Of the Van Buren children, Abraham, 1807-1873, was a West Point graduate, an army officer on the western frontier, secretary to his father as President, an army officer in the Mexican War, and in his later years a man of leisure at N. Y. City. Another son, "Prince" John, 1810-1866, a lawyer, was elected Attorney-General of N. Y. State in Abraham's wife, Angelica Singleton, born in South Carolina in 1820, daughter of Richard Singleton, a wealthy planter, was a cousin of William C. Preston (a U. S. Senator from S. C.), and of President Madison's wife. She was mistress of the White House during most of Van Buren's term. Mrs. Van Buren was a member of the Dutch Reformed Church.

W. H. Harrison, a Whig, of English descent, was born at Berkeley, Charles City County, Va., Feb. 9, 1773, and died of pneumonia at Washington, April 4, 1841. He was the third son of Benjamin Harrison, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He graduated at Hampden Sidney College and studied medicine. Against the advice of his guardlan, Robert Morris, he joined the army and went west and fought the Indians.

Harrison was Secretary of the Northwest Territory; a delegate in Congress; Governor of the Indiana Territory; defeated the Indians at Tippecanoe, on the Wabash River; in 1812 took command of all United States troops in the northwest: in 1813 defeated the British in Canada. In 1816 he entered Congress; in 1819 he was in the Ohio Senate; in 1824 he entered the U. S. Senate, resigning to be Minister to Colombia; in 1836 he was defeated for President; in 1840 he was elected, and a month after his inauguration he died of pneumonia. Harrison was an Episcopalian.

Mrs. Harrison was a daughter of Col. John Cleves Symmes, a delegate to the Continental Congress, a soldier in the Revolutionary Army, and Chief Justice of the N. J. Supreme Court. She was born at Morristown, N. J., in 1775, and died in 1864.

Of President Harrison's sons, the third, John Scott Harrison of Indiana, 1804-1878, was a Whig in Congress and the father of Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd President.

Mrs. Harrison, who was an invalid, did not go to the White House with him, but remained at her home, North Bend, O. She was brought up as a Methodist.

The mistress of the Executive Mansion during Gen. Harrison's occupancy was Mrs. Jane Findlay Harrison, wife of the President's second son, Col. W. H. Harrison jr. Her sister, Elizabeth Irwin, was the wife of John Scott Harrison.

John Tyler, a Jeffersonian Republican, second son of Judge John Tyler and Mary Armistead, both of English ancestry, was born at Greenway, Charles City County, Va., March 29, 1790, and died Jan. 17, 1862, of liver trouble, at Richmond, Va.

He graduated at William and Mary College in 1807; practiced law; served in the Virginia House of Delegates (1811-1816); entered the House of Representatives in 1816, retiring in 1821 because of his health; served again (1823-1825) in the Legislature; became rector and chancellor of William and Mary College; in 1825 elected Governor of Virginia, and was re-elected; elected to the U. S. Senate in 1827 and re-elected in 1833; defeated, in 1836, for Vice-President on the State-Rights Whig ticket; resigned from the Senate after refusing to obey a resolution of the Virginia Legislature demanding he vote for the Benton resolution; in 1838 re-entered the Virginia Legislature; in 1840 chosen Vice-President, and became President on Gen. Harrison's death.

In 1861 Tyler was a delegate from Virginia to the Peace Convention of 13 northern and 7 border States, at Washington, called after the secession of South Carolina, to adopt a place for settling the controversy between the North and the South. He was President of the gathering. The U. S. Senate rejected the convention's proposals. Tyler was a delegate to the Confederate Provisional Congress in 1861, and was elected by Virginia to the Confederate Congress, but died before it assembled.

Tyler was an Episcopalian, tall, thin, cleanshaven, with a Roman nose and a high receding forehead. His eyes were blue, his voice soft and melodious.

The first Mrs. Tyler was Letitia, a daughter of Robert Christian, a planter of New Kent County, Va., and was born in 1790. She was delicate, and died in the White House, in 1842. She was an Episcopalian.

Of her children, Robert Tyler, 1818-1877, lawyer, editor, poet, married Priscilla, a daughter of T. A. Cooper, the tragedian, and she and her daughter,

Mrs. Letitia Semple were the mistresses of the White House.,

The second Mrs. Tyler was Julia Gardiner, daughter of David Gardiner, whom he married on June 26, 1844, at N. Y. City. She was born on Gardiner's Island, near Easthampton, N. Y., in 1820, and died in 1889. She was a member of the family that held manorial rights on that island. Of her children, Lyon Gardiner Tyler, lawyer, legislator, became, in 1888, President of William and Mary College. Williamsburg, Va. He died in Charles City County, that state, Feb. 12, 1935. Another son, Judge David Gardiner Tyler, Confederate veteran, former member of Congress and a student under Gen. Robert E. Lee, died aged 81, Sept. 5, 1927, at the ancestral homestead, Sherwood forest, in Charles City County, Virginia. Her youngest son, Robert Fitzwalter Tyler, died, aged 70, at Richmond, Va., Dec. 30, 1927. The second Mrs. Tyler was a Roman Catholic.

James K. Polk, a Democrat, was born in Mecklenburg County, N. C., Nov. 2, 1795, and died at Nashville, Tenn., June 15, 1849. The name originally was Pollock, and the family came from Ireland. His father was Samuel Polk, a farmer and surveyor, and his mother was Jane Knox, of Iredell County, N. C.

He graduated at the University of North Carolina; practiced law in Tennessee; served in the Legislature and in Congress; elected Governor of Tennessee in 1839. Called the "Napoleon of the Stump," he was, 1835-1839, Speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives; chosen President in 1844. He was a Methodist in his latter days, wore his hair long, and was democratic and affable.

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Mrs. Polk, born in 1803, died in 1891, was a daughter of Joel Childress, a wealthy planter near Murfreesboro, Tenn. She was educated in Moravian school. She abolished drink and dancing from White House receptions. She was a handsome woman of the Spanish type. Having no children, Mrs. Polk, after her husband's death, adopted a niece.

Zachary Taylor, a Whig, fifth in descent from an English immigrant of 1658, was born in Orange County, Va., Nov. 24, 1784, and died July 9, 1850, at the White House. From Virginia he had moved to Kentucky, to Wisconsin, to Florida, and was elected to the presidency from Louisiana. His father, Col. Richard Taylor, was an American officer in the Revolution. There is no official record at the Department of State or at the War Department of the date of Gen. Taylor's birth. In a letter dated at Matamoras, Mex., July 31, 1836, he stated he was born Nov. 25, 1785. On his tombstone the date is Nov. 24, 1784. Another date, named by several encyclopedias, is Sept. 24, 1789.

Zachary Taylor at 23 entered the army, fought the Indians along the Wabash and in Florida, in the Black Hawk and Seminole Wars; defeated the Mexicans at the Rio Grande border of Texas, became a Major-General, and, with Gen. Winfield Scott, was a hero of the Mexican War; elected President in 1848. He was a cotton planter and had a large landed estate in Louisiana. He was buried near Louisville, Ky. He was an Episcopalian.

Mrs. Taylor was a daughter of Walter Smith, a planter of Calvert County, Md. Her Christian name was Margaret. She was born in 1788 and died in 1852.

Her younger daughter, Elizabeth ("Betty'') Taylor, wife of Major W. W. S. Bliss, was mistress of the White Houe. "Betty," when a widow married P. P. Dandridge of Winchester, Va. The Taylors' older daughter. Ann, became the wife of Dr. Robert Wood, Assistant Surgeon-General of the army. Another, Sarah Knox Taylor, became the wife of Jefferson Davis.

Taylor's son, Richard, 1826-1879, born in Kentucky, served in the Confederate Army under "Stonewall Jackson, and rose to be a LieutenantGeneral. He died at N. Y. City.

Millard Fillmore, a Whig, born in Cayuga County, N. Y., Jan. 7, 1800, died March 8, 1874, was of English descent, the first of the name in the U. S. having been John, a mariner, of Ipswich, Mass. Millard's father, Nathaniel, was a pioneer log-cabin settler in Cayuga County, N. Y.

In

Fillmore served apprenticeship as a wool carder, and then went to Buffalo and taught in a public school; studied law under Asa Rice and Joseph Clary, and in 1823 was admitted to the bar. 1836 he formed the law firm of Fillmore, Hall and Haven. He served in the Legislature (18291831), and in the 23rd, 25th, 26th and 27th Congresses; in 1844 was the unsuccessful Whig candidate for Governor; State Comptroller in 1848 and in that same year was elected Vice-President. and succeeded to the Presidency on Gen. Taylor's death, July 9, 1850.

The letters to President Fillmore are with the Buffalo Historical Soc.; there are 44 volumes, and

a list of the letters in these volumes is being prepared for the Library of Congress with the view to photostat such as have historical importance. A collection of letters from Fillmore has been published under the auspices of the Buffalo Historical Soc. Ex-President Fillmore passed his last years at Buffalo, and was buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery. He was a Unitarian. He was Chancellor of the University of Buffalo from the time of its founding in 1846 until his death.

The first Mrs. Fillmore, born in 1798, died in 1853, was the daughter of a Baptist clergyman, the Rev. Lemuel Powers of Stillwater, Saratoga County, N. Y. She taught school in Cayuga County, N. Y., in a backwoods district, and continued to teach after Fillmore married her. Owing to Mrs. Fillmore's poor health, her daughter, Miss Mary Abigail (born 1832, died 1854), was the White House mistress. Mrs. Fillmore's other child, Millard Powers Fillmore, was born in 1828 and died in 1889. The second Mrs. Fillmore, whom he married at Albany, N. Y., at the Schuyler mansion, was Caroline Carmichael, born in 1813, died in 1881, and was a daughter of Charles Carmichael and Temperance Blachley of Morristown, N. J., and widow of Ezekiel C. McIntosh, a prominent merchant of Albany. She bore Fillmore no children.

Franklin Pierce, a Democrat, was born on Friday, Nov. 23, 1804, inaugurated on Friday, died on Friday, Oct. 8. 1869, at Concord, N. H. He first saw the light at Hillsborough, N. H. He was a son of Benjamin Pierce, who was a farmer, an officer in the Revolutionary Army, and Governor of the State.

Franklin Pierce graduated at Bowdoin College in 1824; practiced law; served in the New Hampshire Legislature, in the United States House of Representatives, and in the U. S. Senate, resigning in 1842 to resume his profession; a Brigadier General in 1847, in the war with Mexico; elected President in 1852.

After his term he made a tour of Europe. Pierce was handsome, graceful, well-dressed; and was a notable orator. He was an Episcopalian. He left an estate valued at $72,000.

Mrs. Pierce, born at Hampton, N. H., in 1806, died in 1863, was a daughter of the Rev. Jesse Appleton, President of Bowdoin College. Of the children of the Pierces, one son died in infancy, another at the age of 4, and the youngest, Benjamin, eleven years of age, was killed, Jan. 6, 1853, in a railroad accident near Andover, Mass.

James Buchanan, a Federalist, later a Democrat, of Scottish descent, was born near Mercersburg, Pa.. April 23, 1791, and died of rheumatic gout, at Lancaster, Pa., June 1, 1868.

He served as a volunteer in the defense of Baltimore, in the War of 1812; graduated at Dickinson College in 1809; practiced law; served in the Pennsylvania Legislature; elected in 1820 to the U. S. House of Representatives, from which he resigned in 1831, when President Jackson appointed him Minister to Russia; reelected in 1834 to the U. S. Senate, where he stayed until 1845, when he became' Secretary of State under President Polk. In 1849 he retired to Wheatland, his 22-acre estate near Lancaster, Pa.; in 1853 was Minister to England; in 1856 he was elected President.

The Buchanan papers are mainly with the Pennsylvania Historical Soc., but the Library of Congress has his letters to Harriet Lane Johnston.

President Buchanan was a Presbyterian and a bachelor. The mistress of the White House in his Administration was his sister Jane's daughter. Harriet Lane, whose father, Elliott T. Lane, came from an old Virginia family, had grown wealthy as a transcontinental trader, and lived at Mercersburg, Pa. Miss Lane, tall and blonde with violet eyes, had been educated at a Roman Catholic school at Georgetown; later in life she became an Episcopallan. Her mother died when she was seven, her father when she was nine. Thereafter she made her home with her uncle, and was with him in his career abroad.

Abraham Lincoln, a Whig, later a Republican, 6 ft. 4 in. in height, was born in Hardin County (that spot is in what is now Larue County), Ky., Feb. 12, 1809, and was a descendant of Samuel Lincoln and wife, Martha, who came over from Hingham, near Norwich, England, in 1636, arriving at Salem, Mass., on June 20, and later settled at Hingham, Mass.

Samuel Lincoln, the pioneer, died in 1690, of smallpox, aged 71, the father of 11 children. His third son, Mordecai, (1657-1727) had a son, Mordecai (1686-1736), who had a son, John (died in 1788), who had a son, Abraham (1744-1786), who had a son, Thomas (1778-1851). He was the father of Abraham, the President.

The Lincolns in successive generations lived in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Kentucky. Abraham's father, Thomas (grandson of John

Lincoln of Rockingham, Va., and great-grandson of Mordecal Lincoln of Berks County, Penn.), was a carpenter and cabinet maker and wheelwright. He built the Primitive Baptist Church at Gentryville, Ind. At 22 he was apprenticed to Joseph Hanks of Elizabethtown, Ky., and married Joseph's sister, Nancy. Her ancestor, Thomas Hanks, emigrated from England to Virginia in 1644. Nancy's cousin, Miss Rose Ella Hanks, 84, daughter of Joseph Hanks, died in Canon City, Colo., in 1939. Lincoln's cousin, Mrs. Henry K. Harrison, 62, daughter of David Lincoln, died in Birdsboro, Pa., in 1939.

The log cabin in which Nancy Hanks lived and was married has been deeded to the State of Kentucky by W. L. Clements of South Bend, Ind.. and his father, W. A. Clements of Springfield, Ky. The cabin, in 1911, was moved to Harrodsburg, Ky., from its original site at Beachland, Ky., on the banks of the Little Beech Fork, in Washington County. The cabin, enclosed in a brick church, built by Mrs. E. B. Ball of Muncie, Ind.. now known as the Lincoln Marriage Temple, in Pioneer Memorial State Park, was dedicated as a shrine, on June 12, 1931.

Abraham had a sister, Sarah, and a brother, Thomas. The sister married but had no children. The brother died in infancy. In 1816 Abraham's parents moved across the Ohio River into Indiana, where his mother died in 1818. His father then married a widow, Sarah Bush Johnston. In 1830 the family moved to Macon County, Ill., and in 1831 to Coles County, Ill., where Abraham's parents passed the rest of their lives.

Research technicians of the National Park Service recently have found a record in the office of the Court of Springfield, Ill., of a license granted to William F. Berry to operate a tavern "under the name of Berry & Lincoln" at New Salem, Ill. This license was issued by the clerk of the Court.

Abraham cleared the forest and helped build their cabin home; with Denton Offutt he carried farm produce by water to New Orleans, and sold it; he ran at one time a ferryboat across the Ohio Anderson Creek; kept a general store at New River from the Kentucky shore to the mouth of Salem, Ill.; served as an officer of volunteers in the Black Hawk Indian War; Postmaster at New Salem; he served in the Illinois Legislature 1834elected to the House of Representatives and served 1841; practiced law at Springfield, Ill.; in 1846 one term; in 1858 debated slavery with Stephen A. Douglas in the latter's successful campaign for reelection to the U. S Senate; in 1860 elected President; re-elected in 1864.

President Lincoln was shot Friday (Good Friday), April 14, 1865, at Ford's Theatre, Washington, at the performance of "Our American Cousin," by John Wilkes Booth, an actor, and died the next day. The assassin was shot to death April 26, by Sergt. Boston Corbett, U. S. Army, near Fredericksburg, Va. For participation in Booth's crime, Mrs. Mary E. Surratt, David E. Harold, George A. Atzerodt, and Lewis Payne (Powell) were hanged after trial. The original plot was to assassinate the President, Vice-President, and certain members of the Cabinet; one of the conspirators knifed the Secretary of State, William H. Seward, in his bedroom, but the wound was not serious. Lincoln was buried at Springfield, Ill. The coffin was partly opened on April 14, 1887 to see if the body was there intact and again in 1901.

Lincoln had proposed to his Cabinet on Feb. 5, 1865, that the South be compensated for the loss of slave labor by payment of $400,000,000. The Cabinet was unanimously against the suggestion, and it was dropped.

LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS Following is Lincoln's own version revised by him from his own notes, of the address at Gettysburg on Nov. 19, 1863. The great battle had been fought on July 1-3, 1863.

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final restingplace of those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate-we cannot consecrate-we cannot hallow-this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living,