Thus we find that the Committee of Safety constructed the Pennsylvania State Navy three months before Congress proposed a Continental navy.
By August, 1776, the fleet numbered twenty-seven vessels, with Captain Thomas Reed as commodore, the first officer of that title in America. Another distinguished officer was Nicholas Biddle.
Three months after the State Navy was begun the Continental Congress took action for the construction of a Continental navy, which was also fitted out in Philadelphia. When the Congress of the United States established the Navy Department in 1798, the first navy yard was located in Philadelphia, where ship building had been an established enterprise since 1683. The city is today famous for the quality and quantity of ships built for this and other nations of the world.
Bishop John Heyl Vincent, Founder of
Chautauqua, Died May 9, 1920
General Grant once introduced Bishop J. H. Vincent to President Lincoln and said: “Dr. Vincent was my pastor at Galena (Illinois), and I do not think I missed one of his sermons while I lived there.”
This same Bishop Vincent, of good old Pennsylvania stock and many years a resident of Pennsylvania, was the founder of the Chautauqua Assembly, next only to the public-school system in bringing to the masses of the people some share of their inheritance in the world’s great creations in art and literature. This is the work of a man—a great teacher and educator and university preacher—who did not himself have a college education.
In 1772 the Vincent family, consisting of John Vincent and wife, their sons, Cornelius and Peter; their sons-in-law, Timothy Williams and Samuel Gould, removed from Essex County, N. J., and settled in Northumberland County, Pa., near the present town of Milton.
When the Indians became hostile during the Revolutionary War the early settlers along the West branch of the Susquehanna erected stockade forts at central points, into which the women and children of the neighborhood were gathered for protection at the approach of danger. In one of these forts, known as Fort Freeland, situated on Warrior Run, were gathered the Vincents, the Himrods, the Miles, the McKnights, the Boyds, the Kings, the Littles and others.