The women looked at one another as they retired. The thoughts which their glances carried indicated “well, after all the story’s true.”
They had been alone for about ten minutes when Penn ran out of the door calling, “Come quick, someone, I fear she’s going.”
The household speedily assembled, but in another ten minutes “Mary Warren,” alias Maria Cox-Penn had yielded up the ghost. She is buried on the brushy African-looking hillside which faces the “dreamy Susquehanna,” the Firestone Mountains and the sunset, near where travelers across Broad Mountain pass every day. John Penn returned to Philadelphia and took no more trips to the interior. He divided his time between his town house, 44 Pine Street, and his country seat “Lansdowne.”
During the Revolution he was on parole. He died childless. February 9, 1795, and is said to be buried under the floor, near the chancel, in the historic Christ Church, Philadelphia, which bears the inscription that he was “One of the Late Proprietors of Pennsylvania.” Most probably his body was later taken to England. His wife, nee Allen, survived him until 1813.
The other night in the grand hall of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in the Quaker City, a notable reception was given in honor of the grand historian-governor, William C. Sproul, fresh from his marvelous restoration of the Colonial Court House at Chester. As he stood there, the embodiment of mental and physical grace and strength, the greatest Governor of a generation, receiving the long line of those who came to pay their respects and well wishes, Albert Cook Myers, famed historian of the Quakers, mentioned that the present Governor of the Commonwealth was standing just beneath the portrait of John Penn, one of the last of the Proprietaries. And what a contrast there was! Penn looked so effete and almost feminine with his child-like blonde locks, his pink cheeks, weak, half-closed mouth, his slender form in a red coat, so different from the vigorous living Governor. Penn was also so inferior to the other notable portraits which hung about him–the sturdy Huguenot, General Henri Bouquet, the deliverer of Fort Duquesne in 1758 and 1763; the stalwart Scot, General Arthur St. Clair, of Miami fame, who was left to languish on a paltry pension of $180 a year at his rough, rocky farm on Laurel Ridge; the courageous-looking Irishman, General Edward Hand; and, above all, the bold and dashing eagle face of General “Mad Anthony” Wayne. Such company for the last of the Penns to keep! Though lacking the manly outlines of his fellows on canvas, who can say that his life had one whit less interest than theirs–probably much more so, for his spirit had felt the thrill of an undying love, which in the end surmounted all difficulties and left his heart master of the field.
Though his record for statecraft can hardly be written from a favorable light, and few of his sayings or deeds will live, he has joined an immortal coterie led down the ages by Anthony and the beautiful Egyptian queen, by Abelard and Heloise, Dante and Beatrice, Petrarch and Laura, Alfieri and the Countess of Albany, and here in Pennsylvania by Hugh H. Brackenridge and the pioneer girl, Sabina Wolfe, and Elisha Kent Kane, and the spiritualist, Maria Fox. Love is a force that is all-compelling, all-absorbing and never dies, and is the biggest thing in life, and the story of John Penn and Maria Cox will be whispered about in the backwoods cabins and wayside inns of the Pennsylvania Mountains long after seemingly greater men and minds have passed to forgetfulness.
But for a few lines in the writings of Charles P. Keith, H. M. Jenkins, Nevin W. Moyer and various Penn biographers, such as Albert Cook Myers, the verbal memories of ’Squire W. H. Garman, James Till, Mrs. H. E. Wilvert and other old-time residents of the vicinity of “Tulliallan,” all would be lost, and the inspiration of a story of overwhelming affection unrecorded in the annals of those who love true lovers.
II
At His Bedside
When old Jacob Loy passed away at the age of eighty years, he left a pot of gold to be divided equally among his eight children. It was a pot of such goodly proportions that there was a nice round sum for all, and the pity of it was after the long years of privation which had collected it, that some of the heirs wasted it quickly on organs, fast horses, cheap finery and stock speculations, for it was before the days of player-pianos, victrolas and automobiles.
Yolande, his youngest daughter, was a really attractive girl, even had she not a share in the pot of gold, and had many suitors. Though farm raised and inured to hardships she was naturally refined, with wonderful dark eyes and hair, and pallid face–the perfect type of Pennsylvania Mountain loveliness.