FOOTNOTES:
[1] Hudson, History of Journalism, p. 57.
[2] Howell’s State Trials XVII, 1243.
[3] Wm. Duane, “Canada and the Continental Congress,” p. 20.
[4] Journal of Convention, p. 217.
[5] Elliot’s Debates, Vol. I, p. 183.
RELICS OF COMMODORE JOHN BARRY IN PHILADELPHIA
Apropos of the proposed erection here of a monument to the memory of Commodore John Barry, it is interesting to know that in addition to his tomb in St. Mary’s Churchyard, on Fourth street below Locust, where he was buried, there are many other relics of the great naval commander in this city, which was his home and where he maintained both a town and country residence. In Fairmount Park, too, is a monument not known to many people, where one of the five figures of the fountain erected by the Catholic Total Abstinence Society is a statue of Barry. It is of heroic size and the inscription, besides reciting some of his principal exploits on the sea, describes him as the first commodore of the United States navy.
Nearly all the other relics are in the possession of Mrs. W. Horace Hepburn of this city, who is a great-grandniece of Barry, and also a granddaughter of Commodore Bainbridge, and to whom they have been handed down. They are of many kinds and, taken altogether, would form quite a museum. Some of them are particularly valuable as records of history, among these being the logs of the Alliance and other warships which Barry commanded. Another documentary relic is the commission as captain and commander of the frigate United States issued to Barry to “take rank from the fourth day of June, 1804.” It is dated February 22, 1797, however, and is signed by Washington. On the margin it is numbered “one,” showing it to have been the first captain’s commission issued in the navy of the new constitutional government.