“Mrs. Rittenhouse.”
“P. S. Having mentioned the fatigues of the day, I must assure you that I find my strength fully equal to them: As to walking up the hills, I never pretend to it, having always a horse to ride—Col. P. is every thing I could wish; I mean, so far as is necessary to me.”
This arduous business of determining the territorial limits of several great states, which commenced before the American revolution, was not terminated until some years afterward. And on every occasion of that kind, where Mr. Rittenhouse’s situation, in respect to health and official duties, admitted of his being employed, his talents placed his services in requisition.
He had been at home but a few weeks, after being engaged in running the Western boundary of Pennsylvania, before he was elected by Congress, together with the Rev. Dr. Ewing, and Thomas Hutchins, Esq. afterwards Geographer of the United States, a commissioner “for running a line of jurisdiction between the states of Massachusetts and New-York, conformably to the laws of the said states.” This appointment was made on the 2d day of December, 1785.[[226]] It was not, however, until the year 1787, that the legislature of New-York ceded to the state of Massachusetts all the lands within their jurisdiction, Westward of a meridian to be drawn from a point in the Northern boundary of Pennsylvania, eighty-two miles West from the river Delaware; excepting one mile along the Eastern side of the Niagara river; and also ten townships between the Chenengo and Owegy rivers; reserving the jurisdiction to the state of New-York: a cession which was made to satisfy a claim of Massachusetts, founded upon their original charter.
This line was accordingly run, in the year 1787, by the commissioners so appointed for the purpose:—And “this last business, which was executed with his usual precision and integrity”—says Dr. Rush, speaking of Mr. Rittenhouse,—“ was his farewell peace-offering to the union and happiness of his country.”
It was not until the year 1786, that the American Philosophical Society were enabled to publish a second volume of their Transactions:[[227]] it then made its appearance. Into that volume is introduced a letter to the Society, in the original Latin, (accompanied with an English translation,)[[228]] from the celebrated C. Mayer, the Elector Palatine’s[[229]] Astronomer at Manheim, dated so long before as the 24th of April, 1778. The receipt of that letter had been acknowledged by Mr. Rittenhouse, according to a special order of the Society, so early as the 20th of August, 1779; and the answer, it is presumable, was duly transmitted to Mr. Mayer. Yet, although there was a lapse of seven years, from the date of Mr. Rittenhouse’s letter to the time of Mr. Mayer’s communication being printed in the Society’s Transactions, the former was, by some unaccountable circumstance, omitted and unnoticed! Nor will the reader’s surprise on this occasion be diminished, when he learns, that a member of the Society, having obtained from Mr. Rittenhouse a copy of his letter, had it read at their stated meeting on the 16th of March, 1792,—twelve years and a half after its date; that it was, thereupon, “referred to the committee of selection and publication:” and, notwithstanding, by some other fatality, that letter remained unpublished until now; being twenty-one years afterwards!
On a perusal of the answer to Mr. Mayer’s communication (in the Appendix,) it will be found, that the “eminent utility,” which he expected to result, at some future day, to astronomical science, from a prosecution of such discoveries as he had recently made among the fixed stars, had been long before anticipated by our Astronomer. In that answer Mr. Rittenhouse mentions, that he is induced to request his correspondent’s acceptance of a copy of the Oration he had delivered before the American Philosophical Society, “some years” before:—“because,” says the writer, “I therein gave my opinion, that the fixed stars afforded the most spacious field for the industry of future astronomers; and expressed my hopes, that the noblest mysteries would sometime be unfolded, in those immensely distant regions.”
This early opinion of his own concerning the fixed stars, to which Mr. Rittenhouse refers in his letter, is expressed in his Oration, in this short paragraph: “If astronomy shall again break those limits that now confine it, and expatiate freely in the superior celestial fields,—what amazing discoveries may yet be made among the fixed stars! That grand phænomenon the Milky way, seems to be the clue, that will one day guide us.”
Such were the expectations entertained by our Philosopher, more than three years before the date of Mr. Mayer’s communication of his discovery to the Philosophical Society;—a discovery which Mr. Rittenhouse, in his letter to that great astronomer, styles “excellent;” and one that proves his own “presage” to have been well founded. He, at the same time, modestly suggests to Mr. Mayer, the institution of a comparison between the many observations he had already made, in order to determine, whether the several changes observed will agree with any imagined motion of our system; remarking, that those he had communicated, seemed to favour such a supposition.