To this Mr. Barton replied, in a vein of good-humoured pleasantry:
“I imagine you have mistaken me, with regard to the mathematical questions. They were not sent as trials of your abilities: but, for reasons with which W. B. is acquainted, and which I have desired him to give you, in order to afford you a laugh. I shalt never “insist” on your “measuring heads” with a “schoolmaster,” of any kind; because I know full well, already, that your head is longer than all the heads of the whole tribe. Had you known what diversion your solutions would have afforded me, you would have sent them.”
[168]. It is not improbable, that about the time of writing the letter of the 3d of Feb. 1772, from which extracts are given in the text, he began to think seriously of marrying again. Both his natural disposition and his habits endeared to him the comforts of domestic society; and these he could not enjoy in a single state, his two only children being infants. He therefore married, in December 1772; at which time he was only in the forty-first year of his age. The lady he chose as his companion, was a sensible, prudent and valuable woman; whose family were members of the religious society of Friends, and with whose brothers Mr. Rittenhouse had long been intimately acquainted. By that marriage there was but one child, a daughter, who died in her infancy. Mrs. Rittenhouse survived her husband little more than three years. She died in October, 1799.
[169]. See the preceding note.
[170]. The first law of Pennsylvania, for removing rocks, sandbars and gravel, from the bed of the river Schuylkill, so as to render it passable with rafts, boats, and other small river-craft, was passed the 14th of March 1761.
[172]. The Marks, &c. are particularly described in the Pennsylvania Act of Assembly, passed the 29th of Sept. 1779, entitled “An Act to establish and confirm the Boundary Line between this state and the state of New-York.”
[173]. The Law, referred to in the preceding note, states the extent of their further progress in the business at that time, which was inconsiderable.
In September 1772, the Philosophical Society announced in the public prints, the receipt, by them, of sundry communications: among which were various astronomical observations, made in Canada, by this gentleman and two other military officers, from June 1765, to May 1770, (captain Holland being, at that period, surveyor-general of the district of Quebec.) These observations were communicated to the society by Mr. Rittenhouse; but, having been received after the first volume of the Society’s Transactions was published, their publication in the subsequent volumes was by some means omitted.
[174]. Although Mr. Ellicott’s commission bears date the 16th of June, 1786, his appointment took place some months sooner. On the 3d of April, in that year, Mr. Rittenhouse wrote him thus:—
“Dear Sir,