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 THE WIFE OF BENEDICT ARNOLD. 209 for being a Quaker. She died at Uxbridge, Mass., Febru- ary 14, 1834, eighty-three years of age. . Some of her descendants still survive in England, worthy and honorable persons. The present head of the family is a clergyman of the Church of England, owner of the estate of Little Messenden Abbey, in Buckingham- shire. He is now a wealthy man, a tract of land near Toronto granted by the government to Benedict Arnold, having recently become of great value. He is a kindly and pleasant gentleman, and not at all averse to talking of an ancestor of whom he cannot be proud. One of the sons of the traitor died a few years ago, a Lieutenant- General of the British army. At Tappantown, in Rockland county, New York, a village about three miles west of the Hudson river, and about forty from the city, there is an elevated field, in the midst of which there might have been seen till recently a withered tree, and a heap of stones ; and for a little space round about, the ground was never ploughed. Strangers occasionally came, who gazed upon the spot with evident interest. It is a pleasant, romantic region, interesting to New Yorkers because of the vicinity of Rockland Lake, which supplies us with part of our ice, and gives name to much of the rest. This heap of stones marked the spot where the remains of Major Andre* reposed from the day of his execution in 1780, until 1821, when they were transferred to West- minster Abbey in London. His grave was dug directly be- neath the gallows, and there he was interred at the depth of three or four feet. A peach-tree, planted by a sympathetic woman's hand to mark the grave, struck down its roots, pierced the coffin, and formed a net-work of fibres around the skull. This tree was taken up with the remains and replanted in one of the royal gardens in London. The skeleton, enclosed in a mahogany coffin, which was