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the main road leading from Phoenixville, in Chester county to Norristown, in Montgomery county Pennsylvania, about two miles from the Valley Forge and within a few yards of a hamlet called the Green Tree, may be seen an unpretending two-story stone dwelling of some note. It would not be likely to attract the attention of the traveler of to-day; but a hundred years ago, wayfarers who used the road stopped a moment to examine it, and perhaps envied the wealth of those who could afford to live in a mansion so spacious and imposing. Within sight the beautiful and romantic, though treacherous Perkiomen, flows into the Schuylkill, and the rich tract of land in the angle of the two streams, upon a part of which this house stands, lore in earliest times, the perhaps Indian name of Olethgo. Ten or fifteen years before the Revolutionary war it belonged to Joseph Richardson, a man whose remarkable career, clouded somewhat by the obscurity which has gathered around it during the lapse of time, still lingers in the traditions told by the grandames of the neighborhood to wondering children, and in such contemporaneous documents as chance or antiquarian tastes have preserved. The great-grandson of Samuel Richardson, one of the earliest colonists most influential in shaping the destiny of the province, and of John Bevan, a noted preacher of the Society of Friends, who had abandoned wealth and position in Wales, to accompany in the cause of truth his “esteemed friend