Page:History of the University of Pennsylvania - Montgomery (1900).djvu/110

106 himself to Christ Church. He resigned his Trusteeship in the Academy and College in 1772 owing to increasing infirmities, but his young son was two years later elected a Trustee. He was one of the Commissioners of Peace in 1752, and on 30 May the same year was commissioned a Justice of the Peace of the County Courts of Philadelphia. He espoused the cause of the colonies in their struggles against the parliament, and perhaps his Jacobite traditions made it the more easy for him to seek a severance from a King of the House of Hanover; but an accident which had befallen him in 1757 forbade participation in any political or military movements of the time. When writing to his London correspondents, Messrs. David Barclay & Sons, 11 November, 1765, in ordering some articles, he adds, "But not if the Stamp Act be unrepealed." On one of his stated visits to Maryland he died, after a short illness, at his daughter's house at the head of Bush River, on 29 September, 1779, and his remains now lie in the old St. George's burying ground.

He married secondly, Esther, daughter of Abraham Hewlings of Burlington, N. J., of a family which early in the colony were Friends, but who became followers of George Keith and returned to the Church of England; and by her he had a son William, whom he lived to see Rector of the united Churches of Christ Church and St. Peter's, but did not live to see him wearing the Mitre; and Mary, who became the wife of Robert Morris the Financier, a Trustee of the College from 1778 to 1791. His eminent son records of him,

He was indulgent to his Family in all their reasonable Desires and was attentive to the keeping of a plentiful and hospitable Table. Among his many good Qualities, was strict Temperance and scrupulous Integrity. Perhaps no Man ever lived and died with a more unreserved acknowledgment of these properties of character.

His oldest grandson, Thomas Hall, a graduate of the Academy and College in 1768, while reading law in Philadelphia served for the following year as tutor in his Alma Mater.

Col. White's attendance with the Trustees at their meetings was very regular and would have been almost without intermission but for his absences from the city. The last time he