Page:History of the University of Pennsylvania - Montgomery (1900).djvu/316

312 the Transactions of the Society and afforded valuable information to the foreign correspondents of the Society. In 1770, Dr. Williamson published through the same channel some observations on the change of climate which had been remarked within a range of years to have taken place in the middle colonies of North America. This and other scientific investigations of his brought him the notice of foreign savants, and his medical alma mater, Utrecht, made him Doctor of Laws in 1772, and he was made a member of the Holland Society of Sciences, and the Society of Arts and Sciences of Utrecht.

In 1772 he undertook a voyage to the West Indies to raise funds for the Academy at Newark, Delaware, the successor of Dr Alison's school of which in early life he had been a pupil, and of which he was a Trustee; and in the year following in company with his co-Trustee, Rev. Dr. Ewing, afterwards Provost of the University of Pennsylvania, he made a tour through Great Britain on the same errand, and in this duty they remained together until the autumn of 1775, but Williamson did not return home with Ewing. He then travelled through Holland and the Low Countries, but when the news of American Independence reached him, he retraced his steps and reached Philadelphia in March, 1777. The story which had credence for a number of years that it was through his agency the Hutchinson letters were procured for Franklin who sent them to Massachusetts, and which is yet frequently repeated, is contradicted by the fact that Dr. Williamson, at the time of Dr. Franklin sending those Letters, namely in December, 1772, was at the time in the West Indies, and he did not sail for England as stated above until December, 1773; the ship he sailed in from Boston lay in the harbor ready for sail, when the famed Tea Party took place on that eventful night of 16 December, and he was the first one to communicate to the British Government the tidings of this decisive destruction of the East India Company's cargoes of tea.

On Dr. Williamson's return to Pennsylvania, no opportunity appeared open for the pursuit of his profession, and turning his face southward he engaged in mercantile pursuits; but his medical