Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/243

 was a great development of what has been called the “Speak Easy,” and there have been recent efforts to have my position put in the shape of legislation.

In 1891 the Pennsylvania German Society was organized among the descendants of the early German and Swiss settlers of the state. Among those who took the preliminary steps were Dr. William H. Egle, F. R. Diffenderffer of Lancaster, Col. T. C. Zimmerman of Berks, Julius F. Sachse, George F. Baer, General James A. Beaver and myself. No other of the different race societies has been so energetic in the study of the sources of history or so prolific in the production of literature. My Settlement of Germantown appeared among its publications and for one year I was president of the society.

That summer Senator Quay paid me a visit at Moore Hall, and I had Dr. Joseph W. Anderson of Ardmore there to meet him. We were all three descendants of Major Patrick Anderson of the Revolutionary Army and had this bond of association. The doctor was a bland and mild-mannered person of wealth and great respectability. His father. Dr. James Anderson, was the oldest brother of my Grandmother Pennypacker. When a young man Dr. James Anderson bought a farm not far from Philadelphia and there practiced medicine. My grandfather, who was accustomed to good land and fine meadows, said: “I don't see what James ever bought that poor farm for.” It is difficult to forecast. The Pennsylvania Railroad put the Ardmore Station on that farm and the lands retained by the family are worth from $8,000 to $25,000 an acre. I took the Senator to the little house along the bank of the Pickering, where his grandfather had lived, to the site near a spring where James Anderson, the first settler, had built his log cabin in the woods, to the Anderson graveyard where he had his grandmother buried, to Valley Forge, and on Sunday we attended service at St. David's at Radnor. While at Moore Hall news came of the death of Charles S. Wolfe. Rh