Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/35

 unfinished stairway, and though he recovered, the accident no doubt shortened his life. In his eighty-second year, one day he was in Philadelphia attending to business. He came home, and in the evening, as was his wont, lay down on a sofa to read a newspaper. The paper slipped from his hand. His daughter, who was in the room, went over to him and found him dead.

His father, Joseph Whitaker, named for his grandfather, Joseph Musgrave, of the Scottish clan referred to in “Young Lochinvar,” son of James Whitaker, born in Colne in Lancashire, grandson of John, also of Colne, was born in Leeds, England, where his father was a manufacturer of cloth. The Whitakers of Lancashire are an Anglo-Saxon family known at High Whitaker and the Holme since the eleventh century and distinguished in literature and in the Church. Several of them in remote times were inmates of Kirkstall Abbey, still well preserved. Among them were William Whitaker, who headed the Reformation in England; Alexander Whitaker, the rector at Jamestown, who married Pocahontas to Rolfe; John Whitaker, the historian of Manchester, and Thomas Dunham Whitaker, who wrote the History of Whalley.

Attention is called to Joseph Whitaker the elder because, while his career was in every sense a failure, he transmitted certain dominant traits of character—mental and physical, which have left their impress upon all of his many descendants. His father intended that he should be trained for the ministry of the Church of England. His inclinations turned toward another line of work. The father was determined and the son was resolute. The result was that he left his home and enlisted in Colonel Harcourt's Cavalry. The regiment was sent to America to suppress the rebellious colonists who were fighting in the Army of Washington. He participated in a number of engagements and was one of the squad which captured General Charles Lee in New Jersey in 1776. The tradition is that he became convinced of the Rh