Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/496

Rh was a member of the provincial conference held in Carpenter Hall, Philadelphia, which conference took steps to form a new government to denounce George III. The conference signed the declaration on June 18, 1776, that the state of Pennsylvania was willing to concur in a vote to the Congress declaring the colonies free and independent states.

Colonel Piper was a member of the convention of 1776, that formed the Constitution of Pennsylvania. In 1776 Colonel Piper was appointed lieutenant-colonel of Bedford County, Pennsylvania, with free military power reporting to the president of the assembly.

In 1777 he was appointed lieutenant of western Pennsylvania. From 1779 to 1783 he represented Bedford County in Supreme Executive Council, and a member from 1785 to 1789 of the general assembly, member of the convention of 1789, and one of the framers of the Constitution of 1790, a justice from 1796 to 1801, a senator from 1801 to 1803, presidential elector in 1797, major-general of state militia in 1801 until his death in 1817.

Upon the organization of the Daughters of the American Revoultion, Mrs. Block was one of the charter members, her number being 337, and a charter member of the Chicago Chapter, her number being three, also a member of the first board of management.

Mrs. Block represented her chapter several times as a delegate at Annual Congress and at the Congress of 1911. She presented before Congress a plan to raise money to pay off the debt on Memorial Continental Hall, and to start a fund for its maintenance by designing a beautiful and artistic certificate that could be sold at one dollar each to every Daughter and descendant. Her plan as suggested by her was so simple, so effective, that it was unanimously adopted by the Congress and Mrs. Block was appointed chairman of a committee to carry out her idea. This she is now employed in doing. She is a member of the Daughters of 1812, the Second Presbyterian Church of Chicago, and The Woman's Athletic Club of Chicago.

Mrs. Lawrence, a Daughter of the American Revolution, has the following ancestry: She is a great-granddaughter of Roger Sherman, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, who was her mother's grandfather; the great-granddaughter of Major Morgan, her father's grandfather on his mother's side; the great-granddaughter of Colonel Jonathan Bliss, of Longmeadow, Massachusetts, by her father's grandmother on his father's side, who commanded a Massachusetts regiment of the Continental Line, and a great-great-granddaughter of David Morgan, from her father's grandmother on his mother's side, who was a private in Captain Joseph Hoar's company of Colonel Gideon Bart's regiment of Massachusetts militia, who served in 1782 in the army of Canada.

Mrs. Lawrence, a charter member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, was the daughter of Randolph Morgan Cooley and Maria Louise Stevenson Cooley. She is the wife of George A. Lawrence of New York City.