Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker | Page 8

to suspect at school that
non-resistance did not add permanently to the comfort of life. I was
sorry that my father had not resorted to stronger measures with Mr.
Bradford, a gentleman whom, in after-years, I learned greatly to
respect.
More than anything else, this exceptional experience as to my father
left me with a great desire to know more of these Wynnes, and with a
certain share of that pride of race, which, to my surprise, as I think it

over now, was at that time in my father's esteem a possession of value.
I am bound to add that I also felt some self-importance at being
intrusted with this secret, for such indeed it was.
Before my grandfather left Wales he had married a distant cousin, Ellin
Owen, and on her death, childless, he took to wife, many years later,
her younger sister, Gainor [Footnote: Thus early we shed the English
prejudice against marriage with a deceased wife's sister.] for these
Owens, our kinsmen, had also become Friends, and had followed my
grandfather's example in leaving their home in Merionethshire. To this
second marriage, which occurred in 1713, were born my aunt, Gainor
Wynne, and, two years later, my father, John Wynne. I have no
remembrance of either grandparent. Both lie in the ground at Merion
Meeting-house, under nameless, unmarked graves, after the manner of
Friends. I like it not.
My father, being a stern and silent man, must needs be caught by his
very opposite, and, according to this law of our nature, fell in love with
Marie Beauvais, the orphan of a French gentleman who had become a
Quaker, and was of that part of France called the Midi. Of this marriage
I was the only surviving offspring, my sister Ellin dying when I was an
infant. I was born in the city of Penn, on January 9, 1753, at 9 P.M.

II
I have but to close my eyes to see the house in which I lived in my
youth. It stood in the city of Penn, back from the low bluff of Dock
Creek, near to Walnut street. The garden stretched down to the water,
and before the door were still left on either side two great
hemlock-spruces, which must have been part of the noble woods under
which the first settlers found shelter. Behind the house was a separate
building, long and low, in which all the cooking was done, and upstairs
were the rooms where the slaves dwelt apart.
The great garden stretched westward as far as Third street, and was full
of fine fruit-trees, and in the autumn of melons, first brought hither in
one of my father's ships. Herbs and simples were not wanting, nor
berries, for all good housewives in those days were expected to be able
to treat colds and the lesser maladies with simples, as they were called,
and to provide abundantly jams and conserves of divers kinds.
There were many flowers too, and my mother loved to make a home

here for the wildings she found in the governor's woods. I have heard
her regret that the most delicious of all the growths of spring, the
ground-sweet, which I think they now call arbutus, would not prosper
out of its forest shelter.
The house was of black and red brick, and double; that is, with two
windows on each side of a white Doric doorway, having something
portly about it. I use the word as Dr. Johnson defines it: a house of port,
with a look of sufficiency, and, too, of ready hospitality, which was due,
I think, to the upper half of the door being open a good part of the year.
I recall also the bull's-eye of thick glass in the upper half-door, and
below it a great brass knocker. In the white shutters were cut crescentic
openings, which looked at night like half-shut eyes when there were
lights within the rooms. In the hall were hung on pegs leathern buckets.
They were painted green, and bore, in yellow letters, "Fire" and "J.W."
The day I went to school for the first time is very clear in my memory.
I can see myself, a stout little fellow about eight years old, clad in gray
homespun, with breeches, low shoes, and a low, flat beaver hat. I can
hear my mother say, "Here are two big apples for thy master," it being
the custom so to propitiate pedagogues. Often afterward I took eggs in
a little basket, or flowers, and others did the like.
"Now run! run!" she cried, "and be a good boy; run, or thou wilt be
late." And she clapped her hands as I sped away, now and then looking
back over my shoulder.
I remember as well my return home to this