Part 18

Footnote 69:

Margaret, who intermarried with Edward Morgan; Esther, with the Rev. Thomas Barton; David, the subject of these Memoirs; Andrew, who died in his minority; Anne, who intermarried with George Shoemaker; Eleanor, who intermarried with Daniel Evans; Benjamin, yet living; Jonathan, who died in his minority; and Mary and Elizabeth (twins,) of whom the latter died in her minority, unmarried: Mary, who is living, has been twice married, but without issue; her first husband was Thomas Morgan. David had no sons; and two of his three brothers having died young and unmarried, the only persons, descended from our philosopher’s father, Matthias, who now bear the name of Rittenhouse, are the surviving brother of David, namely, Benjamin, and his sons. Benjamin has been twice married; first, to a daughter of General John Bull; and, secondly, to a daughter of Colonel Francis Wade: By both marriages he has male issue; and, as it is believed, two of the sons by the first wife are married.

Footnote 70:

“There is,” says a late ingenious writer, “a strong propensity in the human mind to trace up our ancestry to as high and as remote a source as possible.” “This principle of our nature,” he observes, “although liable to great perversion; and frequently the source of well-founded ridicule, may, if rightly directed, become the parent of great actions. The origin and progress of individuals, of families, and of nations, constitute Biography and History, two of the most interesting departments of human knowledge.”

The pride of ancestry is, indeed, “liable to great perversion,” and is too frequently “the source of well-founded ridicule:” yet the experience and the history of mankind, in every age and country, have shewn, that it is connected with and derived from principles of our nature, which are not only laudable in themselves, but such as, if “rightly directed” and properly applied, become eminently useful to society.

Footnote 70a:

See a “Discourse delivered before the New-York Historical Society, at their anniversary meeting, December the 6th, 1811: By the Hon. De Witt Clinton, one of the Vice-Presidents of the Society.”

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This son was an infant, when his family removed to Norriton and engaged in the business of farming; and his father appears, early, to have designed him for this most useful and very respectable employment. Accordingly, as soon as the boy arrived at a sufficient age to assist in conducting the affairs of the farm, he was occupied as an husbandman. This kind of occupation seems to have commenced at a very early period of his life; for it is ascertained, that, about the fourteenth year of his age, he was actually employed in ploughing his father’s fields.

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Footnote 71:

It is not this occupation that, in itself, usually attaches to those who follow it, the idea of clownishness: but it is the ignorance that, unfortunately, too generally characterizes persons employed in it, which, by an association of ideas, is apt to derogate from the worthiness of the employment itself. If the profession of husbandry be an honourable one, and every rational consideration renders it such, then one of the most important operations in conducting the great business of the agriculturist, cannot be destitute of dignity. To follow the plough is not a servile labour: it is an employment worthy of a freeman; and if the person, thus engaged, be a man of native talents, aided by some improvement of mind, scarcely any occupation can afford him greater scope for philosophic reflection.

While, therefore, the reader contemplates the celebrated Rittenhouse, such as he was in his maturer years; and then takes a retrospective view of the embryo-philosopher in the period of his youth, directing the plough on his father’s freehold; let it be recollected, that the sovereigns of a mighty empire, in the Eastern world, occasionally guide this truly important machine with their own hands, in honour of agriculture: let him recal to his mind, that, in the proudest days of the Roman republic, consuls, dictators, senators, and generals, were not unfrequently called forth from the actual occupancy of this implement of husbandry, by the voice of their country; and, seizing either the civil or the military helm of its government, with hands indurated by the toils of the peaceful field, have by the wisdom of their counsel, or by their valour, supported the tottering fabric of the state and saved the commonwealth: let them remember, in fine, that—

“In ancient times, the sacred plough employ’d The kings and awful fathers of mankind;”

and that WASHINGTON, himself, the pride and boast of his age as well as country, disdained not to engage himself, personally, in agricultural pursuits.

Footnote 71a:

Thomson’s Spring.

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At that period of our future Philosopher’s life, early as it was, his uncultivated mind, naturally teeming with the most prolific germs of yet unexpanded science, began to unfold those buds of genius, which soon after attained that wonderful luxuriance of growth by which the usefulness and splendour of his talents became eminently conspicuous. His brother Benjamin relates, that, while David was thus employed at the plough, from the age of fourteen years and for some time after, he (this informant,) then a young boy, was frequently sent to call him to his meals; at which times he repeatedly observed, that not only the fences at the head of many of the furrows, but even his plough and its handles, were covered over with chalked numerical figures, &c.—Hence it is evident, that the exuberance of a sublime native genius and of almost unbounded intellectual powers, unaided by any artificial means of excitement, were enabled, by dint of their own energy, to burst through those restraints which the corporeal employments of his youth necessarily imposed upon them.

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Footnote 72:

This gentleman was commissioned by Governor Mifflin, in the year 1791, to be one of the associate judges of the court of common pleas, in and for the county of Montgomery: but his tenure of this office was afterwards vacated, by his removal to Philadelphia.

Footnote 73:

“Astronomy,” says Mr. B. Rittenhouse, in the letter before referred to, “appeared at a very early day to be his favourite study; but he also applied himself industriously to the study of opticks, the mechanical powers,” &c.

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During that portion of his life in which this youthful philosopher pursued the ordinary occupations of a husbandman, which continued until about the eighteenth year of his age, as well as in his earlier youth, he appeared to have inherited from healthful parents a sound constitution, and to have enjoyed good health.

It was at this period, or rather about the seventeenth year of his age, that he made a wooden clock, of very ingenious workmanship: and soon after, he constructed one of the same materials that compose the common four-and-twenty hour clock, and upon the same principles. But he had exhibited much earlier proofs of his mechanical genius, by making, when only seven or eight years old, a complete water-mill in miniature.

Mr. Rittenhouse’s father was a very respectable man: he possessed a good understanding, united to a most benevolent heart and great simplicity of manners. The writer long knew him; and, from his early acquaintance with the character, the appearance, and the habits of this worthy sire of an illustrious son, he had long supposed him to have been inclined to the religious principles of the society called Friends, although he had been bred a Baptist:—but a circumstance which shall be noticed hereafter, will evince the liberality of this good man’s opinions, in the all-important concern of religion. Yet, with truly estimable qualities, both of the head and heart, old Mr. Rittenhouse had no claims to what is termed genius; and therefore did not, probably, duly appreciate the early specimens of that talent, which appeared so conspicuous in his son David. Hence, he was for some time opposed to the young man’s earnest desire to renounce agricultural employments; for the purpose of devoting himself, altogether, to philosophical pursuits, in connexion with some such mechanical profession as might best comport with useful objects of natural philosophy, and be most likely, at the same time, to afford him the means of a comfortable subsistence. At length, however, the father yielded his own inclinations, in order to gratify what was manifestly the irresistible impulse of his son’s genius: he supplied him with money to purchase, in Philadelphia, such tools as were more immediately necessary for commencing the clock-making business, which the son then adopted as his profession.