Part 76

Footnote 300:

Rush’s Eulog. on Ritt.

Footnote 301:

Ibid.

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THE CONCLUSION: COMPREHENDING A RETROSPECT OF THE LIFE OF DAVID RITTENHOUSE,

WITH

A DELINEATION OF HIS CHARACTER.

“It has been the fashion of late years,” says his eloquent Eulogist, “to say of persons who had been distinguished in life,—when they left the world in a state of indifference to every thing, and believing and hoping in nothing,—that they died like Philosophers.” RITTENHOUSE did not, indeed, die like a disciple of that new philosophy, referred to by the Eulogist,—like some of those modern pretenders to illumination, who have been struggling to resuscitate all the maddening dreams and absurdities of the Pyrrhonists of old: His last hours were similar to those, which graced the departure from the world, of a Newton and a Boyle, with very many illustrious Christians besides, who truly deserved the name of Philosophers;—for, “he died like a Christian, interested in the welfare of all around him—believing in the resurrection, and the life to come, and hoping for happiness from every attribute of the Deity.”

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Footnote 302:

Rush’s Eulog. on Ritt.

Footnote 303:

“Astronomy, like the Christian religion, if you will allow me the comparison,” said our philosopher, “has a much greater influence on our knowledge in general, and perhaps on our manners too, than is commonly imagined. Though but few men are its particular votaries, yet the Light it affords is universally diffused among us; and it is difficult for us to divest ourselves of its influence so far, as to frame any competent idea of what would be our situation without it.” See Ritt. Orat.

In another part of his Oration is this passage—“Our Religion teaches us what Philosophy could not have taught: and we ought to admire, with reverence, the great things it has pleased Divine Providence to perform, beyond the ordinary course of nature, for man, who is, undoubtedly, the most noble inhabitant of this globe,” &c.

And in addition to these sentiments, uttered and published by our philosopher himself, let the testimony of Dr. Rush, who had long and intimately known him, be quoted, from the learned professor’s Eulogium: “He believed in the Christian Revelation,” says the Doctor; and then subjoins—“Of this he gave many proofs; not only in the conformity of his life to the precepts of the Gospel, but in his letters and conversation.”

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By his last will and testament, which was not executed till the day preceding his death, Dr. Rittenhouse disposed of his estate in a very equitable manner, between Mrs. Rittenhouse and his two daughters, besides making a liberal provision for an amiable widowed sister, so long as she should live.

It appears, from an estimate of his estate made by himself, (and supposed to have been drawn up about a year before his death,) that all the property he ever acquired, independently of his patrimony, which he valued at one thousand pounds, actually cost him only 13,525l.: and the whole of his estate was estimated, at the time of his decease, at scarcely twenty thousand pounds. When it is considered, that the talents of this very extraordinary man were actively and industriously employed more than forty years, from the time he attained to manhood, during many years of which period, he was engaged in various public occupations, and some of them lucrative; that he was prudent and exact in all his transactions, private as well as public, and economical in his domestic expenditures; and that his family was small;—when all these considerations are taken into view, they furnish matter of surprize that he should not have accumulated a larger fortune! Indeed the moderate amount of the estate he left, affords reasonable grounds for supposing, that he devoted more of his property to purposes of beneficence, than the world had any opportunity of becoming acquainted with.

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Footnote 304:

Equivalent to 36,066⅔ American or Spanish dollars.

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Dr. Rittenhouse survived both his sons-in-law; and their widows are his only remaining children. He constituted these daughters, with Mrs. Rittenhouse, the executrices of his will.

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Footnote 305:

The elder of these ladies became, in the year 1788, the second wife of Jonathan Dickinson Sergeant, Esq. late an eminent lawyer in Philadelphia, and sometime attorney-general of Pennsylvania. This gentleman was one of the five persons delegated, on the 20th of February, 1776, by the convention of New-Jersey (where he then resided,) to represent that colony in congress: his colleagues were, the late governor Livingston, and John de Hart, Richard Smith, and John Cooper, Esquires. Mr. Sergeant died of the yellow fever in Philadelphia, on the 8th of October, 1793; after having been many weeks actively and benevolently employed, with a few other gentlemen of humanity, in the prosecution of such measures, as the sufferings of those of the citizens who had not fled, and the general welfare of the city required, at that calamitous period. He left issue a son and two daughters, by this marriage, besides several children by his first wife.

The other daughter of Dr. Rittenhouse was married in the year 1790, to Nicholas Baker Waters, M. D. of Philadelphia, a young physician of respectable talents and amiable disposition. Dr. Waters died of a pulmonary disease, in August, 1794, at a very early age, leaving one son, an only child.