CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH
It must be a sacrifice to you all, to change your pleasant location at Phœnixville for a residence in Philadelphia, but I hope it will prove satisfactory to you. When I get home I will see what I can do about giving your College a favorable notice in the Maine papers, and may have an opportunity to recommend some students to your care and instruction.
I go from here to Montreal, then home.
- Very respectfully yours,
- Neal Dow.
- Very respectfully yours,
William H. Seward had pleasant relations with my father and spent a few nights at our home. He was thin, with a countenance the lines of which were somewhat drawn, reserved and unsympathetic and made little impression except for smoking a great quantity of cigars. From among his letters I select the following brief note:
Washington, December 25, 1852.
Dear Sir:
I regret that all my copies of the eulogies on Mr. Clay were exhausted a month and more ago. I have requested my friend, Mr. Schoolcraft, of this State to send you one. I will try to save a copy of the Webster Obituary notices for you, but I shall be obliged if you will remind me of it after the publication appears.
Pray offer my most respectful regards to Mrs. Pennypacker and believe me, Always faithfully,
- Your friend,
- William H. Seward.
- Your friend,
Dr. I. A. Pennypacker,
- Phœnixville, Pa.
Being an earnest Whig, my father had little sympathy with the Abolitionists, whom he blamed for causing the defeat of Clay by nominating Birney for the presidency, and when such of their associates as Miller McKim and Charles C. Burleigh appeared he wrestled with them in public controversies, some of which were published in the journals of the time. He was likewise the first to advocate making a public park of the camp ground of Valley Forge. The village of Phœnixville grew up around the iron works
