ishment as we can justly inflict on such as shall contemn or neglect the performance of so religious a duty. Given in Court at Kensington June 8 1713, God save the Queen."

From this proclamation in particular we see how little reason there is for crediting the New Englanders with having made the observance obligatory and repulsive, as often charged.

In Connecticut the records show that thanksgivings were ordered at intervals from 1639 down to 1716, after which the observance was quite regular, all "servile labor" being prohibited on that day, as in England and all New England. Fast days often followed the festival, and were ordered in the same proclamation. In 1660 the New Haven authorities confessed that they were nonplussed; as the scribe observes, they could not "pich vpon a 'day."

In Rhode Island, as elsewhere, various of the Massachusetts appointments were observed. In New Jersey the records of thanksgiving are few, though common political events appear to have been improved quite regularly.

In Virginia, whose early history was overshadowed by frightful calamities, little appears to have been done, yet days were observed in obedience to the home government. The records need to be searched in order to show the particulars of the observance; yet the same royal proclamations that reached to New England went to Virginia, and with substantially the same results.

Coming to New York, we find Mr. Brodhead saying in his history, that the proclamation by government authority in this State of days of fasting and days of thanksgiving was a custom derived from Holland. Yet with this able and worthy writer everything was "Dutch."

The records of thanksgiving in New York are so scattered that it would be difficult to bring them together in an ordered series. As in New England, the observance during the seventeenth century was sporadic. Only about a dozen mentions of the day are found in the colonial documents.

In New York, as elsewhere, the people were not always happy in the selection of the occasion for thanksgiving. One of the early festivals recorded was that of 1644. A manuscript which the Dutch preserved at the Hague shows that in 1644 the New Yorkers marched to Greenwich, Conn., and shot or burned alive five or six hundred Indians, including women and children. They then marched back to New York, and sat down to a thanksgiving dinner.

In 1654, New York found a more fitting occasion for thanksgiving in the peace arranged between England and Holland; but the next year it was for

the victory over the Swedes in New Jersey. In 1659 general prosperity was the staple of gratitude among the burghers, and in 1664 the "Esopus war" was ended with thanks. In 1665, New Amsterdam changed hands, and the English kept thanksgiving for the "conquest." Three years later all parties were very grateful for the birth of an heir to the throne; and in 1696 the people were thankful for the preservation of the king. In 1755, New York, like New England, was in a blaze of thanksgiving glory for the victory of Sir William Johnson at Lake George; and in 1760 there was a thanksgiving day for the conquest of Canada. In New York, New England, and the other colonies political or military events took the lead, the harvests holding a subsidiary place.

After the close of the Revolution a tendency to make Thanksgiving Day a regular institution in New York was at once apparent, and Governor John Jay, in 1795, issued a proclamation for the 11th of November. The act, however, was seized upon by politicians, who maintained that he was seeking to flatter religious prejudices. At an early period, also, the mayors of New York were accustomed to appoint a day of thanksgiving, in accordance with the recommendation of the council, and that of December 16, 1799, appears to have been the first so ordered. Yet the observance of the day until Governor Clinton's time was more or less broken. The festival was kept, however, by Episcopalians, according to the provisions of the Prayer Book, other religious bodies at the same time following their own preferences. Clinton's course, like Jay's, excited criticism. At the east end of Long Island there was no little murmuring, because the day did not coincide with the local custom. It appears that the people of East and South Hampton observed thanksgiving on the Thursday after the cattle were driven home from the common pastures at Montauk Point, the day of the return of the cattle being fixed annually, with due solemnity, at the town meeting. Hence there was a collision, and the herdsmen were divided, striving as the herdsmen of Abram's cattle strove with those of Lot. But this was no case of an immovable body opposed to an irresistible force, and, therefore, the opponents of Clinton gave way, though not without many expostulations. Here was the beginning of the movement which led to the first presidential proclamation nationalizing Thanksgiving Day.

NOTE.-Some valuable matter on Thanksgiving will be found in the New Englander (1879, pp. 240-252). The reader will also find interesting material relating to Thanksgiving proclamations in Hough's Collections. The earliest form for the celebration of Thanksgiving Day appears to be that of the American Book of Common Prayer, drawn up by representatives of Pennsylvania.

MINOR TOPICS

INVENTOR OF THE SUBMARINE TORPEDO-The summer tourist in search of the salt breeze may have eyed with anxiety the mysterious caution posted off one or two of our coast defences not to anchor in that vicinity by reason of "TORPEDOES!" Such anchorage grounds are rigidly avoided, and Government officers proceed in their experiments with these dangerous monsters without fear of exterminating peaceful craft unawares. As an instrument of war, the torpedo is coming forward; and had both parties in the recent Egyptian embroglio been possessed of navies, its modern methods would have been heard from. The principal defence of New York harbor, in case of a sudden rupture, is presumed to lie, we believe, in the capabilities of a torpedo-boat at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

The submarine machine is claimed to be an American invention. General Henry L. Abbot, in charge of the United States Engineer School of Application at Willett's Point, Long Island, having examined the subject historically, finds David Bushnell, an undergraduate of Yale College in 1771-75, its originator, and in a quarto pamphlet lately published for the use and information of his corps, introduces all the known authentic references and extracts showing what Bushnell accomplished. The common impression that this individual, who became an officer in the Revolutionary Army, first turned his attention to the effect of submarine explosions for the one purpose of blowing up English men-of-war in our waters, is found not to be correct. He studied the subject before the war broke out-as early as his Freshman year, 1771, and himself speaks of making experiments "to prove that powder would take fire under water." His famous American Turtle, the father of torpedoes, so to speak, which attempted to blow up the "Asia" in 1776, was projected and completed while he was a student, and it is high praise which Lieutenant F. M. Barber, of the navy, awards him when he says, that notwithstanding its failure to accomplish anything against the enemy, it was "the most perfect thing of its kind that has ever been constructed, either before or since the time of Bushnell."

During the early part of the war Bushnell's efforts to injure the British shipping were unsuccessful, but his ingenuity and ability were recognized, and he was finally rewarded with an appointment as captain-lieutenant in the newly raised corps of sappers and miners. Promoted in 1781 to a full captaincy, he participated in the siege operations at Yorktown, and some

time after the war removed to Georgia, where he died at an advanced age as a highly respected physician.

In summing up Captain Bushnell's contributions to scientific warfare, General Abbot concludes that he was the first to perceive and experimentally establish that the pressure of water alone may develop an intensity of action in a subaqueous explosion sufficient to destroy a vessel in the vicinity, that it was he who gave the name "torpedo" to a case containing a charge of gunpowder to be fired under water, and that he introduced the use of submarine boats and of drifting torpedoes. Fulton, coming after, originated the use of submarine mines, or torpedoes anchored to obstruct a channel. "In a word," says Abbot, "Fulton simply improved upon and developed Bushnell's offensive machines, but he originated the method of operating now known as defensive torpedo warfare. Finally, Samuel Colt, by introducing electricity as the agent for igniting the charges, rendered it possible to perfect both classes of torpedoes. To these three men, Americans all, we owe more than to any others the inauguration of this new and important mode of maritime warfare, which, by strengthening the hands of the weak, has done and is doing much to justify the sentiment inscribed by Fulton upon the title-page of his first treatise upon torpedo war, 'The Liberty of the Seas will be the Happiness of the Earth.'"

David Bushnell

THE WASHINGTON PEDIGREE AND SHIELD-The death of Colonel Joseph L. Chester must prove as much a deprivation to those working in the same field in America as to the English public, with whom he earned the reputation of being, as one of his admirers there writes of him, "a gentleman unrivalled and unapproachable in his own departments of genealogy." He will be missed by many individuals engaged in tracing their ancestry back to the motherland, and to whom in his lifetime he rendered valuable assistance. More than all, he was cut short in the midst of investigations into Washington's pedigree, which he had pursued so far as to overthrow heretofore accepted but incorrect theories respecting the first emigrants, and whose further researches and final conclusions were awaited with a lively interest on both sides of the water. In this matter, as is well known, Colonel Chester established the fact several years since that the John and Lawrence Washington whom Sparks, Irving, Baker, and others describe as the first Washingtons to come to Virginia, and the former of whom is given as the direct ancestor of the "Father of his Country," never

emigrated to America, but lived, died, and were buried in England. This finding took historians and genealogists by surprise, not a few being disappointed, and, in the interval since, little more has been reaped beyond discussions and suspense. Colonel Chester himself, however, to use his own word, had a firm "belief" that he had established the identity of the true emigrants, John and Lawrence, and showed his evidence to his friends, but refrained from publishing anything until every link was complete and the pedigree unimpeachable. The final link was the missing will of the first John Washington, of Virginia, whose signature was needed for comparison with that on a deed discovered in England and supposed to be drawn by the same John. A vexatious doubt thus attaches to the matter.

What, in the eyes of some, lent interest to the pedigree heretofore was the quality of Washington's ancestry, the line being traceable regularly to Lawrence Washington, of "gentle " blood, who, in 1533, and again in 1546, appears as Mayor of Northampton, with his home at Sulgrave, in that shire, and which, still standing, is the oldest known Washington manor-house in England. It is pleasant to know, perhaps, that our first President was well connected, and, so far as this point goes, it appears that Colonel Chester's researches, could the Virginia link have been supplied, would still have connected him with the Northampton family. In regard to this we have almost a positive assurance from the Rev. J. N. Simpkinson, author of "The Washingtons," who was given the opportunity of examining Colonel Chester's new material, and with whom he freely exchanged views on the subject. In a letter to the Nation of April 15, 1880, he writes: "I hope I am not saying too much, under the circumstances, in adding that some of these documents seemed to me to supply strong presumptive proof that the emigrants would be found, after all, to have sprung from the Northampton stock, though of a generation below that which was erroneously pointed out [by Sparks, Baker, etc.]. In this case Brington and Sulgrave would not lose their interest to Americans." And so they would not. A view of the Washington manor of Brington, whither the son of Lawrence of Sulgrave went to reside, appeared in THE MAGAZINE for August, 1881, with a brief article from the pen of Mr. Simpkinson. The Sulgrave manor, older still, is at present occupied by an English farmer, and it seems to havé received but little notice. One of its interesting features is the shield, or family coat of arms, cut into the stone in the porchway, a fac-simile of which, reduced, is presented on the next page, drawn from a cast of the original, for the use of which we are indebted to Mr. E. M. Tuffley, now in this country with interesting material respecting the Northampton Washingtons. This is believed to be the earliest specimen of the shield extant. Upon the ques