Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: MARY WHITE-MRS, ROBERT MORRIS. I have been invited here to-day to perform not an easy task. The life of a. woman whose chief distinction is the prominence of her husband, is not likely to be possessed of characteristics and events, apart from him, of sufficient moment and interest to be preserved alive for half a century after her decease, and bear repeating at the end of that time. And yet this is a grateful task; for by performing it I hope to gratify that most laudable desire of man's heart, to know something of his progenitors, that, by imitating their virtues and transmitting the same to his successors, he may help to improve and benefit the human race. With this end and aim in view, I will relate all I know of Mrs. Robert MorrisMary, youngest child of Thomas and Esther Heulings] AVhite. She was born in the city of Philadelphia on the 13th day of April, 1749, and on the 21st of May was baptized at Christ Church. Of her maidenhood, no incidents, even by tradition, are preserved, save in the opening verse of Colonel Shippen's Lines icritten in an Assembty Ruom1 to commemorate the beauty and charms of Philadelphia's belles, where he says: In lovely White's most pleasing form, What various graces meet How blest with every striking charm How languishingly sweet She must, however, have been carefully trained and educated in all womanly accomplishments to have enabled her to fill, with Ho mueli ease, and dignity, and grace, the position in which she was afterwards placed. 1 Shippen Papers, edited by Thomas Balch. Pliila. 1855. On the second of March, 1769, before she was twenty, she was united in marriage by the Reverend Richard Peters, to Robert Morris, the future financier of the American Revolution. Mr. Morris was a native of Great Britain, having been.