ever, for I have really endeavored to deserve this last and most luminous testimony of their inveterate malice." With a view solely to the protection of the property by her presence, Mrs. Livingston returned with her daughters from Parcipany to Elizabethtown. But their courage and self-possession were several times put to the severest test. When the British made their

[From etching by Albert Rosenthal, through courtesy of Constitutional Centennial Committee, Philadelphia.]

memorable incursion into New Jersey in June, 1780, and burned Springfield and Connecticut Farms, the flames of which were in full view, and soldiers continually passing "Liberty Hall" throughout that dreadful day, the ladies were alone with the women-servants, the governor being at Morristown, and the men-servants all hiding in the woods. In the morning, three or four British officers called and had a short interview with Mrs. Livingston and her daughters; but they left so full of admiration at the coolness and intrepidity of the ladies as to swear they should not

VOL. XXI.-No. 5.-26

be harmed. The house was accordingly spared. Late in the evening some British officers sent word that they should lodge at "Liberty Hall." This was regarded as additional assurance of safety to the family. About midnight there was a sudden uproar, and the officers were called away hastily by startling news. There was firing along the road. Presently a band of drunken refugees came staggering through the grounds, and with horrid oaths burst the door open into the hall. The women-servants huddled into the kitchen, and the ladies locked themselves into one of the chambers. Their retreat was soon discovered, and there was a great pounding upon the door; as it was about to be burst in, Kitty Livingston stepped forward and resolutely opened it. A drunken ruffian seized her by the arm, and she, with the quickness of thought, grasped his coat-collar. Just then a flash of lightning revealed to the assailant the lady's white robes and equally white scared face, and the wretch fell back, exclaiming, "Good God! It is Mrs. Caldwell, whom we killed to-day!" The same merciful light showed Susan Livingston the face of one of their former neighbors among the ruffians, and she quickly secured his intervention

and the house was cleared.

It was in this historic home that Mrs. Washington was entertained in May, 1789, when on her way to New York after the inauguration of her husband as first President of the United States. The mansion was decorated with flowers, and Governor Livingston's children—a gifted gathering of men and women-were present to help do the honors. The guestchamber occupied by Mrs. Washington was over the library. The one set apart for the use of Mrs. Robert Morris was over the hall in the centre of the front of the mansion. The next morning Washington, accompanied by John Jay, Robert Morris, and other distinguished gentlemen, arrived at Liberty Hall" in time for breakfast. No queen was ever escorted into a capital with more conspicuous ceremony than Mrs. Washington into New York.

After the death of Governor Livingston, in 1790, the beautiful country seat passed into the hands of strangers. It had a romantic episode, being purchased by Lord Bolingbroke, who ran away from England with the school-girl daughter of Baron Hompasch, leaving an estimable wife to break her heart. Later on the property was purchased by the daughter of the governor's brother, Peter Van Brugh Livingston, who was the widow of Hon. John McKean. She subsequently married Count Niemcewicz, a Polish nobleman and poet, and the mansion once more became the centre of attraction for statesmen, scholars, and celebrities. It has ever since been in the possession of the Kean family.

There are not less than fifty noteworthy houses in Elizabeth that were built before the Revolution, and several that have defied the storms of at least two hundred years. The romantic story of the town's first settlement in 1664, and how in 1672 an arrogant little parliament deposed its first governor, would bear repeating if space permitted. For many years prior to the Revolution, it was a larger and more notable place than Newark. It was where the General Assembly met until it commenced its alternations between Perth Amboy and Burlington; and it was the residence of the governors and officers of the government far into the following century. The house in which Governor Belcher lived is still standing in Jersey street, a little beyond the old home of Elias Boudinot. This distinguished patron of learning and religion took his seat in the executive chair of the province in 1747, and proceeded very soon to enlarge and improve the charter of the College of New Jersey. The same house was occupied later on by Governor Aaron Ogden, who was five years president of the state society of the Cincinnati, and ten years president-general of the organization. Elizabeth and Newark had a little scrimmage in the early days concerning the boundary-line between the two places. They did not attempt, as did an ancient Connecticut town, to settle the controversy by a private combat. But a committee from Elizabeth met a committee from Newark on a little round hill between the two places-henceforward called "Divident Hill"—and as a preamble to the tangled business before them, Robert Treat, of Newark, led in prayer. When the conference ended, John Ogden, one of the principal founders of Elizabeth, also prayed, returning thanks for their "loving agreement." There were unloving disagreements afterward that were not disposed of so easily. A county election, for example, in 1807, was to decide the location of the court-house. Elizabeth wanted it, and Newark became intensely excited. Public meetings were held in all parts of the county, and the children in the public schools were employed for days in writing tickets for the contest. Whoever spoke a good word for Elizabeth was in personal danger. Two Newark gentlemen drove to Elizabeth in a gig on private business, and were received with a bucket of tar. On the day of election, every horse, carriage, and cart in the place was in requisition, and every man and every woman old enough and big enough (age was a minor consideration), or who expected to grow old enough and big enough, to vote, was promptly at the polls. It may have been forgotten, but it is true all the same, that in the beginning of the present century, widows and single women were entitled by the laws of New Jersey to vote in all elections. Vehicles were going all day to and fro from the different polls, and every person voted at every poll.

Married women voted as well as single women. Three sisters, the youngest aged fifteen, changed their dresses and their names, and voted six times each. This was related to the writer by two of the sisters, who lived to a great age, residents of Newark. Men and boys put on women s clothes in order to duplicate their votes. Never was there a more reckless and extraordinary proceeding. Newark won the court-house, and in the evening illuminated herself to the tops of her steeples. Elizabeth sought consolation in various ways; having established the first schools of importance in the state, attention was given to making the picturesque old historic town a favorite seat of learning.

Elizabeth was originally settled by the same Connecticut stock as Newark. Some personal friends of Robert Treat, subsequently governor of Connecticut, obtained of the new governor, Nicolls, immediately after the Dutch dominion ceased to exist and the English banner floated over New York and New Jersey, the patent for a vast tract of land, including the site of the present city of Newark. But Elizabeth later on received accessions to its population from England and Scotland, and the varied elements did not always harmonize in the organization of social, political, and religious institutions. Treat himself visited the little beginnings of settlement, and found the pioneers willing to part with a portion of their land-purchase, and entered into a written agreement for its transfer—which was the basis for the emigration of thirty families from the New Haven colony, who planted their homes upon the bank of the Passaic river and commenced the building of Elizabeth's rival-the town of Newark.

Martha I Lamb

OAK HILL, THE HOME OF PRESIDENT MONROE

After the return of James Monroe from his mission to foreign courts in the early part of this century, he spent his summers chiefly on his beautiful estate in Loudoun county, Virginia, which was named Oak Hill from a cluster of giant oaks towering above all other trees on its wooded lawn. The picturesque old Virginia cottage, with its dormer windows and chimney on the outside, in which the family lived for many years, was finally superseded in the early part of Monroe's presidency by the grand old mansion of the sketch.

James Monroe first met his wife in New York city while he was a member of congress, when New York was the seat of government. She was Elizabeth, the beautiful daughter of Lawrence Kortwright, son of one of the old merchants of New York in the time of Governor Cosby, who