with diligence and fidelity endeavored to discharge the duties which a partial public has on various occasions assigned me, and of the liberality which has been evinced towards me by a succession of legislatures during an arduous administration, heightens the satisfaction I have in surrendering it to an able successor. And whilst I bid you, and my fellowcitizens generally, an affectionate farewell, I implore for my country the blessings of an all-wise superintending Providence." WILLIAM FINDLAY, GOVERNOR UNDER THE CONSTITUTION OF 1790, December 16, 1817, to December 19, 1820. WILLIAM FINDLAY, the fourth Governor of Pennsyl vania under the Constitution of 1790, was born at Mercersburg, Franklin County, on the 20th of June, 1768. The progenitor beyond whom he never traced his lineage was Adjutant Brown, as he was called, who took part in the defence of Derry, Ireland, during its famous siege in 1566, and afterwards emigrated to this country with his daughter Elizabeth. The daughter married Samuel Findlay, of Philadelphia. A son by this marriage, Samuel, settled, some years before the opening of the Revolutionary War, at Mercersburg, a place which was then of more trade and importance relatively than now. It was an entrepot, where goods to be sent west of the mountains were brought in wagons and transferred to pack-horses. It is situated at the base of the Blue Ridge, in that great valley- the Shenandoah in Virginia and Cumberland in Pennsylvania—which stretches from the borders of Tennessee to the Hudson. In the year 1765, he was married to Jane Smith, a daughter of William Smith. She died in the thirty-fifth year of her age, the mother of eight boys, six of whom survived her. These lived to be men, and all of them attained respectable, and some of them distinguished positions in the communities where they lived. Had that young mother been spared to look on them in their manhood, she might have regarded them with the complacency of Cornelia herself. Her fine understanding, her piety, her maternal tenderness and affection, were themes on which |