Richardson, her father, Anthony Morris, placed her in one scale, balancing her weight with gold in the other for a marriage dower. The family chronicle quaintly adds that the bride was of exceeding small

stature.

Mrs. Earle, in her valuable and entertaining picture of New England customs and fashions, relates a somewhat similar incident in connection with the first marriage of Judge Sewall, except that in the latter case the bride was counted only worth her weight in silver. Her father, Captain Joseph Hull, gave the future Mrs. Sewall her dower in shillings, of the famous "pine-tree" brand.

Progressiveness among women, especially in business matters, is usually considered a nineteenth century departure, yet back in the days of the settlement of Pennsylvania we find Madame Mary Ferree taking up a tract of two thousand five hundred acres in what is now Lancaster County. Madame Ferree was the widow of John Ferree, a French gentleman of distinction. She fled to Germany to es

cape religious persecution in France, and, after spending two years in England, came to New York, and afterwards to Pennsylvania. While in England, Madame Ferree was presented to Queen Anne by William Penn, to whom she brought letters of introduction. From such luxuries and attractions as the Old World presented to one fitted to enjoy them, this heroic woman set forth with her family to make a home in what was then counted the wild west.

Another enterprising settler was Mrs. Duncan, from Scotland, whose name appears in early Philadelphia directories as "Margaret Duncan, Merchant, No. 1 S. Water Street." On her voyage to America the vessel in which Mrs. Duncan sailed was wrecked, and the passengers who took to the boats soon found that they had carried so little food with them that they were forced to draw lots in order to divide the scant supply. In an hour of great extremity, when there seemed small hope of rescue, Mrs. Duncan made a vow to build a church in her new home in the event of her deliverance. The " Vow Church" stood

on the west side of Thirteenth Street, north of Market, and, like the Roman Catholics' "Votive frigate, soft aloft

Riding in air this hundred years,

Safe smiling at old hopes and fears,"

long bore witness to the faith, prosperity, and gratitude of this good Presbyterian settler of old Philadelphia.

A merchant princess from whom many New Yorkers are descended was Margaret Hardenbrook, who married, in 1659, Rudolphus De Vries, an extensive trader of New Amsterdam, and after his death became the wife of Frederick Philipse. During her widowhood Mrs. De Vries undertook the management of her husband's estate, which is said to have been a practice not uncommon in New Amsterdam, and was early known as a woman trader, going to Holland repeatedly in her own ship as supercargo, and buying and trading in her own name. After her second marriage, Mrs. Philipse still continued to manage her estate, and through his wife's thrift and enterprise, as much as through his own industry, Mr. Philipse soon came to

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be the richest man in the Colony, being an extensive trader with the Five Nations at Albany, and sending ships to both the East and the West Indies. From this marriage of Margaret De Vries was descended Mary Philipse, whose chief claim to distinction now rests upon the tradition that she was an early love of Colonel Washington's.

If in the days of the settlement there were to be seen in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania interesting and notable women, through all the Colonies we find their faces and voices lending softer shadings to the rugged scenes of pioneer life. Many of these women were the wives and daughters of Colonial governors, secretaries, and chief justices, patroons and landed proprietors. Being of good birth and breeding, and equipped with whatever intellectual training was deemed suitable for a woman in those days, they not only brought comfort and the sunshine of happiness into the early homes of America, but also a certain refinement and elevation of thought which are most frequently a woman's donation

to the life around her. When we look into the faces of some of these Colonial Dames, as they have come down to us in portraits of the time, and read there the strength, nobility, and self-restraint that the lines disclose, we realize how much these women contributed towards the character-building that rendered the Revolutionary period an almost phenomenal epoch in the history of nations.

An interesting and significant circumstance in the settlement of Virginia is to be found in the fact that no women came over among the earliest colonists, as did those who came to make homes upon the more northern shores. "The Virginia pioneers were treated," says Mr. Drake, "not as men, but more as soldiers sent out to occupy an enemy's country." Does not this circumstance, taken in connection with the fact that "the painstaking men of arts and practices" needed for the settlement of a colony were wanting in this one, account for the failure of some of the early attempts at colonization in Virginia? From the humbler walks of life there was sent