In the 1790s James Biddle was about as connected to Philadelphia as a Philadelphian could be. Born in 1731 he was part of the generation that watched and took part as both a lawyer and official in the American Revolution and the creation of the new nation growing up around him.<\/p>\n
He was later for many years Prothonotary of the Philadelphia Courts, an ancient term used to describe a chief clerk of courts. The term was so obscure that in 1948 when President Harry Truman was making his whistle stop tour through Pennsylvania, stopping at Pittsburgh City Hall he expressed bafflement when confronting it saying, \u201cWhat the hell is a prothonotary?\u201d<\/p>\n
One of Biddle\u2019s acquaintances was Allentown\u2019s Peter Rhoads (1737-1814), one of the leaders of the Revolution in the Lehigh Valley. To judge from a letter between them that was later printed in the \u201cAnniversary History of Lehigh County,\u2019\u2019 Biddle had visited Rhoads here.<\/p>\n
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Easton’s Centre Square area as it looked in the 1780s<\/p>\n
Northampton County Historical and Genealogical Society<\/p>\n
By June 4, 1791, when Rhoads had become President Judge of the Courts of Northampton County, he received a letter from Biddle. It came in the hands of the young man that was its bearer.<\/p>\n
Dear Sir,<\/p>\n
I suspect this will be delivered to you by Mr. Joseph Hopkinson, who has regularly studied law and been admitted as an attorney to our Court of Common Pleas, after an examination which I attended and in which he acquitted himself much to our satisfaction. As he proposed settling in your county, I beg you would favor him with your friendship. You will find him deserving of it and his clients will not be disappointed in the trust they repose in him. If I get leisure of your June term to pay one more visit to the land of trout and strawberries, you will probably see me at Easton.\u201d<\/p>\n
Your old friend,<\/p>\n
James Biddle<\/p>\n
It is not known if Biddle made it up to the Lehigh Valley that summer. But if he did, he would have found Hopkinson well-established. According to his biographer, Burton Alva Konkle, he was gifted with well-educated parents. His family was from Bordentown, New Jersey and his father Francis Hopkinson was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. In 1783 young Joseph entered the University of Pennsylvania and later studied law with James Wilson, one of the drafters of the Constitution.<\/p>\n
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Joseph Hopkinson\u00a0<\/p>\n
Konkle notes that under the Pennsylvania Constitution adopted on April 13, 1791, the state was divided into five judicial districts: \u201cthe first covering three southeastern counties except Chester; the second, Dauphin and those below Berks and west to Cumberland; the third a stupendous one covering almost the upper half of the entire state west to the Allegheny River, with Easton as the seat of its court even on the extreme east on the banks of the Delaware in Northampton County. Berks, Luzerne and vast Northumberland and Northampton constituted this district.\u201d<\/p>\n
On May 4th, 1791, Hopkinson was admitted to the Philadelphia bar. Five days later shortly following the death of his father he arrived in Easton. \u201cJust what caused him to settle outside of Philadelphia is not known,\u201d notes Konkle. \u201cThe extreme probability is that he wanted to try his wings more privately before flying in the high altitudes of ‘a Philadelphia Lawyer’ and Easton was a good place to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n
To judge from his later works Joseph Hopkinson enjoyed his time in Easton. In 1798 he wrote a description of it for the September issue of Thomas Condie\u2019s Philadelphia Monthly Magazine. Here, after a few typical digs at the \u201cdreary wilds, the gloomy haunts of the rude savage Indians\u201d that previously occupied the site, now stands the \u201cflourishing and sprightly borough of Easton.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hopkinson gives an interesting overview of the Northampton County seat as it was at the end of the 18th century:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe town consists of about 200 dwelling houses, generally frame and log buildings and some stone, built with a neatness and elegance; it contains about 1,400 inhabitants, chiefly German. And it is the county town of Northampton, where the public offices are established and the courts of justice held. It is situated on a beautiful plain, at the confluence of the rivers Delaware and Lehigh, about 60 miles north of Philadelphia.”<\/p>\n
Hopkinson goes on to remark on Easton\u2019s \u201ccentral and commodious situation\u201d being a market, \u201cto which produce of every kind is drawn from the interior parts of the county, down the Delaware and Lehigh, and the numerous streams connected with those rivers. Easton is possessed of advantages, highly calculated to sustain and increase the importance in which it is justly held among the inland towns of Pennsylvania, as there is at all times a constant communication between it and Philadelphia.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hopkinson goes on to note the company had been recently formed to build a wooden bridge between Easton and New Jersey to make the link between the two \u201ceasy and practicable.\u201d<\/p>\n
The work \u201cwas commenced last summer (1797) and is now prosecuting with all the ardor that a business of that nature will admit of. It is thrown over the river, opposite Northampton Street, the principal and most central street of the town, where the Delaware is nearly 600 feet wide—and is to be of three arches and 34 feet wide, suitably divided for carriages and footways.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alas for Hopkinson\u2019s hopes these early efforts were swept away by the temperamental Delaware. It was not until 1807 that Timothy Palmer\u2019s covered bridge achieved the long-sought goal, serving that purpose until 1895 and located approximately where the Northampton Street Bridge, popularly known as the Free Bridge, is today.<\/p>\n
Hopkinson\u2019s article goes on to mention several other smaller bridges, one over the Lehigh opposite Pomfret Street and another being planned to cross the Bushkill Creek. He describes the first Northampton County Courthouse as \u201ca high stone building two stories high, with an open dome or cupola and a bell in it.\u201d Nearby were the prison and \u201cthe building destined for the safe\u2013keeping of the public records, and in which the civil offices are kept\u2014it is perfectly fire-proof.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Portrait of Joseph Hopkinson by artist Thomas Sully<\/p>\n
He notes the German Reformed Church built in 1745 and that it was shared by both the Reformed and Lutheran congregations and goes on to list the various industries: four grist mills, four flour mills, one oil mill and two bark mills with three tanneries. \u201cIn the years 1796 and 1797 many thousands of barrels of flour were transported to Philadelphia in boats carrying 100 to 200 barrels,\u201d says Hopkinson. He adds, two stages run from Philadelphia; \u201cone of them runs twice a week in summer and once in winter.\u201d<\/p>\n
He concludes by noting that Easton with its \u201cair pure and salubrious and water good renders it an exceedingly healthy place in so much that it has of late become a fashionable summer retreat to many citizens of Philadelphia.\u201d<\/p>\n
At roughly the time Hopkinson was writing this piece on Easton he was getting better known for something much different. In 1798 the Federalist administration of John Adams was involved with Revolutionary France in what was known as the XYZ Affair. France\u2019s demand for tribute to stop waylaying American ships led to patriotic uproar in the U.S.<\/p>\n
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“Hail Columbia” sheet music\u00a0<\/p>\n
Library of Congress<\/p>\n
Hopkinson, a Federalist, took the music, created in 1790 by Philip Phile for Washington’s first inaugural known as \u201cThe President\u2019s March\u201d and added patriotic words to it.<\/p>\n
Soon it was being sung in taverns and theaters under the name “Hail, Columbia.” According to Wikipedia the song was soon being adopted, complete with \u201cruffles and flourishes\u2019\u2019 as the de facto national anthem of the United States.<\/p>\n
That was officially changed in 1931 when \u201cThe Star-Spangled Banner\u201d replaced it. But “Hail, Columbia” is still played as the official anthem of the vice president.<\/p>\n
As for Hopkinson, he went on to marry Governor Thomas Mifflin\u2019s daughter and take part in several prominent legal cases.<\/p>\n
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Portrait of Emily Mifflin Hopkinson, wife of Joseph Hopkinson, 1808<\/p>\n
After a career in state and national political office he published the first American edition of the works of Shakespeare.<\/p>\n
Hopkinson died in 1842 and is buried in his family burial ground in Bordentown, New Jersey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the 1790s James Biddle was about as connected to Philadelphia as a Philadelphian could be. Born in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275105,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,115532,10655,115531,15909,115529,915,434,115530],"class_list":["post-275104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-bordentown","tag-columbia","tag-francis-hopkinson","tag-hail","tag-joseph-hopkinson","tag-new-jersey","tag-northampton-county","tag-northampton-county-courthouse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}