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DUCHE'S HOUSE, &C.

THIS was one of the most venerable looking, antiquated houses of our city, built in 1758, for Parson Duché, the pastor of St. Peter's church, as a gift from his father, and taken down a few years ago, to give room to erect several brick houses on its site. It was said to have been built after the pattern of one of the wings of Lambeth Palace. When first erected there it was deemed quite out of town, and for some time rested in lonely grandeur. In after years it became the residence of Governor M'Kean, and when we saw it as a boy, we derived from its contemplation conceptions of the state and dignity of a governor which no subsequent structures could generate. It seemed the appropriate residence of some notable public

man.

Parson Duché was as notable in his time as his mansion, and both for a time ran their fame together. He was withal a man of some eccentricity, and of a very busy mind, partaking with lively feelings in all the secular incidents of the day. When Junius' Letters first came out, in 1771, he used to descant upon them in the Gazettes of the time under the signature of Tamoc Caspina, a title formed by an acrostic on his office, &c., as "the assistant minister of Christ church and St. Peter's in North America." At another time he endeavoured to influence General Washington, with whom he was said to be popular as a preacher, to forsake the American cause; and for this measure he was obliged to make his escape for England, where he lived and preached some time, but finally came back to Philadelphia and died. His ancestor was Anthony Duché, a respectable Protestant refugee, who came out with William Penn.

The church of St. Peter, to which he was attached, on the southwest corner of Third and Pine streets, (the diagonal corner from his own house,) was founded in the year 1758, as a chapel of ease to the parent Christ church. It was built by contract for the sum of £3310, and the bell in its cupola, (the best at present in the city for its tones) was the same, as told to me by Bishop White, which had occupied the tree-crotch at Christ church. The extensive ground was the gift of the proprietaries; level as the whole area was, it was always called "the church on the hill," in primitive days, in reference to its being in the region of "Society Hill," and not, in familiar parlance, within the city walks.

In September, 1761, just two years after it was begun to be built, it was first opened for public worship. On that occasion all the clergy met at Christ church, and with the wardens and vestry went in procession to the Governor's house, where, being joined by him and some of his council, they proceeded to the new church, where they heard a sermon from Doctor Smith, the Provost of the college,

from the words "I have surely built thee a house to dwell in," &c The same words were also set to music and sung by the choir.

BINGHAM'S MANSION.

LONG after the peace of 1783, all of the ground in the rear of "the Mansion House" to Fourth street, and all south of it to Spruce street, was a vacant grass ground enclosed by a rail fence, in which the boys resorted to fly their kites. The Mansion House, built and lived in by William Bingham, Esq., about the year 1790, was the admiration of that day for its ornaments and magnificence. He enclosed the whole area with a painted board fence and a close line of Lombardy poplars, the first ever seen in this city, and from which has probably since come all the numerous poplars which we every where see. The grounds generally he had laid out in beautiful style, and filled the whole with curious and rare clumps and shades of trees; but in the usual selfish style of Philadelphia improved gros, the whole was surrounded and hid from the public gaze by a high fence. An occasional peep through a knot hole was all the pleasure the public could derive from such a woodland scene. After Mr. bingham's death, the whole was sold off in lots, and is since filled up with finely finished three-story houses. When the British were in Philadelphia they used this ground as a parade and exercise.

Mr. Bingham being the richest man of his time, and having made a fortune in the West Indies, as agent for American privateers, he was exposed to the shafts of obloquy. In giving a specimen of the pasquinades and detractions, we must add, that we do not mean to endorse them, but merely to show the history of the day. Peter Markoe, in his poem called "the Times," of 1788, was libellously severe upon the senator, saying, among other things:

"Rapax, the muse has slightly touched thy crimes,
And dares to wake thee from thy golden dream,

In peculation's various arts supreme

Tho' to thy "mansion" wits and fops repair,
To game, to feast, to flatter, and to stare.

But say, from what bright deeds dost thou derive
That wealth which bids thee rival British Clive?
Wrung from the hardy sons of toil and war,
By arts, which petty scoundrels would abhor."

Some of his enemies sometimes called him the bloodhound certificate man. Nevertheless, he had his choice of city company, and when he first opened his house, he gave the first masquerade ball ever seen in this city.

The Athenian poplars have only been introduced here about sixteen or eighteen years. William Hamilton, at the Woodlands, first planted the Lombardy poplars there in 1784, from England.

THE BRITISH BARRACKS.

THESE were built in the Northern Liberties soon after the defeat of Braddock's army; and arose from the necessity, as it was alleged, of making better permanent provision for troops deemed necessary to be among us for our future protection. Many of the people had so petitioned the king-not being then so sensitive of the presence of "standing armies" as their descendants have since become.

The parade and "pomp of war" which their erection produced in the former peaceful city of Penn, gave it an attraction to the town's people, and being located far out of town, it was deemed a pleasant walk to the country and fields, to go out and see the long ranges of houses, the long lines of kilted and bonneted Highlanders, and to hear "the spirit stirring fife and soul inspiring drum!" Before that time, the fields there were a far land, severed from all connexion with the city by the marsh meadows of Pegg. No Second eet road before existed; and for the convenience and use of the army a causeway was formed across those wet grounds in the line r the present Second street, along the front of what is now called Sansom's row.

The ground plot of the barracks extended from Second to Third street, and from St. Tamany street to Green street, having the of ficers' quarters-a large three-story brick building, on Third street, the same now standing as a Northern Liberty Town Hall. The parade ground fronted upon Second street, shut in by an ornamental palisade fence on the line of that street. The aged John Brown told me the whole area was a field of buckwheat, which was cut off, and the barracks built thereon and tenanted by three thousand men, all in the same year; the houses were all of brick, two stories high, and a portico around the whole hollow square. These all stood till after the war of Independence, when they were torn down, and the lots sold for the benefit of the public. It was from the location of those buildings that the whole region thereabout was familiarly called Campingtown.

In 1758, I notice the first public mention of "the new barracks in Campingtown;" the Gazettes stating the arrival there of "Colonel Montgomery's Highlanders," and some arrangement by the City Council to provide them their bedding, &c.

An earlier attempt had been made to construct barracks out Mulberry street, on the south side, west of Tenth street-there they proceeded so far as to dig a long line of cellars, which having been abandoned, they lay open for many years afterwards.

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