Fugitive slaves -- United States; Hopper, Isaac T. (Isaac Tatem), 1771-1852
Though always pleased to hear that his children were free from pecuniary
anxiety, he never desired wealth for them. The idea of money never
seemed to occur to him in connection with their marriages. It was a
cherished wish of his heart to have them united to members of the
Society of Friends; yet he easily yielded, even on that point, as soon
as he saw their happiness was at stake. When one of his sons married
into a family educated under influences totally foreign to Quaker
principles, he was somewhat disturbed. But he at once adopted the bride
as a beloved daughter of his heart; and she ever after proved a lovely
and thornless Rose in the pathway of his life. Great was his
satisfaction when he discovered that she was grandchild of Dr. William
Rogers, Professor of English and Oratory in the University of
Pennsylvania, who, sixty years before, had preached the first sermon to
inmates of the State Prison, in Philadelphia. That good and gifted
clergyman was associated with his earliest recollections; for when he
was on one of his pleasant visits to his uncle Tatem, at six years old,
he went to meeting with him for the first time, and was seated on a
stool between his knees. The proceedings were a great novelty to him;
for Dr. Rogers was the first minister he ever saw in a pulpit. He never
forgot the text of that sermon. I often heard him repeat it, during the
last years of his life. The remembrance of these incidents, and the
great respect he had for the character of the prison missionary, at once
established in his mind a claim of old relationship between him and the
new inmate of his household.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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