that there are amongst them number of industrious laboring men who have been, during the late scarcity of laborers, of great service in the neighborhood of this city.
« Submitted to the House. » (Vote p. 143).
I find out one other minute, and that tells a sad tale. I quote it in the simple words in which it appears on the Journal of Assembly. It is on the 4th of January, 1766 :
« A petition from John Hill, of the city of Philadelphia, joiner, was presented to the House and read, settling forth that the petitioner has been employed from time to time to make coffins for the French Neutrals who have died in and about this city, and has had his accounts regularly allowed and paid by the Government, till lately ; that he is now informed by the gentlemen commissioners, who used to pay him, that they have no public money in their hands for the payment of such debts ; that he has made sixteen coffins since his last settlement (as will appear from the account) without any countermand of his former orders ; he therefore prays the House to make such provision for his materials and labor in the premises as to them shall seem meet. Ordered to lie on the table. » — Votes 465.
With this coffin maker’s memorial, so far as I have been able to trace it, ends the authentic history of the French Neutrals in Pennsylvania. All the rest is tradition, and with tradition, that fruitful source of error, I have nothing to do. Mr. Watson, in his Annals, tell us that for a long time the remnant of the Neutrals occupied a row of frame huts on the north side of Pine street, between Fifth and Sixth, on property owned either by Mr. Powell or Mr. Emlen, and those ruined houses, known as the Neutral Huts, are remembered distinctly by persons now living. What at last became of these poor creatures, it is not easy to ascertain from evidence. Their very names have perished. I have diligently searched the earliest extant Directories, and cannot find any one of the name that are known to us as belonging to them.
One other fact, proved by the official records, is that which I have already alluded to, that from November, 1755, till the Revolution, when ruder cares occupied the attention of our Pennsylvania legislators, there appears to have been expended for the support of the exiles, by public authority alone, aside from private benefaction — always bountiful in Philadelphia — no less a sum than 7,500 £, currency, or about 20,000 dollars.
In this retrospect of a sad chapter of local history, I find nothing to wound the proper pride, or excite the blush of Pennsylvania, and no where a trace of truth to justify the wanton aspersion on our fame, the Pennsylvania sold, or wished to sell, or thought of selling these, or any other human beings into slavery. The only color for it comes in the shape of a very slight tradition embalmed in Mr. Vaux’s Life of Benezet. It is this : « Such was Benezet’s care of the Neutrals, that it produced a jealousy in the mind of one of the oldest men among them of a very novel and curious description, which was
