OF THE

HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA,

ON THE DEATH OF

JOHN JORDAN, JR.,

A VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE SOCIETY,

HELD APRIL 28, 1890.

PHILADELPHIA:

PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.

1890.

SEP 27 1858

ADDRESSES AND PROCEEDINGS.

A SPECIAL MEETING of the Society was held in the Hall on Monday evening, April 28, 1890, in memory of the late John Jordan, Jr., the President, Brinton Coxe, Esq., in the chair. A large and sympathetic audience was in attendance. The President, in calling the meeting to order, said,—

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:

We have met to-night to say that which is uppermost in our hearts.

Mr. Jordan was the guardian and father of this Society, and, as such, I was one of those nearest to him. When he and I sat in our respective places, on opposite sides of the table in the North room, our relations seemed more like those of a father and son conferring upon the management of a family than those of two officials administering a public institution.

I have always thought that I fully appreciated the fact that he was the guardian and father of the Society, but now that he is gone and I meditate upon his life and our loss, my sorrow and anxiety convince me that I appreciate him more deeply than I ever did before.

He died without pain and in the fulness of years, surrounded by the love of all who knew him. After he had

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set his house in order, after he had seen that his and our society was in order, he passed away in perfect peace.

Mr. Jordan lived to a great age, and nearly half of his long life was passed in daily care, and much of it in daily work, for our society. When we came to the hall and found him neither standing in the South rooms nor sitting in the North room, it seemed as if the host was absent from the house. He was always the chief personage within it. He would, indeed, always have been the chief person here, even if he had not lived so much among us. The officials, the councillors, and the trustees have for forty years, with but few exceptions, been elected or appointed according to his choice or preference. I am at my post because he selected me. All my colleagues are at their posts because it was his selection or wish that they should be there.

The membership of our Society is remarkably representative of our community, and it is so largely on account of him. A sympathetic writer has well said that he was a representative Pennsylvanian of the best type. It was as such that he acted on behalf of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and so drew so many other representative persons within its fold. Besides, too, his private, his social, his family, and his ecclesiastical relations extended widely throughout the Commonwealth. In many places in it besides Philadelphia tears have been shed for him. He was at home throughout a large area of Pennsylvania. Bethlehem and at Nazareth there are houses of mourning, as well as at Philadelphia. In English and in German both he is mourned. As was natural, with a man of his prudence, and inevitable with a man who was such a personification of trustworthiness, he had many friends who looked up to him for counsel and guidance. His personal influ

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ence thus, unconsciously as well as intentionally, affected the membership. His friends became naturally friends, and so members, of a Society whose membership was largely based upon public confidence in him.

Not only as to persons, but also as to material things, was he the most important member of our institution. The mere aggregate of his gifts to it, during half of his long life, places him among its most munificent donors, but that aggregate by no means represents the importance of his generosity. Much of what he gave was given in the time of its greatest need; when the Society was struggling for existence; when, as Townsend Ward tersely put it, John Jordan, Jr., was not only the treasurer but the treasury of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. In this, as in every other point of view, he was the friend in need. Furthermore, it was he who was in large measure the cause of our other benefactors selecting the Society for their benefactions. Thus, without the confidence with which he inspired Mr. Gilpin and his family, the Gilpin Fund might never have existed. Without a faith in the durability of his accomplished work on the part of the community, the great subscription, which gave us a home of our own, might never have been secured.

Mr. Jordan's devotion to our institution was an enlightened one. It was based upon conviction as well as feeling. It came from heart and head both. He loved the Society dearly, very dearly, through long, long years, but it was as a means to an end. In practical life it was the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, but in principle it was the history of Pennsylvania, which was the object of his devotion. The history of Pennsylvania is a great and a profound subject, but the history of no State equals it in difficulty, from and including the Indian times. In no State, therefore, is