Excerpt from Autobiography of Charles Biddle: Vice-President of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania; 1745-1821 I was born in the city of Philadelphia the 24th of December, 1745. My father, William Biddle, was a native of New Jersey, grandson of William Biddle, who came from England, one of the proprietors of that State. My grandfather was a man of very large fortune. He sent my father to Philadelphia, where he was brought up by Mr. Griffiths, at that time one of the first merchants in America. My mother was the daughter of Nicholas Scull, surveyor-general of Pennsylvania. She possessed great firmness, and was one of the most amiable and best of women. My father was unfortunate from his first entering into business. Soon after he was married, he became bail for a Captain Turner, in a large sum of money. As he understood he was going off Without settling the debt for Which he was bound, my father took out a bail-piece. Turner had locked his room, and declared he would put any man to death who forced the door. As the sheriff and his officers knew Turner to be a desperate fellow, they were afraid to go near the door, but called on my father, who was a man of uncommon strength and resolution. He immediately went to the house, and, notwithstanding Turner declared he would cut down the first man that entered, he forced the door, when the villain wounded him with a cutlass in the right arm in such a manner that it was almost useless the remainder of his life. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.