WAYNE, ANTHONY, eminent during the war of the American Revolution for his abilities and ser vices as a soldier and a general, and through life as a patriot, was born in the township of Eastown, Chester County, Pennsylvania, on the first day of January 1745. His ancestors were natives, origi nally, of Yorkshire, England; his grandfather removed to Ireland, and located himself in the county of Wicklow; they appear, all of them, to have been celebrated for their martial propensities; for not only was the gentleman of whom we speak in command of a squadron of dragoons in the army of King William at the battle of the Boyne—but his son, the father of the subject of the present brief notice, as a commissioned officer in America, repeatedly distinguished himself in expeditions against the Indians.
Mr Wayne's grandfather removed from Ireland to Pennsylvania, a country more congenial to the warmth of his republican principles, in the year 1722, and purchased a large real estate in the county of Chester. His son Isaac, the father of the general, besides the military duties we alluded to above, and which he performed very greatly to his credit, must honourably represented the county in which his father had fixed his. abode, in the pro vincial legislature. He died in the year 1774, leaving but one son. Anthony. and two daughters.
The future hero of Stony Point was destined by his father to the profession of an agriculturist—but the tardy labours of the field were soon found but poorly to accord with the ardent temperament and more ambitious views of young Anthony. Ile was, accordingly. committed by his father to the care and tuition of his uncle Gabriel Wayne, who is said to have been a man of very considerable talents and erudition.
Ills first essay in learning appears to have been productive of so little fruit, that his uncle sent him home to his father, under the full persuasion that parental affection had blinded him completely in his estimate of his son's abilities. He told him in a letter, which is worthy of preservation, " that his son would never make a scholar; he might, per haps, make a soldier; he has already distracted the brains of two-thirds of the boys under my charge, by rehearsals of battles, sieges, S:c. They exhibit
more the appearance or Indians and Harlequins than students. This one decorated with a cap of many colours; others habited in coats as variegated, like Joseph's of old; some laid up with broken heads and black eyes. During noon. in place of the usual games of amusement, he has the boys employed in throwing up redoubts, skirmishing, tcc." The effect of his father's severe remon strance and threat to make him return to the painful drudgery of the farm, was to call forth the latent energies of young Wayne's character; he returned to school, and devoted himself with such ardour to his studies, that in the course of eighteen months this very uncle was forced, and gratified too, to admit, that his young charge had exhausted all his stock of information in the mathematics, and he therefore advised his brother to send An thony to Philadelphia, for the purpose of comple ting his education at an academy.
At 16, then, he entered the Philadelphia Acade my, and remained at that institution until he was 18 years of age. His attachment to the mathema tics; probably arising from their connection with the science always uppermost in his mind—that of war—induced him to devote almost his entire attention to that branch of learning; of the dead languages he acquired merely the rudiments. Upon his return to his native country, as a surveyor of competent abilities was much needed at that period in the settlement of controversies arising from ill-defined and disputed lines, and from the location of roads, he commenced the business of surveying, connecting with it the pursuit of prac tical astronomy and engineering. He has left several manuscripts on those subjects, which have reflected great credit on his learning and capacity.