Diary of Anna Rawle, October 26, 1781

Sixth day. Neighbor Waln and Ben. Shoemaker were here in the afternoon. Juliet,¹ Polly Foulke and James Fisher² came to see us in the evening; the conversation as usual on the late disturbances. It seems universally agreed that Philadelphia will no longer be that happy asylum for the Quakers that it once was. Those joyful days when all was prosperity and peace are gone, never to return; and perhaps it is as necessary for our society³ to ask for terms as it was for Cornwallis. Juliet says all Uncle Penington's fine pictures are broken; his parlour was full of men, but it was nothing, he said, to Nancy's illness, who was for an hour or two out of her senses and terrified them exceedingly.

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¹ A fancy name given to and used by Sarah Burge (see note, ante) in correspondence during the Revolutionary War.

² The late James Cowles Fisher.

³ The Society of Friends.

SOURCE: “A Loyalist's Account of Certain Occurrences in Philadelphia After Cornwallis's Surrender at Yorktown. Extracted from the Diary of Miss Anna Rawle.” The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Publisher, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 16, 1892 No. 1, p. 107