* * Went and drank coffee at James Cannon's. He was not there, being gone
to [the] State House Yard to help consult and regulate the forming of the militia.
After coffee, I went back to [the] Factory by an appointment of some of the
managers, who had appointed to meet ——— Gardiner, a committee man of New York,
with whom we spent the evening. This day, about noon, Jabez Fisher came by
persuasion to the Coffee House, and there declared, in the presence of a great
concourse of people, that it was Robert Holliday, of Duck Creek, that wrote and
sent that letter to him, which he had caused to be published in the
Pennsylvania Ledger, No. 3, and no other person, upon which the people, with
some reluctancy, let him go; but the overseers of the poor interfered, by
obliging him there to give security for the maintenance of his two bastard
children. James and Drinker had bonded a vessel for Newfoundland, and intended
to slip away with her, but a number hearing, waited on them. At first, they
equivocated, but the people being resolute, they delivered up the ship's
papers, and hindered her proceeding. That also prevented Samuel Shoemaker from
loading a vessel to the same place.
SOURCE: William Duane, Editor, Passages from the Diary of
Christopher Marshall, Kept in Philadelphia and Lancaster during the
American Revolution, Vol. 1, 1774-1777, p. 24
