Charles Henry Hart Benjamin West's Family

Annotation

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. So very little is known of the family of Benjamin West, the Pennsylvanian President of the Royal Academy of Arts, London, that every little counts, and mayhap by exploiting that little it will act as the magnet and draw more ample data to itself. John Galt, who was the official biographer of West, was a romance writer and not a historian; conse quently he coined many pretty fictions that have taken root and spread by being served up by all subsequent writers, so that now it is almost impossible to lop them off and eradicate them, although mere romances. What seems strange, too, is they appear to have received the sanction of West himself, who, however, was noted for his vanity, which they helped to flatter. Ashmead, in his History of Delaware County, Pennsylvania (p. Says His biographer, Gait.