er when William Penn landed in America. He was the
progenitor of eleven generations of descendants born on American soil.
His memory is embalmed in an old document still extant as "a man who
never irritated even a child."

In the list of his descendants one Matthias stands out as "a tall
handsome man, with a very melodious voice which could be intelligibly
heard at times across the Delaware."

[Illustration: John Keen, about 83 years of age, maternal
great-grandfather of Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson.]

A later descendant, John Keen, born in 1747, fought and shed his blood
in the war of American Independence, having been wounded in the battle
of Princeton while in the act of delivering a message to General
Washington. It was he who married Mildred Cook, daughter of James
Cook, an English sea-captain who commanded the _London Packet_, plying
between London and New York. Family tradition has it that he was a
near relative of Captain Cook of South Sea fame. When Fanny Stevenson
went a-sailing in the South Seas, following in the track of the great
explorer, she boldly claimed this kinship, and, much to her
delight, was immediately christened Tappeni Too-too, which was as near
as the natives could come to Captain Cook's name.

We have a charming old-fashioned silhouette portrait in our family of
a lovely young creature with a dainty profile and curls gathered in a
knot. It is "sweet Kitty Weaver," who married John Cook Keen, son of
the Revolutionary hero, and became the grandmother of Fanny Stevenson.
Little Fanny, when on a visit to Philadelphia in her childhood days,
was shown a pair of red satin slippers worn by this lady, and was no
doubt given a lecture on the folly of vanity, for it was by walking
over the snow to her carriage in the little red slippers that sweet
Kitty Weaver caught the cold which caused her death.

Our mother, Esther Thomas Keen, one of John and Kitty Keen's six
children, was born in Philadelphia, December 3, 1811. She was
described by one who knew her in her youth as "a little beauty of the
dark vivid type, with perfectly regular features, black startled eyes,
and quantities of red-brown curls just the color of a cherry wood
sideboard that stood in her house." She was a tiny creature, under
five feet in height, and never in her life weighed more than ninety
pounds; but in spite of that she was exceedingly strong, swift in her
movements, straight as an arrow to the end of her days, and always
we