Washington Didn’t Sleep in Delaware Twp.
And he probably didn’t visit either. But the notion that he spent a leisurely afternoon drinking fresh water under a shady tree in the company of John Opdycke just won’t go away. It probably never will.
Interpreting Lenape
I am no expert on the Lenape language. In fact, like most people, I am clueless. Recently someone asked me if I knew the meaning of a Lenape creek name, Octoraro. This is the answer I sent him:
In Days When The Great Fire Up The Chimney Roared
Fireplace Was the Center of Family Life and Activity;
Chimney Sweeps Common
by Egbert T. Bush, Stockton, NJ, March 20, 1930
Mr. Bush has good advice for those of us who enjoy a warm fire in winter. Note that the illustrations were not included with the original article.
“The great fire up the chimney roared.” Indeed it did, and how could it be otherwise? There was so much of greatness around that fire that it could not help either being great or roaring with its own greatness and that of its surroundings. That fire was not built on the economic Indian plan: “Injun make little fire—go close by;” but rather according to the Indian’s description of the uneconomic way of the paleface: “White man make big fire—go ‘way off.”