of privateering. Here he
lived in manorial splendor, entertaining the most eminent personages of
the day with munificent hospitality and employing himself with numerous
ingenious inventions, notably a practical device for moving brick and
stone houses intact. He wrote on moral philosophy, lectured on astronomy
and published the first city directory in 1785, a unique volume giving
the names in direct house-to-house sequence and having such notations
as, "I won't tell you", "What you please", and "Cross woman" against
street numbers where he found the occupants suspicious or unresponsive
to his queries.

Meeting reverses in some of his financial affairs and longing for
further adventures at sea, Macpherson sought the chief command of the
American Navy at the outbreak of the Revolution. This being denied him
he leased Mount Pleasant to Don Juan de Merailles, the Spanish
ambassador. But to be near General Washington, Merailles had to remove
to Morristown and there he soon died.

In the spring of 1779 Macpherson sold Mount Pleasant to General Benedict
Arnold, of unhappy memory, whose remarkable and traitorous career is
known to every American. Arnold had been placed in command of
Philadelphia by Washington, following its evacuation by the British, and
in acquiring the most palatial countryseat in the vicinity he gratified
his fondness for display and apparently saw in it a means of retaining
or increasing his influence and power. It was his marriage gift to his
bride, Peggy Shippen, the daughter of Edward Shippen, a moderate
Loyalist, who eventually became reconciled to the new order and was
chief justice of the State from 1799 to 1805. At Mount Pleasant Arnold
and his wife remained for more than a year, living extravagantly and
entertaining lavishly. Arnold's financial embarrassments and bitter
contentions with persistent enemies became ever more deeply involved.
Here in bitterness, and not without some provocation, he conceived the
dastardly plan of obtaining from Washington command of West Point, the
key to the Hudson River Valley, in order that he might betray it to the
British.

Following the discovery of the plot and Arnold's flight to the British
lines, his property was confiscated, and Mount Pleasant was leased for a
short period to Baron von Steuben, after which it passed through several
hands to General Jonathan Williams, of Boston, in whose family the place
remained until the middle of the nineteenth century, w