This Ring is round And hath no end…

The True Lover's Knot "turns" 210 years old this Friday, December 9th. Hugh Pugh, the pen-artist, signed and dated the artifact: Bedford County Decem'r 9th 1801.

"This Ring is round
And hath no end
So is my Love
To thee my Friend
Mary Fisher"

(Verse appears within the left circle of the labyrinth.)

"Be thankful. Be humble. Seek Mercy." I have utilized excerpts from Hugh Pugh's letters home to his children in Radnor, Pennsylvania written in 1803 and 1807, to create a set of three new postcards highlighting his thoughtful, anguished at times, missives to the family he left behind in Delaware County. They are printed on 5" x 7" card stock with rounded corners and I paired them with "hipstamatic" images I took this fall where I work part time at Cedar Run Wildlife Refuge in Medford, New Jersey.

Somehow the trees, with their fragile, close-to-falling leaves represented, in my mind, Hugh's separation from his own offspring. A little poetic license on my part, I admit, but when I think of Hugh alone, and obviously lonely, from the tone of those letters I continue to wish I could find out what became of him ultimately. Still no luck finding his last resting place, but I've put some of the research on hold in any case. Hoping that with all the new ancestry resources out there, eventually I will be able to solve the mystery of his last home on this mortal coil.

Quaker Schoolmasters

Re Hugh Pugh (b. 1747-d. aft 1807) the pen artist who made the 1801 "True Lover's Knot" for my great great great grandmother Mary Fisher, was an itinerant Quaker Schoolmaster by profession. He migrated from southeastern PA's Chester County westward into Bedford and later Washington Counties, beginning around 1770 and into the early 19th c.

Reading about Chester Co. Quakers in the 18th c. from the book West Chester to 1865: That Elegant & Notorious Place. (Douglas R. Harper, Chester County Historical Society, 1999) Apparently, school teachers at the time were often "selected not so much for their learning but because they were men incapacitated for farm work by the effects of diseases or injuries."

Hugh was born with "but one hand" (per a mention by his father—Hugh Pugh Sr.'s last Will & Testament in the Chester Co. Archives), thus his career was essentially decided for him @ birth. His father specifically stipulated in his will that his youngest son—who was only about 2 years of age at his father's death—be educated so that he could make a living. Making it still more wondrous that he was such an excellent draftsman.

His father bequeathed him a sum of money—£80 pounds—to be dispersed to him at age 21 as well, but no property. £80 of unskilled wages in the latter 18th c. calculates to an equivalent worth in today's dollars of somewhere around $69K.