Excerpt from Benjamin West's Family: The American President of the Royal Academy of Arts Not a QuakerSo 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 ¿atter. Ashmead, in his History of Delaware County, Pennsylvania (p. Says His biographer, Gait.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.