Biographical annals of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, containing genealogical records of representative families, including many of the early settlers and biographical sketches of prominent citizens, Vol. I, Part 20

Author: Roberts, Ellwood, 1846- ed
Publication date: 1904
Publisher: New York, N.Y. : T. S. Benham
Number of Pages: 826


USA > Pennsylvania > Montgomery County > Biographical annals of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, containing genealogical records of representative families, including many of the early settlers and biographical sketches of prominent citizens, Vol. I > Part 20


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Ellen Priscilla Beidler married Jonathan D. Elliott of Chester county and they reside in West Philadelphia. Their children are: Alva Wayne, born October 23, 1879; Roland Arthur, born Oc- tober 23, 1882; Fannie Louisa, born November 20, 1884; Edna Bell, born December 29, 1886, and died in infancy ; Norman Walker, born July 9, 1888; Mary Ella, born January 8, 1890; Paul Dner, born December 8, 1892, and died in 1893.


Fannie Elizabeth Beidler married Marine Thomas of Wilmington, formerly of Norristown. They have one son, Joseph Davis Thomas, who was born October 27, 1877, and married Mabel Boddy,


Sarah Louisa Beidler married Joathan Rob- erts, son of William B. and grandson of Jonathan and Eliza Roberts, of Red Hill, Montgomery county, Pennsylvania. They had five children : Mary Davis, born February 12, 1883; Edith May, born January 28, 1886; Walter Jonathan, born January 24, 1890; William B., born September 24, 1893; Edward Holstein, born November 24. 1894 ; and Louisa S. Mr. and Mrs. Roberts reside in Atlantic City.


Jacob Howard Beidler married Rebecca Jane Shainline. They reside in Upper Merion and have five children : Helen Anderson, born April 2, 1888; Jonathan Warren, born May 20, 1890; Ethel Jean, born January 22, 1893 ; Anna Landes, born December 12, 1894; and J. Howard.


The children of Cyrus and Annie L. Caley were: Harry Thomas, born Twelfth-mo., 1865, died Fourth-mo. 13, 1867; Sarah Lucy, born Fifth-mo. 11, 1868; Ella Beidler, born Twelfth- mo. 14, 1869; Laura Massey, born Twelfth-mo. 6, 1873; J. Oswald, born Fourth-mo. 4, 1876; Jonathan Richards, born Third-mo. 8, 1878; David Ashmore, born Eighth-mo. 21, 1880; Han- nah Mary, born Fifth-mo. 4, 1883.


Ella Beidler Caley married William Fred- erick, engineer at Watts Mills, Norristown. They have two children : Anna and Frances.


Laura Massey Caley married William C.


Moore. They reside at Blue Bell and have one child, Cyrus Norman.


J. Oswald married Lydia Foulke Moore.


David Ashmore is clerk at Hotel Bolton, Har- risburg. He married Catharine Moyer of Harris- burg.


Mr. and Mrs. Cyrus Caley are not members of the Society of Friends but they and several of their family attend Valley Meeting.


GEORGE C. MORGAN, though compara- tively a young man, being less than fifty years of age, has made a record as one of the most ener- getic and enterprising business men of Montgom- ery county, Pennsylvania. He is the proprietor of the grain elevator and the flour, feed and coal depot at Elm street and the Stony Creek Railroad. He is descended from Welsh-Quaker stock, al- though he is himself a member of the Oak Street Methodist church, Norristown.,


George C. Morgan was born at Chester Springs, Chester county, Pennsylvania, June 10, 1856. He is the son of Antrim F. and Martha (Harris) Morgan. His father and mother had five children. as follows : Thomas H., who resides at the old family homestead in Quakertown, Bucks county, Pennsylvania ; Hannah, widow of Stephen F. Penrose; Kate, deceased, who married Charles E. Smulling, of Quakertown ; George C., subject of this sketch ; and Joseph A., of Norris- town.


Antrim Foulke Morgan, father, was born at Montgomeryville, in Montgomery county, March 8, 1818. On reaching manhood he removed to. Chester Springs, in Chester county, Pennsyl- vania, where he engaged in the milling business with his brother Joseph for a number of years. The remainder of his life was spent at Quaker- town, Bucks county, where he became a farmer and continued in that occupation until his death. He also engaged in the wood business there for a number of years. In politics he was a Whig, and a Republican after the formation of that party in 1856, but in the latter years of his life he affiliated with the Prohibition party, believing that the im- portance of legislation against the liquor traffic


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overbalanced every other issue. He was a life- long member of the Society of Friends. On the 3Ist of December, 1846, he married Martha Har- ris, who was born in Chester county, Pennsyl- vania, and who died at Quakertown, in Bucks county, three months after the decease of her hus- band, in 1898, at the age of seventy-four years. Antrim Foulke died in 1897 at the age of seventy- nine years. He was for many years a trustee of the Friends' School at Quakertown, and also one of the elders of the Society at that place. In 1894 he was the candidate of the Prohibition party for congress in the district composed of Bucks and Montgomery counties, and in 1895 the candidate of the same party for the legislature. He was a member of Horsham Friends' Meeting in his younger days.


Morgan Morgan, the grandfather, born 5th- mo. 16, 1782, was a justice of the peace at Mont- gomeryville for twenty-five years. He was a blacksmith and gunsmith by trade, and was one of the workmen in that occupation who could make a double barrelled gun in the early days. He was a native of Horsham township, of Welsh parentage, his father having emigrated from Wales and settled there, where he died. He was a member of Horsham Friends' Meeting, and one of the building committee appointed to erect the present meeting house. Morgan Morgan mar- ried, IIth-mo. 15, 1810, Ann Custard, born 8th- mo. 14, 1787. Their children : Amelia, born 8th- mo. 5, 1811, died at the age of four months ; Jo- seph C., born Ioth-mo. 10, 1812, died 2d-mo. 27, 1888; Amelia Ann, born 5th-mo. 10, 1815, died in 1855; Antrim F., born 8th-mo. 31, 1818, died 12th-mo. 24, 1897 ; George, born 2d-mo. 7, 1821, died 3d-mo. 2, 1839; Elizabeth, born 6th-mo. 20, 1823 ; Hannah, born 12th-mo. 28, 1828.


Thomas Harris, maternal grandfather, was the son of Colonel John Harris, of Revolutionary fame. Col. John Harris was a native of England. He was born April 1, 1753, and died December 25, 1838, at the age of eighty-three years, three months and six days. He came to America when a boy, and settled in Chester county, Pennsyl- vania. He was an officer in General Anthony Wayne's Division. He was a farmer by occupa-


tion and also operated a mill. Thomas Harris, grandfather, was a native of Chester county, and married Catharine Smith, who was of German descent. He was born in 1780, and died in 1842. His wife was born May 5, 1783, and died August 2, 1856. Their children : Thomas, born May 3, 1814, died September 22, 1825; Jackson, born Ioth-mo. 8, 1819, died 7th-mo. 3, 1822; Mary, born IIth-mo. 29, 1823, died 6th-mo. 14, 1852; Martha, mother of George C. Morgan, born Ioth-mo. 24, 1825, died 3d-mo., 10, 1898.


George C. Morgan was reared in Quaker- town, and attended the Friends' school there in his boyhood days. On leaving school he went to Conshohocken, where he spent two years learn- ing the trade of miller with his future father-in- law, John J. Brooke, now a resident of Norris- town. At the close of his apprenticeship he went to Greenlane, on the Perkiomen, where he fol- lowed the occupation of milling for two years. In 1878 he removed to Norristown, and pur- chased the old mill at the corner of Main and Markley streets which he soon afterwards de- molished and re-established it near the corner of Marshall and Barbadoes streets. It was a large and well equipped structure in every respect. He operated it by steam and water for nearly twenty years, from 1879 to 1898. In the last named year he sold it to the Stony Creek Milling Com- pany, who in turn disposed of it to the Eastern Milling and Export Company.


In 1895 Mr. Morgan bought the Shaffer brick manufacturing plant, located on Forest avenue, Norristown, but just beyond the borough limits, and operated it very successfully for a number of years, the establishment being finally merged into the Morgan Brick Company, which, on Mr. Mor- gan's withdrawal, became the Norristown Brick Company. In 1902 Mr. Morgan formed a part- nership with his son, Warren B. Morgan, and built a grain elevator and feed house on the Stony Creek Railroad at Elm street. He has combined this business with the retail coal trade and it has since been successfully conducted under the firm name of George C. Morgan & Son.


Mr. Morgan married, on March 25, 1880, Miss Inez, eldest daughter of John Jacob and Catharine


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MONTGOMERY COUNTY.


(Hunsberger) Brooke. They have had nine chil- dren, as follows: Warren B., associated with his father in business; Lottie; Elsie; George R .; John J. B .; Inez ; Blanche; Janet ; and Catharine. Elsie and Janet died at the age of eighteen and eleven months, respectively.


Mr. Morgan is class leader and president of the board of trustees of Oak Street Methodist Episcopal church, of Norristown, of which he and his family are members. In politics he is an ac- tive and prominent Prohibitionists, being earn- estly devoted to antagonism to the liquor interests. He has frequently been a candidate for public office on the ticket of that party. He has been treasurer of the Prohibition county committee since 1880. He was for two years postmaster at Hillegass. Mr. Morgan is actively connected with several Norristown enterprises. He is a director in the West Norristown Building & Loan Associa- tion. In addition to his other occupations, Mr. Morgan, some years ago, engaged very exten- sively in building operations in the vicinity of ·Green and Brown streets, in the borough of Nor- ristown, erecting many dwellings. He has also been largely identified with the ownership of real · estate in other sections of Norristown. Mr. Morgan has done much to assist in the progress of the community in which he lives, exerting him- self vigorously in whatever occupations he has been engaged, and being in every respect a use- ful and valuable citizen.


The Brooke family, to which Mrs. Morgan belongs, is among the oldest in Montgomery county. John is a prominent name in the family, there having been a John Brooke in nearly every generation to the present. John Brooke, with Frances, his wife, and two sons, James and Mat- thew, arrived in Pennsylvania from Yorkshire, England, in 1699. John had purchased from William Penn a tract of seven hundred and fifty acres of land, and on his death his sons took up the land in the township of Limerick, settling upon it. It occupied the central portion of the township. The house which they built in 1714 has been partly incorporated into the modern dwelling which is still standing on the premises originally owned by them, and the house built by


Matthew Brooke's widow in 1721 was torn down in 1835 by one of the Bornemans who owned the property at that time. John Brooke, the father of James and Matthew, and the progenitor of the family in America, was detained, according to a family tradition, in quarantine at Gloucester, be- low Philadelphia, with a contagious disease, and died there. His will corroborates the tradition, as it bears date 8th-mo. 25, 1699, directing that his property be divided among his three sons, one Jonathan, having been left in England. The Brookes were among the earliest settlers above the Perkiomen, although there was a Swedish set- tlement at Douglassville, and a few Germans had even then located themselves in New Hanover township. James and Matthew Brooke set apart a burial place containing two acres and four perches of land, and a deed was made for it to trustees by their sons, William and George Brooke.


John J. Brooke, father of Mrs. George C. Morgan, was born August 21, 1840, on the home- stead of later generations of the family in Lower Pottsgrove township. He was educated in the schools of the neighborhood, working at inter- vals on the farm as was then customary in the rural districts of the county. He learned the mill- ing trade at what was then known as Brower's Mill, in Plymouth township. In 1867 Mr. Brooke purchased the mill and operated it himself with the exception of one year, 1882, when he rented it to Jonathan Nyce, until 1899, when he sold it to A. T. Cross, who has since sold it to the Alan Wood Steel Company, at Ivy Rock, and the mill site is now a part of their extensive grounds. Since selling his mill in Plymouth township, Mr. Brooke has been employed a part of the time at the old Morgan Mill, on Marshall street, Norris- town. He lives retired at No. 1020 Main street, in that borough.


John J. Brooke married Catharine, daughter of Samuel H. and Catharine (Haldeman) Huns- berger, of East Coventry township, Chester county, Pennsylvania. Her parents lived about four miles from Pottstown, her father being a miller and farmer. Mrs. Brooke's mother was the daughter of Abraham Haldeman, who was a Men-


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nonite preacher for many years. The Hunsber- gers were also an old Mennonite family, long domiciled in the vicinity of Sumneytown, in Mont- gomery county. Samuel H. Hunsberger was a Republican in politics, and served for a number of years as a supervisor in East Coventry town- ship.


Mr. and Mrs. John J. Brooke have the follow- ing children: Inez, wife of George C. Morgan; Mary, wife of Allen Hallman ; Charlotte, wife of William H. Moser, of Upper Merion township, Montgomery county ; and Miss Daisy, residing with her parents. In addition to the children men- tioned, Mr. and Mrs. Brooke had a son John and a daughter Lillian, who are deceased.


John Brooke, grandfather of Mrs. Morgan, married Maria Christman, of an old Lower Potts- grove family. They resided at Crooked Hill, in that township. He was a farmer, and died Jan- uary 27, 1861, at the age of sixty-two years. He had nine children, all of whom are now deceased except John J., father of Mrs. Morgan ; Firman, a druggist in Chicago, and Josiah, who lives re- tired in Philadelphia.


Mrs. Morgan's great-grandfather was twice married and died in 1812. He was the son of Matthew Brooke, one of the immigrant's three sons. The surviving brothers and sisters of Mrs. John J. Brooke are Abraham, residing in Vir- ginia ; Elizabeth (Mrs. John Detwiler), of Clif- ton, Virginia ; Annie ( Mrs. Thomas Whiteman), of Parkesburg, Pennsylvania ; and Emma (Mrs. Penrose Thomas), of Norristown, Pennsylvania.


THOMAS BUCKMAN, deceased, for many years a highly respected and influential citizen of Jenkintown, Montgomery county, Pennsylvania, where he was actively and extensively engaged in agricultural pursuits, was born December II, 1802, a son of Thomas and Mary (Harding) Buckman.


The educational advantages enjoyed by Thomas Buckman during his boyhood days, and which thoroughly qualified him for a life of use- fulness and activity, were obtained at the Friends' School, situated in Abington township, Mont- gomery county. After completing his studies he


rented a farm which was located in the vicinity of Jenkintown, and after operating this success- fully for a short period he purchased a seventy acre farm in Cheltenham township, which he cultivated and tilled for a number of years there- after, finally disposing of it to John Fork. He then purchased another farm of one hundred and eleven acres from Mr. Troutwine, this land being located near Rydal Station, Montgomery county, and resided there up to the time of his demise, September 20, 1892, in the ninetieth year of his age. He was practical and progressive in his methods, painstaking and careful in the per- formance of his labor, and his broad acres yielded him a goodly return and large financial gain. He was just and conscientious in all his affairs- of life, and bore the respect and esteem of all who knew him. He was a good citizen, a loving husband, and an indulgent father.


Mr. Buckman was twice married. His first wife, whose maiden name was Ann Comly, a daughter of Clement and Rebecca (Jones) Comly, bore him seven children, namely : Amos, deceased; Alfred C., deceased ; Mary, deceased ; Jacob T., deceased ; William, deceased ; Thomas. and Joseph Buckman. The mother of these chil- dren died about 1861. Mr. Buckman then mar- ried, secondly, Mary Ann Brooke, born August 1, 1830, daughter of Thomas and Mary (Reyner) Brooke, who bore him two children: Linford, who died in infancy ; and Jessie T., who died at the age of nearly nine years. The paternal grandfather of Mrs. Brooke was general William Brooke, whose history is narrated as follows:


General Brooke was born in Limerick town- ship, Montgomery county, Pennsylvania, May 12, 1746, and was the oldest son of Matthew Brooke and Sarah Reese; and the third in de- scent from the emigrant John Brooke, who with his wife came from England to take up a grant of land of seven hundred and fifty acres pur- chased from William Penn in England. The vessel arrived at Philadelphia in the year 1698, though both John Brooke and his wife died on board as she was coming up the Delaware, and were buried at or near what is now Cooper's Point, Camden, New Jersey. His will was pro-


----


IT hos Buckman Sur


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bated at Trenton and is a very interesting docu- ment, and photographs have been made and are in the possession of a number of his descendants.


At the breaking out of the Revolutionary war, General Brooke, who was then not quite thirty years of age, volunteered his services, and was commissioned a captain in the Fourth Com- pany, Chester County Volunteers, on May 14, 1777, as a major in the Fourth Battalion in 1779, and as a major in the Sixth Battalion, May IO, 1780. He also served as a major in the Fourth Regiment of Foot, containing six hundred and seventy men, of which Lieutenant-Colonel Rich- ard Willing was the commanding officer. It was while serving as a captain that General Brooke had the following experience, as related by George Smith, M. D., in his "History of Dela- ware County, Pennsylvania :"


"It sometimes happened that some of our military scouts were captured by the enemy, when not sufficiently on their guard. About this per- iod, such a party under the command of the late eneral William Brooke, of Haverford, who was then a captain, were one night taking their ease at a house, late the property of George Swain, when the house was suddenly surrounded by a larger party of the enemy. Brooke determined not to be taken, leaped from a window and ran, but in getting over the fence into the road found that a partial dislocation of his knee had hap- pened. Putting his foot through the fence, and giving his leg a quick extension, the joint was brought into a proper condition, when he hastily made his escape."


During his absence with the army on one of the forages made into the territory surrounding Philadelphia, while the British army were in pos- session of the city, his dwelling was plundered of nearly every article of food and furniture, so that his wife, with two young children, was obliged to turn out in the snow and seek shelter elsewhere. This outrage afterwards formed the basis of a claim against the government, the original papers of this claim being on file at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in a volume of manuscript entitled "Depredations by British Army, Chester County, 1777." as follows: "An estimate of Goods and Chattels taken and de-


stroyed from William Brooke by the British Armies under the command of Lord Cornwallis on the 11th of December, 1777.


£


S.


d


Six sheep, six cows and two calves. 45 15 . .


Beds, bedding and wearing apparel. 100 . .


Household and kitchen furniture .. 20 . . . .


Provision and poultry 12 IO


. .


Fat and store hogs 21


I7 6


Two tons of hay and grain in the sheaf IO


210 2 6


Chester S. S .:


Personally appeared before me, one of the justices, etc. for the County of Chester, William Brooke, and on his solemn oath doth declare and say that the above amount is just and true as it stands stated and that he hath received no part thereof.


Given under my (obliterated) the 27th of August, 1783. JNO. BARTHOLOMEW. Endorsed on back "Haverford."


Wm. Brooke's account.


Among said papers is the claim of John Lind- say, a son-in-law of General Brooke, who resided near him in Haverford, for goods and chattels destroyed by the British Army on the following day 12th of December, amounting to £134 3s. 6d. General Brooke performed further special military service, as will be seen from the minutes of the Supreme Executive Council, then sitting at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, under date of Oc- tober 2, 1777, as follows :


Ordered :-


"That Col. Evans, Col. William Evans, Col. Gibbons, Col. Thomas, Capt. Thomas Kevis, Capt. William Brooke, Capt. Jacob Rudolph be au- thorized and required to collect without delay, from such of the inhabitants of the County of Chester, as have not taken the oath of allegiance and abjuration or who have aided or assisted the enemy, Arms and accoutrements, blankets, shoes and stockings, for the use of the army ; that they appraised the same when taken, according to their quality, allowing at the rate of three pounds for a new single blankets, and give certificate for the same to the owner: that they called to their aid the militia of the commonwealth, who are hereby ordered to obey and assist them in


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MONTGOMERY COUNTY.


the execution of this order, and that they deliver the same, so taken, to the order of the Clothier General, or his Agent, with whom they are to correspond in the discharge of this business." Official record of this is found in volume 5, page 69, Pennsylvania Archives.


For General Brooke's Revolutionary services, he was granted by congress several grants of land in Bedford county, Pennsylvania, as fol- lows : 400 acres, surveyed Feb. 4tl1, 1785, 100 acres, surveyed Jan. 24, 1783 and 200 acres, sur- veyed June II, of the same year.


At his home in Haverford, General Brooke possessed as an heirloom a splendid mahogany chest of drawers, known as a high boy, and it was during one of the raids, when his house was plundered, that the top drawer was forced open with a bayonet in the hands of a Hessian soldier, in the belief that said chest contained treasure. This chest of drawers remained in his possession until his death in 1829, when it passed into the possession of his son Thomas Brooke, who was the father of Mrs. Buckman, and then in turn it passed to his son, George Brooke, Esq., of Dela- ware county, Pennsylvania, and at his death some few years ago it was bought at public sale. The purchaser in turn delivered it to Benjamin Brooke, from whom it went to Mr. Francis M. Brooke, who represented another branch of the family, and is still in the possession of his heirs. An old "grandfather's clock" from which the leads have been taken to make into bullets, was also sold at the same time as the chest of draw- ers, and is now in the possession of Mr. George Brooke Lindsay, of Chester, Pennsylvania, a lineal descendant of General William Brooke.


After the Revolution was over, General Brooke returned quietly to his plantation in Hav- erford to pursue the more peaceful avocation of farming, surrounded by his numerous family, until the depredations of the British navy on our merchant ships on the high seas made it neces- sary that we should once more lay aside the ploughshare for the sword, as the country was once more destined to go to war with England. Among the first to offer their services was Gen- eral Brooke, who was promptly commissioned a


brigadier-general of the Third Division of Militia, with headquarters at Chester, where the troops soon assembed, and made every prepara- tion to defend the shores of the Delaware against an anticipated invasion by the British.


General Brooke's remaining years were spent at the old homestead in Haverford, which he had built and lived in for many years prior to the Revolution, and was located at the junction of Darby and Ithan creeks, in Chester county, and the old house is still standing, though it has long since passed out of the family and is fast going to ruin. His death occurred in 1829, at a ripe old age, and he was buried beside his wife, who had preceded him a number of years before, at Old St. David's church at Radnor, one of the most historic and interesting Episcopal churches in this country, and where he had been married on June 5, 1770, to Margaret Moore, who came of a family long settled in that neighborhood. Here also are buried besides General Brooke and his wife, among other children, his eldest daugh- ter, Elizabeth, and her husband George Weed,. and with this old church General Brooke had been identified nearly all his life, having served as a vestryman for many years.


The Brooke family history has been written up by Mr. Frank Brooke Evans, of Philadelphia, and shows a connected history from the coming of the emigrant in 1698 from Huddersfield, England, where the family had been settled since 1534, several of the children of the emigrant hav- ing remained in the old country and leaving numerous descendants.


MILTON T. KEYSER, the well known clerk of the Farmers' Hotel, at Main and Barba- does streets, Norristown, is a native of Skippack township, where he was born July 26, 1869. He remained on the home farm until 1886, when he engaged in work on his own account. He com- menced by working for Daniel Detwiler on his farm near what is known as Linfield, Montgomery county. He continued with Mr. Detwiler a short time and then went to Parkerford, in Chester county, to learn the baking trade, with John Rochester, but before completing his apprentice-




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