USA > Pennsylvania > Colonial and revolutionary families of Pennsylvania; genealogical and personal memoirs, Vol. I > Part 79
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ods of instruction; establishment of public kindergartens, the School of Indus- trial Art, the two Manual Training High Schools for Boys, the High School for Girls, the School of Pedagogy, etc., in all of which he had been one of the most active. His resignation was accepted with the utmost regret by both the board and the public at large. Resolutions were adopted, by the Board of Education and the school directors, of a highly complimentary nature; many letters of the same import were received from persons prominent in the cause of education, and the public press of Philadelphia voiced the regret of the public at the loss of his eminent services. In 1890, when city councils had failed to make sufficient appropriation for the establishment of an additional Manual Training School, Mr. Sheppard assumed the responsibility of providing the equipment of rooms therefor, by advancing $1,500 to the Board of Education for that purpose. He labored with the councils for years for an appropriation for a new building for the Boys' Central High School, and had the satisfaction of laying the corner stone, as president of the board, October 20, 1894. Mr. Sheppard became a member of the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1852, and was for thirty-five years superintendent of the Sunday School of Emanuel church. He was active in all branches of church work and served as vestryman for over forty years, and as lay delegate in many diocesian conventions. In 1890, he built and presented to the trustees of the Protestant Episcopal City Mission, a cottage building to fur- nish additional accommodations at the House for Consumptives at Chestnut Hill, since known as "The Sheppard Memorial Cottage of the Home for Consump- tives." In 1870, Isaac A. Sheppard was one of the organizers of the National Security bank, and became one of its board of directors. In 1874, he was unani- mously chosen vice-president, and in 1886, its president, filling that position until his death. He was also many years a director and member of the executive com- mittee of the Northern Savings Fund and Safe Deposit Company.
As before stated, Isaac A. Sheppard united himself with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, in 1847, as a charter member of Welcome Lodge No. 229. Of his work in and impress on the great charitable, benevolent, and fra- ternal order, volumes might be written. Believing thoroughly in its cardinal principle of the fatherhood of God, and brotherhood of man, he labored incessantly for its upbuilding, and its establishment on a firm basis financially. He united with Palestine Encampment No. 51, and served several years as its scribe as well as secretary of his lodge. He was admitted to the Grand Lodge of Penn- sylvania, in 1849, and to the Grand Encampment in 1856. He represented his Lodge in the Grand Lodge for many years, being absent from but three ses- sions in forty-six years. He was elected Grand Master of the Grand Lodge in 1874, and in 1878, was elected representative to the Sovereign Grand Lodge, and regularly re-elected until 1886, when he was elected Grand Treasurer of the Sov- ereign Grand Lodge, which position he resigned in 1895 by reason of failing health, the resignation being accepted with great regret, publicly expressed by a special committee appointed to secure his continued service if possible. In both the Grand and Sovereign Grand Lodge he served on the most important committees and took an active part in all legislation introduced, and many of the committee reports during his terms of service bear the impress of his ripe experience as a legislator, and his wisdom, sagacity and zeal for the strengthening and upbuilding
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of the great moral features of the order, and in furthering its designs to promote the welfare and happiness of common humanity. He was prominent in its coun- cils, vigilant in guarding its interests, and tireless in his labors to promote the welfare and usefulness of the great order which he loved, and by whose mem- bers he was loved and known in all parts of the country as a great and good man.
He married Caroline Mary Holmes, who was born February 5, 1826, and died May 24, 1897. He died March 6, 1898. They had six children :- Applin Holmes Sheppard, born November 28, 1850, died January 21, 1851; Franklin Lawrence Sheppard, of whom presently; Mary Ball Sheppard, born June 7, 1858, died May 2, 1872; Heber Judson Sheppard, born June 8, 1863, died October 26, 1886; and Howard Reynolds Sheppard, of whom later.
FRANKLIN LAWRENCE SHEPPARD, second, and eldest surviving, son of Isaac A. and Caroline Mary (Holmes) Sheppard, was born in Philadelphia, August 7, 1852. He was educated in public and private schools of Philadelphia, pre- paring for college at the classical school of William Fewsmith, then a leading educator of Philadelphia. He entered the college department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1868, and graduated at the head of his class of 1872, with the degree of Bachelor of Arts. Taking a post-graduate course, he received the degree of Master of Arts from the same institution in 1875. He is a mem- ber of the Delta Chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa fraternity of the University. In 1875, he went to Baltimore, Maryland, and had charge of the branch house of the firm of Isaac A. Shepherd & Co., in that city until 1888. In the lat- ter year he removed to Germantown, Philadelphia, where he has since resided, being still actively engaged in the busines established by his father as the head of the firm of Isaac A. Sheppard & Co., in which he and his brother How- ard Reynolds Sheppard, are the only surviving partners.
Mr. Sheppard is a member of the Pennsylvania Society of the Sons of the Revolution; a member of the Union League and City Clubs, of Philadelphia, and is a director of the National Security bank. He is connected with the First Presbyterian church of Germantown, and has for many years been active in the work of the Presbyterian Church in his section, having been President of the Presbyterian Social Union of Philadelphia, a member of the Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sabbath School Work, and also of the Hymnal Committee of the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America. He has also served repeatedly as a member of the Presbyterian General Assembly.
Franklin L. Sheppard married (first), September 15, 1875, Mary Eleanor, daughter of Jesse and Elizabeth (Shinnick) Lee, of Philadelphia, and a descend- ant of William Lee, an officer under William, Prince of Orange, at the battle of Boyne, said to have been a near relative of the progenitor of the illustrious Richard Henry Lee, and "Light Horse Harry Lee" of the Virginia family of Lee.
William Lee is said to have come to Pennsylvania soon after the battle of Boyne, but little is known of his life here. He is supposed to have located on land surveyed to the Pennsylvania Land Company of London, in the manor of Highlands, Upper Makefield township, Bucks county, where land, previously
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occupied by the family, was conveyed to his son William Lee (2), on the clos- ing out of the lands of the London Company many years later.
William Lee (2), born about 1700, married, in 1729, Hannah, daughter of William Smith, who came to Pennsylvania in the ship "Friends' Adventure" which arrived in the river Delaware, September 28, 1682, and lived with Phineas Pemberton, the eminent Bucks county official, known as the "Father of Bucks County" at the Falls, for a few years, and then located on a large tract of land in Wrightstown, where he was one of the earliest settlers. This William Smith married, November 20, 1690, Mary Croasdale, who had accompanied her parents, Thomas and Agnes Croasdale, to Pennsylvania in the "Welcome" with William Penn in 1682, and Hannah (Smith) Lee was their eighth child. Mary (Croas- dale) Smith died in 1716, and William Smith died in 1743. Their descendants have taken a prominent part in public affairs in Bucks county and elsewhere since the earliest colonial times.
Thomas Lee, eldest son of William and Hannah (Smith) Lee, was the ances- tor of Mary Eleanor (Lee) Sheppard. He was born in the year 1730, at the old Lee homestead near the present site of Buckmanville, Upper Makefield town- ship, Bucks county, and spent the greater part of his life in Solebury township, removing later in life to New Jersey, where he died about the year 1812. He married (first) in 1754, Mary Burgess, by whom he had ten children, and (sec- ond) in 1785, Hannah, daughter of Reuben and Effie (Burd) Pownall, of Sole- bury, and great-granddaughter of George and Eleanor Pownall, of Leylock, county Chester, England, who also came to Pennsylvania in the "Friends' Adven- ture" September 28, 1682, and settled in Bucks county. Two brothers of Han- nah (Pownall) Lee, Reuben and George, married daughters of Thomas Lee by his first wife Mary Burgess. She was born in Solebury, Bucks county, August 6, 1759, and was younger than the first three daughters of her husband by Mary Burgess. Thomas and Hannah (Pownall) Lee had three children, Reuben, Effie and William.
Reuben Lee, the eldest child, born in Solebury, Bucks county, January 18, 1786, married Clarissa, daughter of William Wetherill, of the family of that name long prominent in Philadelphia, a descendant of Christopher Wetherill one of the earliest English settlers of New Jersey, and resided for many years at Milford, New Jersey, removing in 1839 to Newtown, Bucks county, where he died, August 27, 1872. His wife Clarissa, who was born, December 16, 1788. and died, January 29, 1876. They had eight children :- Wetherill, died in 1874, aged 62; Eleanor, married A. E. Albright and died in 1853; Mary, died unmar- ried in 1853; Jesse, the father of Mrs. Sheppard, born, October 22, 1817, at Milford, Hunterdon county, New Jersey, died in Philadelphia, June 28, 1875, married Elizabeth Shinnick; William, still living at St. Paul, Minnesota; Clara, married Louis Buckman of Newtown, Bucks county; Keturah, died unmarried in Bucks county in 1904; Joseph, still living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Frank- lin Lawrence and Mary Eleanor (Lee) Sheppard, had five children, all born in Baltimore, Maryland :- Mary Sheppard, born 1876; Grace, born 1877; Irene, born 1879; Walter Lee, born 1880, a practicing attorney in Philadelphia ; Helen, born 1882, died in infancy. Mary Eleanor (Lee) Sheppard died February 22, 1904, and Mr. Sheppard married (second), at Plymouth, Indiana, August I,
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1906, Victoria, daughter of Gilson Strong Cleaveland, of a well-known New Eng- land family, who settled in Indiana in 1835, who died at Plymouth, December 12, 1906, in his ninety-fifth year. The only child of Franklin Lawrence and Victoria (Cleaveland) Sheppard, is Mildred Cleaveland, born January 21, 1908.
HOWARD REYNOLDS SHEPPARD, youngest child of Isaac A. and Caroline Mary (Holmes) Sheppard, was born in Philadelphia, December 31, 1865. He was educated at the Eastburn Academy, Philadelphia, and on his graduation in 1884, became actively associated with his father and elder brother Franklin Law- rence Sheppard, in the stove foundry business of the firm of Isaac A. Sheppard & Co. of which firm he became a member on reaching his majority, and of which he and his brother are now the surviving partners, still carrying on a large business under the old firm name. Mr. Sheppard is a member of the Penn- sylvania Society of the Sons of the Revolution, in right of his great-great-grand- fathers, Joseph Sheppard and Ephraim Harris, members of the Committee of Safety of Cumberland county; his great-great-great-grandfather Thomas Haines, Chairman of that body; and of his great-great-grandfathers, Samuel Westcott and Captain Jeremiah Bennett, of the New Jersey troops during the Revolution. He is also a member of the Union League, Manufacturers' and City Clubs, of Philadelphia. Like his father he early united with the Indepen- dent Order of Odd Fellows, and he is an active and prominent member of that Order, as well as of the Masonic fraternity.
Howard R. Sheppard married, December 21, 1891, Mary Estelle (b. May IO, 1871, d. Aug. 14, 1907), daughter of Frederick and Margaret Fowles of Phila- delphia. They had one child, Isaac Applin Sheppard, who was born April 30, 1894.
JACOB ESHER HEYL
The ancestors of the Heyl family of Philadelphia, resident in the Grand- Duchy of Baden, were early converts to the Protestant faith, who affiliated with the Moravian Brethren.
JOHN THOMAS HEYL, the earliest ancestor of whom we have any definite rec- ord, with his wife Kathrina, resided at a place called Vahesbach, a little village near Saisheim, Baden, on the river Main, where Kathrina died August 20, 1738, and from whence John Thomas Heyl and two of his sons, Heinrich, aged 40, and George Thomas aged 37, with their families emigrated to Pennsylvania the following year, crossing the Atlantic in the good ship "Friendship," Captain William Vittery, with about sixty other families of German Protestants, and landing at Philadelphia, September 3, 1739. They affiliated with the Moravian Church of Philadelphia, and the aged emigrant, who did not long survive his settlement in the city of brotherly love, lies buried in the old Moravian bury- ing ground at the corner of Franklin and Wood streets.
GEORGE THOMAS HEYL, son of John Thomas and Kathrina, was born at Sais- heim Baden, August 2, 1702, and was christened at the Moravian church at Kambach. At an early age he was apprenticed to the trade of a tailor, with Daniel Alberch, or Alberg, at Bischoffsheim, on a branch of the river Main, called Tauler, some miles below Saisheim, and on coming of age went, according to an ancient German custom, on the Vandenchaft, a travel or pilgrimage away from home to learn the ways of the world before settling down permanently. Returning to the home of his parents, he betrothed, January 4, 1728, and married. May 25, 1728, at Bischoffsheim, Susannah Steirheim, the sweetheart of his apprentice days, born at Bischoffsheim January 13, 1706. After following his vocation in his native country for eleven years, George Thomas Heyl decided to emigrate with his little family to the land of promise in Pennsylvania, where many of his countrymen had already settled, and his mother having died a year previously, his aged father, and an elder brother accompanied them to Phila- delphia in the "Friendship" where they arrived, September 3, 1739, as before stated. George Thomas and Susannah (Steirheim) Heyl were members of the Moravian Church, of Philadelphia, and lie buried in the old Moravian church- yard at Franklin and Wood streets, the latter dying, August 3, 1780. On the baptismal record of the church may be found the record of the baptism of five of their children born in Philadelphia, exclusive of that of their son Philip, born less than two weeks after their arrival in the city. They probably had other chil- dren born in Germany, but we have no complete list of them. Those baptized at the Moravian Church were,-Daniel Christopher, born January 14, 1745, bap- tized January 16; Gottfried, born August 22, 1746; John, born March 28, 1748, baptized March 30, died in infancy ; John, born July 18, 1750, baptized July 19. married, at the German Reformed Church of Philadelphia, September 18, 1771, Mary, daughter of Adam Stricker, a blacksmith, of the Northern Liberties, Phil-
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adelphia, and had sons John and Philip; Mary, born August 19, 1752, married November 7, 1771, Philip Worn; George, another son, married July 14, 1763, Sophia Ohmenzettern, and left issue.
PHILIP HEYL, son of George Thomas and Susannah (Steirheim) Heyl, was born in Philadelphia, September 15, 1739, twelve days after the arrival of his parent's in that city, was for many years proprietor of a bakery in Philadelphia and owned considerable real estate in the city proper and in Germantown, where, at the time of his death in 1810, he also owned a bake-house and dwell- ing, the former apparently in the tenure of his nephew John Heyl, son of his brother John, who with his son John was named as an executor of his will. He was a prominent business man of Philadelphia, and appears as executor, trus- tee, etc., of quite a number of wills, and in other capacities of trust, in the years immediately succeeding the Revolutionary War, in which he had taken an active part. His commission as ensign, in the First battalion, Associators of the City and Liberties of Philadelphia, bearing date February 4, 1775, and signed by John Morton, Speaker of the House of Representatives, is in the possession of his great-grandson, Jacob E. Heyl, the subject of this sketch. He served through- out the war in the Philadelphia Brigade, under Brigadier-general John Cad- walader. Philip Heyl married, at the Lutheran Church of St. Michael's and Zion, June 10, 1762, Maria Jacobina Zeigler, who was born June 1, 1740. Their family bible, with the dates of their birth and those of their children neatly entered therein, is in possession of their great-grandson, Jacob E. Heyl. These children were :- George, born April 17, 1763, died young ; Mary, born July 22, 1765, died February 17, 1810, married Bernard Raser; Philip, (2) born Febru- ary 19, 1765, died May 2, 1835; Susanna, born May 9, 1771, died young ; Thomas, born September 10, 1772, died in 1792; John, born February 7, 1775, died December II, 1849; and Elizabeth, born June 26, 1779, died 1834. Maria Ja- cobina (Zeigler) Heyl, died in Philadelphia, September 2, 1804. Philip died De- cember 29, 1811. His will is dated January 31, 1810, and mentions his sons, Philip and John, daughter, Mary Raser, and his nephew, John Heyl, son of his brother, John Heyl; and a codicil dated May 7, 1810, mentions the death of his daughter Mary, and devises her share of his estate to her five children, William, Thomas Bernard, George, and Mary Raser. The will of Mary Raser, of Philadelphia, widow of Bernard Raser, late of Philadelphia, mariner, dated February 7, 1810, and probated February 23, 1810, mentions the same children, and names her brother John Heyl, as executor.
JOHN HEYL, youngest son of Philip and Maria Jacobina (Zeigler) Heyl, was born in Philadelphia, February 7, 1775, and married, May 13, 1813, Ann Molle- dore, born January 3, 1785. He died December 11, 1849, and she, October 21, 1864. They had five children, whose births are recorded in the old Lutheran bible of Philip Heyl before referred to, printed at Nuremberg in 1733. They were :- William Molledore, born January 3, 1814, died October 21, 1864; Mary Raser, born May 25, 1816, died September 25, 1840; Ann Eliza, born March 17, 1819; John Bernard, born May 8, 1822, died November 4, 1874; George Raser, born November II, 1824, died April 16, 1826.
JOHN BERNARD HEYL, second son of John and Ann (Molledore) Heyl, was born May 8, 1822, and married, December 31, 1847, Jane Chapman Esher. born
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October 28, 1825, daughter of William Esher, of Philadelphia, born January 25, 1793, died October 13, 1871, by his wife Jane Chapman, born in Phil- adelphia, July 22, 1798, died May 6, 1855, and granddaughter of George Esher, and his wife, Sarah Shuster.
George Esher, the grandfather of Jane Chapman (Esher) Heyl, was born September 12, 1766, and died February 26, 1855. He was probably a son of Johan Jacob Esher, who came to Pennsylvania in the ship, "Crawford" Charles Smith, master, which arrived in Philadelphia, October 26, 1768, from Rotter- dam. George Esher and his family were members of Market Square Reformed church of Germantown and are buried in the family plot in the graveyard of that church. August 25, 1779, George Esher enlisted as a drummer boy in the company of Ezekiel Leets, First Regiment of Foot, in the service of the United States, under the command of Colonel William Bradford, of the Philadelphia City militia, and saw considerable active service in the field, though but 13 years of age at the date of his enlistment. George Esher married, at the Lutheran Church of St. Michael's and Zion, November 14, 1790, Sarah Shuster, who died October 16, 1847. The Eshers owned a plantation lying on both sides of the Ridge road, in the present built up limits of the city of Philadelphia, where three generations of the family resided.
William, son of George and Sarah (Shuster) Esher was born in Philadelphia, January 25, 1793, and married there, November 28, 1820, Jane, daughter of Robert Chapman, an English Quaker, born at Stockton-on-Tees, county Durham, England, on the borders of the North Riding of Yorkshire, April 25, 1775, who came to Pennsylvania, with his wife Mary, born at Longnewton, near Stockton- on-Tees, November, 1771, and lived for many years near Chestnut Hill, Phila- delphia, later removing to a farm in what is now West Philadelphia, north of Haverford avenue, where he died, April 29, 1858, aged 83 years and 4 days. Jane (Chapman) Esher died May 6, 1855, and her husband William Esher died October 13, 1871. The Eshers, father and son were active in public affairs and held municipal positions of importance.
John Bernard and Jane Chapman (Esher) Heyl, had six children :- Jacob Esher Heyl, the subject of this sketch; William Esher, Mary, Robert Chapman, Margaret Chapman, and Jane Heyl.
JACOB ESHER HEYL, eldest son of John Bernard and Jane Chapman (Esher ) Heyl, born in Philadelphia, June 2, 1849, was educated at the Friends' Central School of Philadelphia, graduating in 1866. He then entered the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at Troy, New York, from which he graduated in the class of 1870. His father was then a member of a firm engaged in the sugar-refining business in Philadelphia, and Jacob E. entered the firm on his graduation and remained with them until 1890, when he engaged in the banking and brokerage business, founding the firm of Heyl & Company, which has continued to the pres- ent time. Mr. Heyl is a director of the German-American Trust Company, and of the Tacony Trust Company. He is a member of the Union League, of the Pennsylvania Society of the Sons of the Revolution, of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, one of the board of governors of the Merion Cricket Club, a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon College Fraternity, etc. Mr. Heyl married, March 1, 1877, Ella Cora, daughter of James Carmalt and Mary (Tuller) Willis,
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and great-great-granddaughter of Jacob Tuller, who enlisted in 1775, immediately after the battle of Bunker Hill, at Simsbury, Connecticut, as sergeant of Com- pany H. Colonel Jedediah Huntingdon's regiment, of Norwich, Connecticut ; and again enlisted under Colonel Huntingdon in the Eighth Connecticut regiment, in 1776. Mr. and Mrs. Heyl have one daughter, Marion Willis Heyl, born May 4, 1883, who married, January 9th, 1907, George Sheldon Chauncey, of Brook- lyn, New York, son of George W. Chauncey. They have issue, George Heyl, born September 15, 1908.
WILLIAM ESHER HEYL, second son of John Bernard and Jane Chapman (Esher) Heyl, was born in Philadelphia, December 15, 1850. His ancestry and an account of the Revolutionary services of his paternal great-grandfather, Philip Heyl, (1739-18II) as ensign, in the First battalion, Philadelphia Asso- ciators, 1775-6, etc., and of his maternal great-grandfather George Esher, (1766- 1855), drummer-boy, and ensign, of Captain Ezekiel Leet's company in Colonel William Bradford's battalion, Philadelphia city militia, are given in the preceding sketch of his elder brother Jacob Esher Heyl, and need not be repeated here.
William Esher Heyl was educated at the Friends Central School, Philadel- phia, graduating in 1867. He became at once associated with his father in the sugar-refining business in Philadelphia, and has continued in that business to the present time, being, since 1880, associated with his brothers under the firm name of Heyl Brothers, with offices at 101 South Front Street, and their refinery located at Washington Avenue and Water Street. Mr. Heyl is a member of the Union League, of the Merion Cricket Club, of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and of the Pennsylvania Society of the Sons of the Revolution, in right of the ancestors above mentioned.
William Esher Heyl married November 1, 1892, Mary Jackson, daughter of Isaac Hallowell Clothier, the well-known merchant, financier, and philanthropist, of Philadelphia, born in that city, November 5, 1837, and his wife, Mary Clapp Jackson, a great-granddaughter of Lieutenant-colonel Ebenezer Clapp, born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, April 23, 1732, died there January 29, 1802, and his wife, Mary Glover, born October 18, 1760, died September 17, 1817.
Lieutenant-colonel Ebenezer Clapp, had been commissioned Colonel of the Massachusetts Militia, early in 1775, but having received his commission from officers having their authority under the British crown, with other officers resigned his commission and was re-appointed by the Continental Congress, March 7, 1775, Lieutenant-colonel of Read's Massachusetts Regiment, Continental line, and served as such from May to December, 1775. He became Lieutenant-colonel of the Thirteenth Continental Infantry, January 1, 1776, and served with that regi- ment during the war.
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