USA > Pennsylvania > Colonial and revolutionary families of Pennsylvania; genealogical and personal memoirs, Vol. I > Part 87
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Dr. Turnbull is now Major and Surgeon of the First Regiment National Guard, Pennsylvania, and the Veteran Corps Ist Regiment, National Guard of Pennsyl- vania, and a member of the Old Guard, Company A. He is a member of the Union League Club of Philadelphia, and other social and semi-political organiza- tions, and of the alumni associations of the Central High School and the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania, and is a member of the Penn- sylvania Society of the Sons of the Revolution.
Charles Smith Turnbull, M. D., married October 18, 1877, Elizabeth L. daughter of Edmund and Elizabeth (Rehn) Claxton, and they had four daugh- ters, Louisa Claxton Turnbull, born September 9, 1878, died April 27, 1889; Elizabeth Turnbull, born April 27, 1881, married March 18, 1905, Lieutenant now Captain, Hamilton Disston South, of the United States Marine Corps, son of Thomas W. and Ida (Corbley) South of Cincinnati, Ohio, and they have one child, Hamilton Disston South, Jr., born December 8, 1906; Edith Dunbar Turnbull, born January 23, 1883, married December 3, 1908, Paymaster McGill Robinson Goldsborough, of the United States Navy, son of Worthington Golds- borough, United States Navy, and his wife Henrietta Maria Jones, of Canı- bridge, Maryland; Gladys Laurence Turnbull, born May 29, 1888, married June 3, 1908, Lieutenant Nelson Palmer Vulté, of the United States Marine Corps, son of Herman Theodore, and Eugenia Wilhelmina Caroline (Fielitz) Vulté, of New Rochelle, New York, and has one son, Nelson Palmer Vulte, Jr., born April 9, 1909.
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RICHARD DALE SPARHAWK
RICHARD DALE SPARHAWK, of Philadelphia is a descendant of early settlers of New Jersey, several representatives of whom took part in the war for Inde- pendence, but on the paternal side is of New England ancestry.
NATHANIEL SPARHAWK, came from Dedham, England, and was made a free- man of Massachusetts Bay colony, May 23, 1639. He settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was a deacon of the church there, and represented that town in the General Court or legislative body of Massachusetts Bay colony, 1642 to 1647.
NATHANIEL SPARHAWK, (2), was a selectman of Brighton district, Cam- bridge, Massachusetts, 1677 to 1686, and was also a deacon of the church there.
NATHANIEL SPARHAWK, (3) enlister from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and served in Sir William Phipps' expedition against Port Royal and Quebec, Can- ada, in 1690. He was a selectman of Cambridge, 1715 to 1730, and was elected a deacon of the church, August 5, 1724.
THE REV. NATHANIEL SPARHAWK (4), graduate from Harvard College inl 1715, and in 1720, was ordained pastor of the church at Lynnfield, Massachu- setts.
JOHN SPARHAWK, M. D., fifth in the line of descent from Nathaniel Sparhawk, the emigrant, is supposed to have been the John Sparhawk who enlisted from Cambridge, Massachusetts, in Pepperill's expedition against Louisburg in 1745. He removed to Philadelphia, Pa., about 1750, and became a merchant there. He was one of the signers of the "Non-Importation Resolutions" in 1765, and took the oath of allegiance prescribed by act of the Pennsylvania Assembly of June 13, 1777, on June 25, 1777. He was joint owner with Matthew Irwin of the Sloop "Col. Parry," which was armed and entered the service of the state of Pennsylvania, or the Continental service, sealing from Philadelphia, October 29, 1776, in command of Captain William Gambel, who had been a captain in the Pennsylvania Navy, with a crew of 15 men and four guns. John Sparhawk is believed to have served in the Revolutionary war, probably as a surgeon without a formal commission.
THOMAS SPARHAWK, son of Dr. John above mentioned, enlisted twice in the war of 1812, in the defence of the city of Philadelphia. He was a private in Captain Condy Rauet's company, "Washington Guards," May 13, 1813, to July 28, 1813 and was fifth sergeant of the same company-commanded by Captain Thomas F. Pleasants in the second campaign-First Regiment Volunteer In- fantry, Colonel Clement C. Biddle, commanding, attached to the "Advance Light Brigade," Brigadier-general Thomas Cadwallader, stationed at Camp Dupont, August 29, 1814 to January 3, 1815. Thomas Sparhawk married Catharine Passmore, of the well-known family of that name.
SAMUEL SPARHAWK, the father of the subject of this sketch, was a son of Thomas Sparhawk, above mentioned, and seventh in descent from Nathaniel Sparhawk, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, (1639). He was born in Philadel-
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phia, December 25, 1823, and died there, May 22, 1883. He was vice-president of the Fire Association of Philadelphia for many years. He married Sarah Axford Kneass, born in Philadelphia, a daughter of Christian Kneass of Phil- adelphia, and his wife Sarah Axford, a daughter of John Axford of Oxford, Warren county, New Jersey, whose maternal ancestry traces back to the first English settlers in Bucks county, Pennsylvania.
Hannah Polhemus, the wife of John Axford, above mentioned, and mother of Sarah (Axford) Kneass, was a daughter of Major John Polhemus, of Rocky Hill, Somerset county, New Jersey, of the New Jersey Line in the Revolutionary war, and his wife Susannah Hart, daughter of John Hart, member of Continental Congress from New Jersey, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. The Polhemus family was founded in America by Rev. Johannes Theodorus Pol- hemus, a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church in Holland, who came to New Amsterdam in 1654. The family was one of considerable celebrity in the Netherlands for centuries, one of the family, Eleazer Polhemus, a very learned jurist, being Burgomaster of Antwerp as early as 1310.
Daniel Polhemus, son of Rev. Johannes Theodorus, the Dutch dominie, was captain of the Kings county, New York Troop; supervisor of Flatbush, Long Island, and a judge of Kings county court. He died in 1730, at an advanced age.
Hendrick Polhemus, son of Daniel, and father of Major John Polhemus, settled in Somerset county, New Jersey, about four miles north of Princeton, where his grandfather, Rev. Theodorus Polhemus and a number of other Dutch residents of Long Island had purchased a large tract of land on Millstone river, in 1701.
Major John Polhemus, son of Hendrick, above mentioned, was born at Hopewell, now Mercer county, New Jersey, May 25, 1738. At the age of seven- teen years, in 1755, he served in the New Jersey contingent of the provincial forces in the Braddock campaign against Fort Duquesne. On March 10, 1762, he was enrolled in Colonel Samuel Hunt's regiment of New Jersey, organized for the expedition against the Spanish possessions in the West Indies, and on May 7, embarked with that regiment for the West Indies, and took part in the attack on Moro Castle, Havana, Cuba, July 30, 1762. At the outbreak of the Revolution, when affairs, even to the most sanguine, wore a gloomy aspect, John Polhemus, deeply impressed with the importance and necessity of prompt ac- tion on the part of every true patriot, was among the foremost to respond to the summons of his country to come forward and offer his services and his means. November 22, 1775, he was appointed fourth captain in the First battalion, First establishment, Continental troops, New Jersey line, commanded by Colonel Wil- liam Alexander, Lord Stirling. At the time of his appointment, his company of eighty-six men, recruited by himself, was without arms and accoutrements. These, as the public treasury was empty, he was requested by his colonel to furnish, with a promise of reimbursement. This he did, mortgaging his prop- erty to raise the money, and marched his company fully armed and equipped to the New Brunswick barracks, where he remained until January 1, 1776. Gen- eral Nathaniel Heard of the militia, having been ordered to disarm the tories on Long Island and bring off the military stores there, Captain Polhemus was sent to accompany him. In the execution of this order six hundred and forty-
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one persons were sworn in allegiance to the patriot cause, and the most no- torious tories and the captured stores were taken to New York, where Captain Polhemus remained until May. The result of this expedition was bitterly re- taliated during the subsequent British occupation of Long Island, upon the Whigs, among whom were many of Captain Polhemus's relatives. In the same year (1776) Captain Polhemus was ordered to join the expedition against Can- ada, where he participated in the battle of Three Rivers, and several skirmishes, in sight of the British fleet, until the army was compelled to fall back to Cham- bly. There, he says in his journal, "the forts, stores, and all the shipping were burned, except the batteaux, which were pulled up the rapids by rope to the Isle aux Noix, at the north end of Lake Champlain, and from thence to Crown Point and Ticonderoga, where the troops remained in camp until autumn, forti- fying and building a bridge across the lake to Mount Independence." In No- vember, 1776, the term of his company's enlistment having expired, at the re- quest of General Gates, he and his men remained two weeks over time, until relieved by the Third regiment under Colonel Dayton. At this time he was in- formed by Lord Stirling, of his reappointment on November 29, as fourth cap- tain, First battalion, Second establishment, Continental troops, New Jersey line, for three years or during the war. At Pinckemin, on the homeward march, he found the people much alarmed and the militia ordered out. Major Linn of the militia presented himself to Captain Polhemus and requested him to ac- company him and assist him in his command. So together they marched against the enemy at Brown's Hook, who, being apprised that the militia had been joined by veterans from Canada, left for other parts. The Americans then continued their march to the camp at New Brunswick. "On my return," says Captain Pol- hemus in his journal, "Jersey was so overrun with the British that I could not go to my home. My wife left all and fled for safety to the mountains where I found her." He remained a day or two with his family at the house of Wil- liam Blew, then leaving them in the care of friends, rejoined the army at New- town, Bucks county, Pennsylvania. During this visit he further mortgaged his property to satisfy his men with their back pay and secure their re-enlistment, as they refused to continue in the service until payment could be arranged by congress. Rapidly succeeding military events are thus described by Major Pol- hemus in his journal as follows :-
On the 26th of December, 1776, the army moved from Newtown and crossed the Delaware to Trenton, where after a severe contest, the enemy fell back in defeat. *
* * We whipped them terribly and took a thousand Hessians prisoners, driving them into Newtown jail yard like a pack of sheep during a severe hailstorm. We allowed the offi- cers to wear their side arms, also the privilege of occupying part of the house with Gen- eral Patterson and myself. *
* * On the 3d of January, 1777, we attacked them at Princeton, and drove them to New Brunswick. I was left behind with a rear guard to se- cure stores and bury the dead, which we did by hauling them on sleds to great holes and heaping them in. * * * I was then relieved by Colonel Chamberlain. * regiment passed on the left side of Millstone River, where our mill stood; the British
* Our * passing before us on the other side. * * * One night the British lay near Ten Mile Run, not more than three miles distant. In the morning they sent a company of dragoons to burn the mill and cut down the bridge, but as they hove in sight a body of militia came down the hill with a field piece and opened on them. They scampered like a drove of oxen, luckily for us, for at that time we had four hundred bushels of wheat and a large quantity of flour on hand. The mill belonged to my father-in-law, John Hart, then a member of Continental Congress, and myself. Going to the mill I found about fifty of the British that Morgan's Rifles had killed, belonging to the Fifty-first British Regiment. We buried them and on going to the house I found a British Sergeant in my bed, with a part
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of his face shot off, also a number of sick and wounded soldiers. *
* As there was no way by which we could take them with us, I swore every man of them not to take up arms against the independence of America, unless exchanged according to the rules of war, and left them. *
* * The next day I found the army at Street's Mountain, and we lay there some time watching the enemy occupying New Brunswick until they vacated the town. We then traversed the mountains, always keeping by their side, until we came into the State of Delaware, and participated in a severe skirmish at Iron Hill, there losing Cap- tain Dallas and quite a number of men. We soon reached the Brandywine and on the IIth day of September had a bitter engagement with the British Army, which had been largely reinforced, and fought until dark. We lost over five hundred men there and one field piece, a three pounder of wrought iron commanded by Captain Jones. Our luck was against the British grenadiers and fusiliers. * * * Our Colonel had his horse killed and General Marquis de Lafayette received a wound in his leg from the same ball, where- upon while stroking the smarting wound, he exclaimed "Bon, bon, America." I asked him what bone had to do with it, to which he replied "Good, good for American liberty," and we both enjoyed the joke. In our retreat the Jersey Line retired to Chester, and that night I quartered in the same house with the Marquis and was present when his wound was dressed. * *
* On the 29th day of September I was with General Wayne's expe-
dition and unfortunate surprise by the enemy at Paoli. *
*
*
We continued our lines
along the mountains until the 4th of October and attacked the British at Germantown, driv- ing in their pickets. They fled abandoning their tents and a few of their field pieces after cutting the timber off. Some fled to the hills some to the mills and some to Chew's house. Having field pieces within and about the latter place, we were ordered to storm it, which we did. This charge was a deadly one, all the captains in the First Battallion were killed or wounded but myself, and I did Major's duty. Major Witherspoon was killed at my side; General Nash's horse was killed and himself wounded. Lieutenant Hurley was tak- en prisoner and hung to a tree without benefit of clergy by the enemy who recognized him as formerly belonging to the King's Dragoons. The scattered forces of the enemy ral- lied, marched down the hill, and poured into us a deadly fire, compelling us to halt in our charge and retire from the field.
Later, while the American army was encamped at Valley Forge, Captain Polhemus, who had been promoted major of his battalion which he called the "Jersey Blues" asked for leave of absence to visit his family in New Jersey but was refused by Lord Stirling, for the reason that he was the only field of- ficer of his regiment in the camp, and that he could not part with "so valuable an officer" while there was no one to take his place. So the Major stayed on at the camp throughout the winter and its severe trials. June 28, 1778, he par- ticipated in the battle of Monmouth, and shortly after while engaged in the ser- vice near Amboy under General Washington, to quote again from his valuable journal, "I was taken prisoner by a large party of Tories. I was sent to New York gaol, there suffering terribly from want of food and clothing, and obliged to lie on the cold floor almost perishing, without any hope of relief. It was in- deed a most dismal and severe winter. The bay and East and North Rivers were frozen over and formed solid bridges of ice, great numbers constantly crossing from New York to Staten Island and Paulus Hook. During this severe and cold weather I was removed to the sugar house. It was out of the frying pan into the fire-no fire, not even a blanket to keep me warm. In the spring of 1780, I was let out on parole, by the intercession of Dr. Bainbridge, father of the future commodore, United States Navy. I went directly to my regi- ment crippled and twisted with rheumatism and in bad health, then to my home where I remained, never receiving notice of my exchange until peace was de- clared." The Journal concludes, "I am now in my eighty-seventh year, old and infirm. I have been in most all the actions and skirmishes of the war for Amer- ican independence this side of Virginia, and have received a pension since 1818."
His home had been sacrificed to pay the liens put upon it to equip his com- pany and pay their back pay. He entered the army in affluence and left it with- out a pittance to support his numerous family ; nevertheless he declined to press
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his claims against the federal government in its infancy and thus lost not only reimbursement for moneys advanced but much of his pay as an officer. His powerful frame however gradually recovered its tone when surrounded by his family, and he lived to a ripe old age, dying at the residence of his daughter, the wife of Captain Peter Kurtz, of the Continental army, No. 178 Pine street, Philadelphia, May 25, 1833, in the ninety-sixth year of his age. He was an orig- inal member of the Society of the Cincinnati, admitted July 4, 1786. A few months before his death he sent for the late Colonel James Page of the State Fencibles, whose father had been a personal friend, and requested him to see that a cor- poral's guard should carry his remains to the grave. Colonel Page on notice of his death called out his whole company and Major Polhemus was buried with military honors at Ronaldson's cemetery, where a marble slab appropriately in- scribed marks the resting place of himself and his wife.
Major Polhemus had married, in 1770, Susannah Hart, Daughter of John Hart, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. John Hart, the Sign- er, was a son of Captain Edward Hart, who came from Stonington, Connecticut, about the time of the birth of his distinguished son, and settled in Hopewell township, Hunterdon county, New Jersey. So near to the time of the birth of his son John, was this removal that it is uncertain whether the latter was born in Stonington, or at Hopewell. A granddaughter is authority for the state- ment that he was born at Stonington. He was baptised as a child at the Presby- terian church of Maidenhead, now Lawrenceville, New Jersey, by the Rever- end Jedediah Andrews, on the "12th Mo. (February) 21, 1713-14." He was reared on his father's farm in Hopewell township, and spent his whole life there, dying at his home in Hopewell, May II, 1779. He early became interested in public affairs ; was a staunch supporter of the people and wielded a wide in- fluence. He was a Justice of the Peace for Hunterdon county in 1755, and was elected to the Colonial Assembly from that county in 1761, taking his seat on April 7, 1761. He continued a member until the dissolution of the Assembly in 1768, and was re-elected in June, 1768, and continued a member until its dissolu- tion December 21, 1771. He was commissioned at about this date a justice of the common pleas court of Hunterdon county, and was filling this position when, July 8, 1774, he was elected to represent his county in the first Provincial congress of New Jersey. He was a delegate to the various provincial conven- tions ; presiding at that of January 18, 1875, for the election of delegates to the second Provincial congress at which he was chosen to the latter body. At its sessions in May and August, 1775, he took a most active part in its deliberations ; was appointed a member of the Committee of Observation, and Committee of Correspondence, and served on the State Committee of Safety during the years 1776-7. He was re-elected to the Provincial congress in September 1775, and served in the sessions of October, 1775, and January and June, 1776, being named on important committees, and as one of the signers of the paper money issued by the Provincial congress for the purpose of arming for the war that they recognized as imminent. June 15, 1776, he was elected vice-president of the New Jersey provincial congress, and one week later was elected one of the five delegates from that state to the Continental Congress. He and his col- leagues Richard Stockton, Francis Hopkinson, John Witherspoon and Abraham Clark arrived in Philadelphia in time to affix their signatures to the immortal
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Declaration on July 2, 1776. In the selection of the new delegation to the Con- tinental Congress, November 30, 1776, Mr. Hart and Francis Hopkinson were omitted, and in August 1776, Mr. Hart was elected to the first New Jersey As- sembly under its state constitution, and on the meeting of that body was elected unanimously its speaker, which office he held by successive re-elections during 1776, 1777 and the first session of 1778, when failing health compelled him to relinquish his arduous public duties. Owing to his prominence and influence in the cause of independence, he was hunted with peculiar ferocity by the British and Tories when the enemy were in force in New Jersey. Some of his correspondence as a member of the Committee of Safety and also as speaker of the house, showing his activity in procuring supplies for the army, etc., has been preserved. In 1865 the New Jersey legislature caused a monument to be erected to his memory, on which occasion Governor Joel Parker truthfully said of him in his public address,-"Upon a careful examination of the history of New Jersey during, and immediately preceding the Revolutionary War, I am of the opinion that John Hart had greater experience in the Colonial and State legislation of that day, than any of his contemporaries; and that no man ex- ercised greater influence in giving direction to the public opinion which culmin. ated in independence."
The dates of birth and death of John Hart are given on the monument as 17II and 1780 respectively, and a number of biographers have perpetuated the error in the last date. Family records and the date of the proof of his will, furnish abundant evidence of its incorrectness, however. John Hart married Deborah Scudder of a prominent New Jersey family, and they were the parents, among others, of Susannah Hart, who became the wife of Major John Polhemus above mentioned, whose daughter Hannah, was the wife of John Axford, and maternal great-grandmother of the subject of this sketch.
Samuel and Sarah Axford (Kneass) Sparhawk were the parents of seven children, viz .;- Helen S., born October 17, 1854, died September 17, 1886; Sam- uel, born March 16, 1856, married Grace Emily Reifsnyder, died December 26, 1907; Horace Magee, died in infancy; Richard Dale, the subject of this sketch; Catharine Passmore, born September 25, 1866; Edward Magee, born September 10, 1868, married in 1898, Mary Howard, and has issue three chil- dren, Richard Dale, Jr., Elizabeth and Helen; Louise Everly, born June 21, 1870.
RICHARD DALE SPARHAWK, second son and third child of Samuel and Sarah Axford (Kneass) Sparhawk, was born in Philadelphia, June 25, 1861 ; was ed- ucated in the public schools of Philadelphia. On leaving the Central High School he engaged in the life insurance business in his native city, and January I, 1905, became manager of the Philadelphia agency of the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York, a position he still fills.
Mr. Sparhawk is a member of the Pennsylvania Society of the Order of Founders and Patriots of America, and of the Pennsylvania Society of the Sons of the Revolution, vice-president of the Philadelphia Association of Life Underwriters, and is a warden of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the Atonement, the memorial to the Reverend Benjamin Watson, D. D., of West Philadelphia. He married, November 3, 1891, Mary E., daughter of Robert and Ellen (Cascaden) Hume, of Philadelphia.
SAMUEL REA
SAMUEL REA, Second Vice-President of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and in charge of the engineering and accounting departments of that corpora- tion, comes of sturdy Scotch Irish ancestry that were prominent in the early settlement of central Pennsylvania, and rendered yeoman services in the estab- lishment of the independence of the Colonies of America.
SAMUEL REA, the great grandfather of the subject of this sketch, was born in the north of Ireland of Scotch parentage and emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1754 or 1755. He settled for a short time in the western part of Chester County, then removed to Lancaster County and finally to the Conococheague Valley, now Franklin County, then part of Cumberland County. He was three times married, his first wife being a Snodgrass, of the same family as the Rev. James Snodgrass, one of the early Presbyterian ministers of the Scotch- Irish settlement on the eastern bank of the Susquehanna, who was a grandson of Benjamin Snodgrass, an early settler in the Scotch-Irish Colony on the Ne- shaminy, in Bucks County. His second marriage was to a widow named Edgar, and his third to Martha (Grier) Wallace, who survived him. He died August 15, 18II.
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