USA > Pennsylvania > Colonial and revolutionary families of Pennsylvania; genealogical and personal memoirs, Vol. III > Part 18
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Mr. Dechert married, September 15, 1857, Esther Servoss, daughter of Thomas S. Taylor, of Philadelphia, by his wife Mary (Mckenzie) Taylor, and they have the following children : I. Henry Taylor, born February 21, 1859; mar- ried January 30, 1895, Virginia Louise, daughter of Edward W. and Mary Ellis Howard, and has issue: Robert Dechert, born November 29, 1895; Phil- ip Dechert, June 16, 1906. 2. Bertha Mary, born April 5, 1862; married, July 5, 1902, Charles H. Gale, of the Cleveland, Ohio, bar. 3. Ellen Goddard, born
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November 1, 1863; died May 28, 1886. 4. Edward Porter, born June 6, 1872; married, February 6, 1896, Margaret, daughter of John and Mary Foy, and has issue: Esther Dechert, born February 17, 1897; Marjorie Dechert, January 7, 1903.
HON. RICHARD LEWIS ASHHURST
RICHARD LEWIS ASHHURST, appointed March 1, 1906, postmaster of the city of Philadelphia, was the eldest son of John and Harriet Kingston (Eyre) Ast- hurst, and grandson of Richard and Elizabeth (Croto-Hughes) Ashhurst; also grandson of Manuel and Anne Louisa (Connelly) Eyre and great-grandson of Captain Manuel Eyre.
Captain Manuel Eyre, born in Burlington, New Jersey, November 10, 1736, came of a family that furnished three distinguished officers in the pa- triot cause in the American Revolution, Captain Jehu Eyre, Colonel Benjamin G. Eyre, both of the Pennsylvania troops, and himself. Captain Eyre became a member of the Philadelphia Committee of Correspondence in 1775, and in the same year constructed for the Provincial government the war vessels "Bull Dog", "Franklin", and "Congress" for use in the Pennsylvania navy. He be- came a member of the first Pennsylvania navy board, and took an active part in its proceedings for the establishment of a navy of war vessels, and in pro- viding other means for the defence of the Delaware bay and river. He was also a member of the artillery company commanded by his brother Captain Jehu Eyre, of the Philadelphia Associators in the battalion commanded by Colonel John Cadwalader, who, June 5, 1777, signed the following declaration :
"We whose names are hereto subscribed do pledge our faith to each other that we will continue to associate for the defence of American Liberty and to stand forth for the same when called, as Witness our hands this 5 day of June, 1777, in a Company of Artillery."
Captain Eyre continued active in the patriot cause until independence was achieved. He died in Philadelphia, November 1, 1805. He married, Mary Wright, of a prominent New Jersey family, where his own ancestors had also resided from its first settlement by the English.
RICHARD LEWIS ASHHURST was born at Naples, Italy, where his parents were temporarily sojourning, February 5, 1838. He graduated at the Universi- ty of Pennsylvania, with the highest honors, in the class of 1856, delivering the Greek salutatory oration. He studied law under William M. Meredith, and was admitted to the Philadelphia bar, June, 1859, and at once engaged upon the ac- tive practice of his profession in that city. With every prospect of early distinc- tion in his profession, he abandoned it and his home ties to take up arms in de- fence of the Union. When Major Roy Stone of the First Pennsylvania Rifles, Thirteenth Regiment, Pennsylvania Reserves, known as the "Bucktails", came north to recruit a "Bucktail Brigade" after the reverses of the spring of 1862, it was decided to recruit four companies in Philadelphia, and Mr. Ashhurst became one of the most active in organizing and recruiting the Philadelphia contingent of what became the One Hundred and Fiftieth Regiment, Pennsylvan- ia Volunteers. He was one of the earliest to enlist, August 20, 1862, and was commissioned adjutant of the regiment. The regiment went to Harrisburg, September 1, 1862, and to Washington, September 4th. Here it remained on
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guard duty until February, 1863, when it was ordered to Belle Plain as a part of the Army of the Potomac. His regiment, with the One Hundred and Forty- third and One Hundred and Forty-ninth regiments were joined together in the formation of a brigade which was placed under the command of Colonel Stone, and it thus participated in a number of skirmishes, in the movements of the army along the Rappahannock, but its first real battle was Gettysburg, where it met the enemy, July 1, 1863, and won a reputation for valor that is imperishable. Holding its position near the seminary in the first day's fight, under the heaviest fire of the enemy, and losing fifty per cent. of its fighting force. Colonel Stone was killed and the command of the brigade devolved up- on Colonel Langhorne Wister of the One Hundred and Fiftieth regiment. He and Lieutenant-colonel Huidekoper were also successively wounded, and the command devolved upon Adjutant Ashhurst, who though he had been shot through the shoulder and received a painful wound in the shin, rallied the shat- tered and somewhat demoralized remnant of the brigade, and succeeded in holding them together while they fell back through the open ground towards the seminary, fighting as they went, taking advantage of every favorable spot to make a defensive stand and finally, receiving orders to retreat, halted at the seminary long enough to defend and secure the removal of a battery hardly pressed by the enemy and then retreated through the town, after which Mr. Ashhurst went to an improvised field hospital where his wound was dressed. Adjutant Ashhurst received a brevet as major, and was discharged by surgeon's certificate, September 10, 1863. He had been breveted captain for meritorious services at Chancellorsville in May, 1863. Returning to Philadelphia, he re- sumed the practice of law which has continued to the present time. March I, 1906, Major Ashhurst assumed the duties of postmaster of Philadelphia, to which position he was appointed by President Roosevelt. He is a member of the Pennsylvania Society of the Sons of the Revolution, of the American Philosophic Society, the Military Order of the Loyal Legion, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; of the Pennsylvania Bar As- sociation, and other professional associations, serving as vice-president of the Philadelphia Law Association. He is also vice-dean of the Shakespeare Society of Philadelphia, a member of the Phi Beta Kappa fraternity, and of the Un- ion League, Rittenhouse and Philadelphia Country clubs. Major Ashhurst is the author of a "Biography of William Moore Meredith;" "Contemporary Ev- idences of Shakespeare's Identity"; and other pamphlets on Shakespeare, and also a number on military subjects. Colonel Thomas Chamberlain, in his "History of the One Hundred and Fiftieth Regiment, Pennsylvania Volun- teers", published in 1905, acknowledges the valuable assistance rendered him by Major Ashhurst, and quotes him extensively in its pages. Major Ashhurst married, May 30, 1861, Sarah, daughter of Professor John Fries Frazer, of the University of Pennsylvania, and they reside at 321 South Eleventh Street.
CHARLOTTE DALLAS MORRELL PATTERSON
CHARLOTTE D. MORRELL (Mrs. John C. Patterson), of Philadelphia, is of the Morrell and Dallas families. On the paternal side she is the granddaughter of Dr. Robert Morrell, whose father was born in France, while the mother was of the tropics. Dr. Robert Morrell was a physician of much skill and emi- nently successful. He married Tousard, daughter of General Tousard, who came with Lafayette to this country. She was born in San Domingo. Their son, Charles H. Morrell, was born in 1828 in Cuba, and married, December 20, 1854, Charlotte Byron Dallas, daughter and only surviving child of Vice-Pres- ident George M. Dallas. The issue of Mr. and Mrs. Charles H. Morrell, was as follows :
I. Robert, born 1855.
2. George Dallas, born 1857.
3. Louisa, born 1859, deceased.
4. Charles H., born 1861.
5. Charlotte Dallas, born May 8, 1863, now the wife of John Curtis Patterson, who is the son of Joseph and Lovinia (Horstman) Patterson. He is by profession a civil engineer and spent several years at the opening of the present century in constructing railroads in South America and Mexico, but at present is a civil engineer in Phila- delphia.
6. Philip, born 1865, deceased.
7. William, born 1871, deceased.
The father of this family, Charles H. Morrell, was a sugar planter in Cuba, and died in June, 1877, at Cambridge, Massachusetts. His brother is Hon. Edward Morrell, congressman from Philadelphia. His only sister, Louisa, married and lives in Havana, Cuba. Her husband is Lambert Fernandez and their children are: Andrew, Robert, Matilda, Caroline, Joseph Michael and Peter.
Of Mrs. John Curtis Patterson's maternal side, it may be stated in this con- nection, that she is the granddaughter of Hon. George M. Dallas, who was vice-president of the United States, with James K. Polk, president. Her ma- ternal great-grandfather was Hon. Alexander J. Dallas, of which family, men- tion is made elsewhere in this work.
FRANK WILLIAM SHRIVER
FRANK WILLIAM SHRIVER, of Philadelphia, is a descendant from early Ger- man emigrants from the Pfalz, who settled in Pennsylvania early in the eigli- teenth century. The name Shriver is a corruption of the old German name of Schreiber.
ANDREAS SCHREIBER, son of Jost and Anna Schreiber, was baptized in the church at Alsenborn, Oberant Lautern, Germany, in the Electorate Palatine, September 7, 1673. At the age of thirty-three years he was married in the same church at Alsenborn, the following being a literal translation of the record of his marriage :
"Anno Domini 1706, August-Andreas Schreiber, legitimate son of Jost Schreiber of this place, was, after being regularly proclaimed, joined in wedlock with Anna Margareta, lawful widow of the late John Young, who was a citizen of this place"
She was a daughter of Theobald and Margareta Hess, "citizens and wedded persons of this place" says the quaint German record of Alsenborn Church, and was baptized there, October 22, 1674. Her marriage to John Young, of Frankelbach, on August 14, 1698, the baptism of her two children by Young. and three by Andreas Schreiber, are also of record.
Andreas Schreiber, having decided to emigrate to America, applied for and received from the pastor of the church a certificate of character, of which the following is a translation :
"That the bearer of this, Andreas Schreiber, citizen and inhabitant of this place and his wife Anna Margareta, whom he has with him, confess themselves to be conformable to the Word of God of the Reformed Church, and have until now assiduously observed the out- ward duties of Christianity in attending our public worship, receiving the Holy Sacrament, and otherwise, so far as is known, have been irreproachable in their conduct, I attest.
WHEREAS the said man and wife and their children, after having borne adversity, are about to turn their backs upon their country and to go (God knows where), into a strange country, I would therefore recommend them to a willing reception by the preachers and elders of the said Reformed Church, wherever they may show this.
Alsenborn, Oberant Lautern, in the Electorate Palatine, May 13, 1721.
JOHN MUELLER, Pastor
From these German church records we learn further that the grandparents of Andreas Schreiber, of Alsenborn, were Lorentz and Margareta Schreiber, both of whom died in the year 1684; that his mother Anna, the wife of Jost Schrei- ber, died in 1690; that Lorentz had brothers, Peter Schreiber, whose wife's name was Elizabeth, and Johannes Schreiber, (died 1685) whose wife Appo- lina died 1686. The descendants of neither of the two brothers of Lorentz have been traced, but it has been ascertained that Lorentz and Margareta had. beside Jost, the father of Andreas the emigrant, two other sons, Johannes, who married Anna Otille, and had four children baptized at Alsenborn Church, 1681 to 1686; and James, with wife Anna Elizabeth, who also had several children baptized, 1675 to 1688, some of whom doubtless came to Pennsylvania. The children of Jost and Anna, beside Andreas, the emigrant, were: Matthias, born
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1667, who married Sybylla Von Heimbach and had children; Anna Margaret born 1669; Anna Josephine; Cassines; and Francis Theobald.
On the lists of persons naturalized, or qualified, as subjects of the British crown on their arrival in Philadelphia, under the Act of General Assembly of 1727, we find a great number of the name of Schreiber, between the year 1732 and the date of the Revolutionary War. Among these are: Hans Jacob Schrei- ber, aged thirty-four, and wife Anna, aged thirty, in the "Hope", August 28, 1733; Heinrich Schreiber, aged twenty, in the "Mercury",, May 29, 1735; Lor- ents Schreiber, aged twenty-six, in the "Samuel", August 30, 1737; Nicolaus, Elias, Maria Elizabeth, Johan Georg, and Philip, in the "Charming Nancy," October 8, 1737; Johannes Schreiber, aged thirty-two, in the "Friendship," Sep- tember 20, 1738; Johannes Schreiber, aged twenty-four, in the "Samuel", De- cember 3, 1740; Adam Schreiber, in the "St. Marks", September 26, 1741 ; Johan Peter Schreiber, in the "Europa", November 20, 1741, "Aged 27".
As we find a number of the name settled near Andrew Schreiber in York and Lancaster counties, it is presumed that some of his cousins or nephews or both, followed him and his family to Pennsylvania, in search of religious free- dom. In a number of cases the names of the above mentioned emigrants were spelled on either the original or duplicate lists as "Shriver" or "Schriver"; nearly always, however, appearing on one of the lists as either "Schreiber" or "Shreiver".
Whether the Schreiber family had decided upon their destination before leav- ing Alsenborn, to escape the "adversities" they had borne in the way of relig- ious persecutions, alluded to in the certificate above quoted, or whether they were going "God knows where" as stated therein, does not appear, but they had probably decided to follow earlier co-religionists to Penn's Colony in the search for religious freedom and a betterment of their material interests. At any rate they landed in Philadelphia some months after the date of the certifi- cate, and soon after settled near The Trappe, Philadelphia, now Montgomery county, where was gathered one of the earliest congregations of the German Reformed Church. Here Andrew Schreiber died, and his widow took a third husband by the name of John Steiger. The records of Alsenborn church show the baptism of three children, born to Andreas and Anna Margareta (Hess) Schreiber, who with their half-brother, David Young, son of the mother by her first marriage, accompanied their parents to America. The names of these three children and the dates of their baptism were as follows:
Ludwig Schreiber, bapt. Oct. 14, 1709; Andrew Schreiber, bapt. Sept. 6, 1712;
Anna Margareta Schreiber, bapt. July 25, 1715.
ANDREW SCHREIBER JR., the second son, baptized September 6, 1712, was apprenticed to a tanner, at proper age, and also to the shoemaker trade. He obtained his freedom in 1732, and worked at his trade one year thereafter prior to marriage. At about this date there had settled near the Schreibers an- other German family by the name of Keiser, consisting of the father, Ulrich Keiser, who had been a tanner in the little village of Renche, five miles from Heidelberg, Germany; his wife Veronica, and two daughters, Magdalena and Anna Maria Keiser. This family had come to Pennsylvania in the ship,
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"Brittanica", of London, Michael Franklin, master, from Rotterdam, arriving in Philadelphia, September 21, 1731. The roll of passengers gave the age of Ulrich Keiser, the father as seventy years; that of his wife "Feronica" as six- ty-six ; Magdalena, as aged twenty-nine, and Anna Maria, aged nineteen years.
In the spring of 1733 Andrew Schreiber Jr., married Anna Maria Keiser, the youngest daughter of Ulrich and Veronica Keiser, the former of whont had died at about this date. After his marriage Andrew Schreiber, accompan- ied by his wife and his step, or half-brother, removed to Conewago, York coun- ty, Pennsylvania, then a part of Lancaster county, six miles south of Hanover, in what became Heidelberg township, York county, where he purchased for one hundred pairs of negro shoes, one hundred acres of wild land of a Mr. Diggs, who had a patent under Lord. Baltimore, that section being then claimed as ly- ing within the limits of Maryland. David Young helped to clear the land and then returned to Montgomery county, but both he and Andrew's full brother, Ludwig Schreiber, later settled near Andrew. The Schreiber plantation lay on the road from the south, leading westward through "Standing Stone", now Huntingdon. Here Andrew Schreiber crected and operated a tannery, and later purchased larger tracts of land. On his first settlement in this section it was a wilderness, Indians living near him in every direction, but there was al- most a continual war between the two tribes of the Catawbas and Delawares, but both were always friendly with the Schreibers. Their nearest neighbors were the Forney family, living where the town of Hanover now stands, of which the late John W. Forney, of Philadelphia, was a descendant. Andrew Schreiber died August 12, 1797, near the end of his eighty-fifth year. His widow, Anna Maria (Keiser) Schreiber, died May 8, 1801, in her ninetieth year. They had three sons : David, Andrew and Jacob; and three daughters who married respectively, Henry Koontz, George Koontz and Jacob Mill.
DAVID SCHREIBER, or Shriver, as his family spelled the name, eldest son of Andrew and Anna Maria (Keiser) Schreiber, was born at Conewago, York county, six miles south of Hanover, March 30, 1735. The exigencies and pri- vations of life on the frontier of civilization prevented him from acquiring much in the way of an education in his boyhood. He assisted his father in the tilling of the soil and the conduct of other branches of business. Possessed of more than ordinary mechanical ingenuity, he acquired, without the formality of an apprenticeship, a knowledge of a number of mechanical trades, and was beside a farmer, a carpenter, "joiner" (cabinet-maker) miller, cooper, black- smith, silversmith, comb-maker, and millwright, and later a surveyor. On com- ing of age he attracted the attention of one, Andrew Steiger, a prominent bus- iness man of Baltimore, Maryland, and was engaged by him to conduct a branch country store not far from his father's residence. Realizing the disad- vantages of his want of an education, he diligently applied himself to the study of such books as he could obtain, during his leisure hours, and during the five years he was employed in the store acquired much useful knowledge, in- cluding the art of surveying.
While attending a fair at Lancaster he met Rebecca Ferree, who was at- tending school there, and later accompanied her to the home of her parents, Abraham and Elizabeth (Elting) Ferree, in the Pequea Valley, and subse- quently, May 8, 1761, married her. On his marriage, David Shriver settled
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on a tract of land purchased for him by his father at Little Pipe Creek, Freder- ick county, Maryland, where he cleared the land for cultivation, and erected a mill. He became active and prominent in the affairs of the new settlement, filling many honorable positions, and was frequently called upon to arbitrate disputes among his neighbors. He was active in promoting the establishment of schools, and in all matters tending to advance the interests of the com- munity. At the outbreak of the Revolution he was a staunch supporter of the cause of independence and liberty, and was a member of the Committee of Safety ; a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of Maryland in 1776, and a member of one or the other branches of the State Legislature for thirty years. What was especially rare with one of his nationality, David Shriver was, in a sense, a slave-holder; he inherited through his wife a negro girl, whose progeny at the time of his death, in 1826, numbered about thirty, all of whom had remained with him and his family, and all of whom were given their freedom by the terms of his will.
David Shriver died January 29, 1826, in his ninety-first year, and was bur- ied in the family burying ground at Little Pipe Creek. The eldest of his father's family, he survived them all. His wife died November 24, 1812, in the seventy-first year of her age and the forty-third of her marriage. She was a remarkable woman of affairs, managing her husband's affairs during his fre- quent absences from home on public service. A notice of David Shriver, pub- lished at the time of his death, says of him in part as follows:
"David Shriver departed this life at his residence, Little Pipe Creek, Maryland, (Janu- ary 29, 1826) in the gist year of his age. He closed his useful and honorable life in peace with all men and in the cheery hope of blissful immortality. His latter end was the calmness of repose, tranquil and serene.
"Born at a period when the blessings of education were restricted, almost exclusively, to the sons of the affluent, it was the lot of Mr. Shriver, whose parents were humble, to be left to his own unaided power in the acquisition of knowledge. His youth was spent in a sparsely settled country, where the voice of civilized man rarely gladdened the ear. Taught by his parents the bare elements of language; debarred by his situation the bland influences of society, cut off almost entirely from every avenue of knowledge, the attainments of Mr. Shriver in the mechanical arts, in the pure science of mathematics, and in general informa- tion, must be considered remarkable.
"About 60 years since he came to this state and procured a patent for the land which he occupied thereafter till his death, and where his grave is now seen. When the troublous period of the Revolution arrived, he was of freedom's active partisans, and was of suffi- cient consequence in the country to be elected a member of the Convention which adopted and established the Declaration of Rights, and the constitution of the State. More than once he was admonished by imposing warning's that 'King George's Men' had set a price upon his head, and that his property was marked for confiscation, and his family doomed to suffer in Consequence. But amid all the vicissitudes of events his course was unwavering and he continued his exertions as one of the Committee of Safety, until all danger was past.
"For more than thirty successive years, (with but one interruption which his private duties rendered indispensable) he served his fellow citizens in the General Assembly as a delegate from the County, and afterwards in the Senate; until a stroke of palsy, some years since, rendered it necessary that he should vacate his seat.
"As a public character, Mr. Shriver was respected for his faithfulness to his duty, and his discriminating judgment. * * * In private life he was plain and unostentatious. He was highly esteemed by the people of the neighborhood in which he dwelt for his practical friendship, manifested in his intercourse with them. * * *
"He has arranged by his will for the liberation of all his slaves, about thirty in number, the more advanced in age being provided for".
Rebecca (Ferree) Shriver, wife of David Shriver, was of French Hugue- not descent. The name originally La Fierere has been spelled by the Ameri- can descendants as Veree, Ferree. Hugh LaFierere, was of the company of
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French Huguenots known as "Walloons" who emigrated to New York about 1660, and settled near Kingston, Ulster county, New York. He was likewise one of the "Twelve Patentees" under the leadership of Louis DuBois, who organized the settlement at New Palz, on the Hudson opposite Poughkeepsie, 1663. Louis DuBois, the great-great-grandfather of Rebecca (Ferree) Shriver, was born near Lyons, France, in 1630, married there Catharine Blancon. Hav- ing become a convert to Protestantism, he was forced to flee with his family from France, and in 1658, with his wife and eldest son Abraham, he located at Mannheim, then the capital of the Electorate Palatinate, where he resided for two years, and where another son, Isaac, was born. In 1660 he joined with a number of Huguenots and they emigrated to New York and settled at King- ston as before stated. Louis DuBois was the first elder of New Palz Church. and also its clerk, the earlier records of the church being entirely in his hand- writing. He, however, returned to Kingston in 1686, and died there in 1696.
Abraham DuBois, eldest son of Louis and Catharine (Blancon) DuBois, born near Lyons, France, in 1656, died at New Palz, New York, October 7, 1731. He married Margaret DeYou (Deyou) and had seven children, the youngest of whom, married Philip Ferree, who, according to data collected and published by the Shriver family, was a son of John LaFierere, generally known as Ferree, a silk weaver in France, who on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, fled with his family to Strasburg, Germany, where they re- sided for two years and then removed to Landau, a walled town on Lake Con- stance, on the borders of Switzerland, where John Ferree died, about 1704. He had married Mary Warrenbuer, who after his death set out for London with her six children, Daniel, Philip, John, Catharine, Mary and Jane, with a view of emigrating to America, where some of hers and husband's compatriots, and doubtless relatives, had long since located. Having heard of William Penn and his Colony in Pennsylvania, she sought out Penn, then residing in Ken- sington, and received from him encouragement and assistance to transport her- self and her family to Pennsylvania. After remaining in London for six months she sailed with her family to New York. The family settled among the other Huguenots at a place called Esopus, near Kingston, and remained there two years. Before leaving London Queen Anne presented them with many implements for tilling the soil.
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