USA > Pennsylvania > Colonial and revolutionary families of Pennsylvania; genealogical and personal memoirs, Vol. III > Part 7
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Henry Howard and Elizabeth Morris (Ogden) Ellison had one child, Henry Howard Ellison, Jr., born in Philadelphia, December 3, 1877, a member of the firm of John B. Ellison's Sons. Henry Howard Ellison married, April 16, 1907, Elizabeth Blakistone Foard, of Baltimore, daughter of Joseph R. and Jennie Blakistone. Issue: Elizabeth Foard, and Sarah Morris.
Henry Howard and Mary Elizabeth (McCarty) Ellison had three children : Evelyn Ellison, born June 1, 1885; William P. Ellison, born November 24, 1886, died June II, 1907; Edith Rodman Ellison, born August 14, 1895.
THOMAS LEAMING
THOMAS LEAMING, now one of the leading practitioners at the Philadelphia bar, comes of a family that has been seated on American soil for two hundred and thirty-eight years. The family had, for an indefinite period, been landed proprietors in Yorkshire, England, at the Manor of Leamyeng.
CHRISTOPHER LEAMING, or Leamyeng, founder of the family in America, left England when a youth, in or about the year 1670, accompanied by a brother Jer- emiah, in search of a home in the new world west of the Atlantic. On the voy- age Jeremiah sickened and died, and Christopher landed on the New England coast, at or near Boston, Massachusetts. This much and some further account of the family and its migrations in America, we gather from a quaint narrative written by one of the family in 1757. According to this narrative the name was originally spelled Leamyeng. The narrator, Aaron Leaming, of Cape May county, New Jersey, a grandson of Christopher Leaming, the immigrant, writes thus on this subject : referring to a period after the death of Christopher Leam- ing :
"On the introduction of this House of Orphans into the world they took the privilege to alter the spelling of their Sirname. Thomas wrote the name Leamyng and Aaron, who was my father, called himself Leaming and all the rest of the fraternity as far as I could be informed followed his Example and wrote their names Leaming. I have heard my father say that Thomas preferred the y in order that if any estate should descend to them in England, he being the oldest son, might claim it in the proper name of the Family. Tho' in that case there was a defection of the letter e.
"The authority I have for writing my Grandfather's name Leamyeng is a Book entitled The Young Clerk's Guide, which was his property in 1690 and which I have been told he brought with him to Cape May but after his death passed to his son Aaron and in the Divi- sion of My Father's Books, June 29, 1747, fell to me. In the Frontispeace of this Book and the Blank Page facing the Same his name is wrote several times by several hands according to that Orthography; but which is his hand writing I cannot undertake to Say, tho my Father once told me that one of them was".
Christopher Leamyeng married, about 1573, Esther, daughter of Thomas Bur- nett, a Scotch settler at Sag Harbor, near East Hampton, Long Island, and, here we quote again from the narrative of Aaron Leaming :
"Her father gave her a tract of land at Sag, near East Hampton, which to this time I am informed goes by the name of Leaming's Lot, or Leaming's Corner. There he lived till about the year 1691 and then, leaving his Family at Long Island, he came himself to Cape May which was at that time a new Country, beginning to settle very fast and Seeming to promise good advantages to the Adventurers. He went a whaling in the proper seasons, and at other times worked at the Coopers trade which was his occupation and good at that time by reason of the great Number of Whales caught in those days made the demand and pay for casks certain".
Whaling at that time in the Delaware Bay was extensively engaged in by numerous persons residing on both sides of the Delaware, and was the chief en- terprise of dwellers about the Capes of the Delaware.
Those interested in the whaling business were principally from New England, and the bayside district first settled by them was known as "New England Town"
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or New England township, through which flows New England Creek into Dela- ware Bay well down toward the Cape.
The Leamings were amongst the largest of land owners in New Jersey, their possessions extending from Delaware Bay to the Atlantic. Some of this land re- mained in the family for six generations, notably Leaming's Beach, otherwise known as the "Seven-mile Beach," which within the life time of the present gen- eration passed out of the family and upon which are now located several flour- ishing watering places. Christopher Leamyeng took up for the purpose of build- ing a homestead, a tract of two hundred and four acres of land which was sur- veyed to him in Cape May county, April 4, 1696, but he died soon after this date at the house of Shamgar Hand, one of the most prominent settlers of that locali- ty. The date of his death is given by his son Thomas Leamyng, as May 3, 1696, while Aaron Leaming, in his narrative above quoted, says that his grandfather "died of a pleurisie at Cape May about the year 1696 or 1697, aged - years, as the reputation is. But indeed I think the time of his birth, marriage and death are uncertain. He made the coffin of my Grandfather Parsons who died Janu- ary 1693-4". This narrative of Aaron Leaming, written in 1757, gives the follow- ing account of the town on the shore of Delaware Bay, in New England township, where the whalers lived, and the place of burial of his grandfather :
"Christopher Leamyeng's remains were interred at a place called Town Bank which Town was Scituate next above New England Town Creek and then contained about 13 houses but on failure of the Whale Fishery in Delaware Bay, it dwindled into common farm land and the Graveyard is on the plantation now owned by Ebenezer Newton. At the first settlement of this Country the chief whaling was in Delaware Bay and that occasioned the Town to be built there. But there has not been one house in town since my remembrance. "In 1734 I saw the Graves, Samuel Eldredge shewed them to me. They were then about 50 rods from the Bay and the Sand was blown up to them. The Town was between them and the water. There was then some signs of the ruin of the houses".
Esther (Burnett) Leamyeng, the widow of Christopher Leamyeng, survived her husband and died at the residence of her brother-in-law, Enoch Fithian, at Sag Harbor, Long Island, near East Hampton, Suffolk county, New York, No- vember 5, 1714.
Christopher and Esther (Burnett) Leamyeng had seven children, viz:
Thomas Leamyng, b. at Sag Harbor, L. I., July 9, 1674, d. at Cape May, N. J., Dec. 21, 1723; m. Hannah Whilldin, and was the ancestor of the Leaming family of Phila., of whom presently.
Jane Leaming, m. Abraham Bradley ;
Hannah Leaming, m. James White;
Christopher Leaming, Jr., participated when a youth in an expedition against the French in Canada, but left the army at Albany, N. Y., and after many hardships reached Amboy; in 1702 joined a privateering expedition and was lost at sea.
Aaron Leaming, b. Oct. 12, 1687, of whom presently ;
Jeremiah Leaming, m. July 4, 1716, Abigail, dau. of Edward and Sarah (Hall) Turner, and settled in Connecticut; they had nine children, among whom was,
Rev. Jeremiah Leaming, bap. May 12, 1717, d. at New Haven, Conn., Sept. 15, 1804; graduated at Yale College, 1745, and became an eminent clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Conn. and R. I .; was offered the appointment as the first Bishop in America, at the creation of the bishopric in 1783, but declined it on account of his advanced age; received honorary degree of D. D. from Columbia College, in 1789. He was bur. in the old churchyard at New Haven where a monument with appropriate inscription is erected to his memory. Another son of Jeremiah and Abigail (Turner) Leaming was Matthias Leaming, who was the ancestor of Delphine Marie Pumpelly, of Albany, N. Y., who became the wife of Gen. John Meredith Read, of Phila., who was U. S. Minister to Greece, etc., and prominent in military and diplomatic circles.
Elizabeth Leaming, married Stephen Stone.
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Most of the daughters of Christopher and Esther (Burnett) Leamyeng, re- mained in New England, the present writer has no account of them or their descendants.
AARON LEAMING, third son of Christopher and Esther (Burnett) Leamyeng, was born at Sag Harbor, Long Island, October 12, 1687. His father died before the boy had completed his ninth year, and the widowed mother and her younger children continued to reside at Sag Harbor. In accordance with the custom of that time Aaron was bound an apprentice to a trade, though of what handicraft we are not informed. Having little liking for either the trade or his master, he ran away and followed his elder brother to South Jersey, where he eventually became one of the most prominent public officials of the province in his day. According to the narrative of his son, Aaron Leaming, Jr., before quoted, first located for a time in Salem county, apparently spending some time in the town of Salem, if the narrative of his son, Aaron Leaming, can be relied upon, though the reference to Sarah Hall, in the following quoted extract from his narrative would indicate that she was then a widow, as from Thomas Leaming's record we have: "And in 1703 I went to Cohansie and fetched brother Aaron;" she was then the wife of William Hall, a prominent merchant of Salem, who died in the winter of 1713-14, and the narrative may be colored by the narrator's own recollection of Sarah Hall, her legal lore and her library. The reference to Sarah Hall, in the narrative is as follows:
"Here he became acquainted with Sarah Hall, a Quaker Lady, Mother of Clement Hall. She herself was an eminent Lawyer for that time; had a Large Collection of Books and very rich and took delight in my father on account of his sprightly wit and his fondness for the Law which he read in her Library, tho' a boy and very small of his age (for he was a little man) and could not write for the Presbyterian Master in New England had taken no other care of his education than to send him to meeting, cramp his mind with predestination and all the horrors of Presbyterianism, and stunt him with work.
"It was there I suppose that he commenced Quaker; for the family before this time I understand had been Presbyterian. Thomas Leamying of Cape May was a Quaker and I am told he and his wife were once Zealous professors. I have no reason to believe that either of them Would since my remembrance have suffered Martyrdom for the tenets of the-" (sect was probably the word with which the sentence closed, the manuscript here being illegible).
Aaron Leaming joined his elder brother, Thomas Leamyng, in Cape May county while yet a youth of sixteen years, and married there, October 12, 1714, Lydia (Parsons) Shaw, widow of William Shaw, and daughter of John Par- sons, formerly of East Hampton, Long Island, from whence he had removed to Cape May. On October 2, 1721, Aaron Leaming was commissioned from New York to administer civil and military oaths, and two years later became clerk of Cape May county, a position for which he received a commission from Fort George, dated August 6, 1727, though he had then been the incumbent of the of- fice for four years. He was elected to the New Jersey Assembly in 1727 and was successively re-elected to that body until 1744, retiring in July of that year, after seventeen years active and prominent service, being recognized from the first year of his service as one of the ablest members, and constantly employed on important committees and commissions of the House, as clearly shown by minutes of Provincial Council and other official records. He continued his law studies, it would seem after reaching adult age, as he was admitted to practice in the courts of Cape May county. During the last three years of his service
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in the Assembly, his only colleague from Cape May county was his son of the same name, Aaron Leaming, Jr., the narrator above quoted. The father died, as before stated, in Philadelphia, June 26, 1746, and was buried in the churchyard at Christ Church, where his tombstone is still to be seen. His wife, Lydia (Parsons) (Shaw) Leaming, was born at East Hampton, Long Island, April 10, 1680, died in Cape May county, New Jersey, October 2, 1762.
Aaron and Lydia (Parsons) (Shaw) Leaming had four children: Aaron, the author of the family memoirs so frequently quoted; Jeremiah; Matthias, and Elizabeth, who married her cousin, Thomas Leaming, second, hereafter mentioned, and is the ancestress of the Philadelphia family of Leaming.
Aaron Leaming, eldest son of Aaron and Lydia Leaming, born in Cape May county, New Jersey, July 6, 1715, became his father's colleague in the Pro- vincial Assembly in 1740, served until 1743, was re-elected in 1743, and served his county and state in that body with eminent ability until the Provincial gov- ernment was assumed by the Committee of Safety, in 1775, and then became chairman of the Committee of Safety, and rendered valuable service in the struggle for independence until his death, August 28, 1780. He was buried two miles north of Cape May Court House in the old Leaming graveyard, and upon his monument, since removed with his remains to the Baptist Cemetery in the same village, is the inscription :
"In Memory of Aaron Leaming, Esq. who represented this county in Assembly 30 years. Died Aug. 28th. 1780, aged 66 years Imo. II days.
Beneath this stone, here lies a name That once had titles, honors, wealth and fame; How loved, how honored, now avails thee not, To whom related or by whom forgot ; A heap of dust alone remains of thee, Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be."
A local historian, Dr. Maurice Beasely, says of him:
"He was one of the most prominent and influential men the county ever produced. The family lost nothing in caste through him. He was a heavy land operator, and a member of the Legislature for thirty years. From the manuscript he left behind him, which is quite voluminous, it would appear that he was a man of great industry and much natural good sense, well educated for the times, and withal a little tinged with aristocracy; a trait of character not unexceptionable under royal prerogative. No man ever received greater honors from the county, and none, perhaps, better deserved them. The Legislature selected him and Jacob Spicer of our county, to compile the laws of the State, known as, "Leaming's Collection" a trust they executed to the satisfaction of the State and the people."
He married, February 13, 1738, Mary Foreman, of Cape May county, and had several children; his son, Jonathan Leaming, was a member of New Jer- sey Assembly, 1779-80; another son, Parsons Leaming, was a member of As- sembly, 1797-98, and 1801-03; and among other descendants who rendered service to their State were: Furman Leaming, a member of the Council of State, 1814-15; Jeremiah Leaming, a member of the Assembly, 1830-34, and of the Council, 1834-36; Jonathan F. Leaming, M. D., D. D. S., a member of the Assembly in 1861, a member of the State Senate in 1862-64, and again in 1877-79; Richard Leaming, a member of the Assembly 1871-73, and of the State Senate, 1874-76; and Walter S. Leaming, D. D. S., a member of the As- sembly, 1888, and of the State Senate, 1889-91. In fact there was probably no
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American family of which so many of its members were for such a length of time, or in such great numbers, identified with the legislative affairs of any of the colonies or states, and prominent in other public affairs.
Thomas Leamyng, (as his nephew gives the spelling of the name) the eldest son of the emigrant, was, however, the direct male ancestor of the branch of the family with which this sketch is principally concerned, though through the marriage of his son with the daughter of Aaron Leaming, Sr., above mentioned, the Philadelphia family is descended from both the New Jersey brothers.
Thomas Leamyng, like his nephew, Aaron Leaming, Jr., left a narrative ac- count of himself and his family still to be seen at the county clerk's office at Cape May Court House, from which we will quote as to material points in the history of the family, omitting such portions as refer to daily domestic occur- rences and have no interest to the present reader. His account of his coming to Cape May county and the death of his father is as follows :
"In July, the ninth day, 1674, I was born in Southampton on Long Island. When I was 18 years old I came to Cape May, and that winter I had a Sore fit of the Feaver and Flux. The next Summer I went to Philadelphia with my father and there my Father was Lame with a withered hand, which held him till the day of his Death. The Winter following I went a Whaling, And we got 18 whales 5 of them drove to the Horekills and we went there to cut them and staid a month, and the first day of May we came home to Cape May and my Father was very sick and on the third day of May 1696 he departed this life at the house of Shamgar Hand".
The narrator then tells of his return to the residence of his mother and broth- ers and sisters at Sag Harbor, Long Island, of his experiences during the next two years and his return to Cape May in 1698, he having purchased the tract of two hundred and four acres located by his father shortly before his decease. The subsequent events, his marriage in 1701; the birth of his children, his "fetching" of "Brother Aaron from Cohansie" in 1703; his zealous devotion to the principles of Friends in 1705, and the consequent taking of "a horse worth seven pounds because I could not train;" (a rare instance of New England intolerance, transported to the much more tolerant Province of New Jersey, by the New England settlers about the Cape) ; the building of his house in 1706; his visit to Long Island in June, 1708, and the decease of his mother, November 5, 1714, "at East Hampton on Long Island, at Enoch Fithian's house" are all faithfully narrated.
He inherited the homestead at Long Island on the death of his mother, and his narrative further records his visit to East Hampton in 1715, when he dis- posed of this property for one hundred and twenty pounds, and an account of his visit, on this occasion to his brother Jeremiah and his sisters in New England. He died December 31, 1723, and his narrative concludes a year earlier, as fol- lows : "And in August the 12, 1720, I made Bricks for my house and was taken very Sick, held up and down till the middle of May following and then taken down So bad that every one thought I should have died for about Two Weeks, then got about house again but remained sick until the last of Decem- ber, 1722."
He was commissioned one of his Majesty's justices of the peace, and of the several courts of Cape May county, March 17, 1713; on January 25, 1716, was specially commissioned judge of the Court of Common Pleas; recommissioned August 3, 1721, and doubtless held that position until his death in 1723. He was
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among the most prominent citizens of South Jersey and a man of wide influence in all that section.
He married, June 18, 1701, Hannah Whilldin, "being then in her 18th year", he says in his narrative. She was a daughter of Joseph Whilldin, then of Cape May county, but formerly of New England, by his wife, Hannah Gorham, daugh- ter of John Gorham, a noted soldier in King Philip's war, whose wife was a daughter of John Howland, and his wife, Elizabeth Tilly, both passengers on the "Mayflower", with the Pilgrim Fathers in 1620. After the death of Thomas Leamyng, Hannah (Whilldin) Leamyng, his widow became the second wife of Philip Syng, of Philadelphia, the ancestor of many prominent Philadelphians of the past, and a number of other names still residing in that city. She died in this city in 1728.
The children of Thomas and Hannah (Whilldin) Leamyng were:
Esther Leaming, b. July 3, 1702; Mercy Leaming, b. Sept. 10, 1704;
Jane Leaming, b. Oct. 15, 1706; Phebe Leaming, b. Nov. 4, 1708;
Priscilla Leaming, b. June 15, 1710;
Christopher Leamyeng, who continued the old spelling of the name, b. April 19, 1712, m. Sarah Spicer ;
THOMAS LEAMING, b. 1714.
THOMAS LEAMING, second, the youngest child of Thomas and Hannah Whill- din Leamyng, born at Cape May, New Jersey, in the year 1714, was like his father and uncle prominent in public affairs, being only excelled in prominence and influence in Provincial and county affairs by his cousin and brother-in-law, Aaron Leaming, Jr., the narrator above referred to. Thomas Leaming was commissioned a justice of the peace for Cape May county, together with his cousin, Jeremiah Leaming, in 1753, they both being named for that position to the Provincial Council and approved by them, June 7, 1753; and both were re- commissioned December 6, 1762; and Thomas was named as one of the judges of the Courts of the County of Cape May, August 21, 1767, and continued to fill that office until the opening of the Revolutionary struggle. He was one of the three magistrates who issued the warrant in 1770 for and before whom John Hatton, the notorious collector of His Majesty's Customs, at the ports of Salem and Cohansey was brought. The misrepresentations of this violent and corrupt collector to the Lords Commissioners of Trade led to a voluminous cor- respondence between the commissioners and Governor William Franklin, who upheld the judges in the strongest terms.
Thomas Leaming married, by New Jersey License dated April 25, 1740, his cousin, Elizabeth Leaming, daughter of Aaron and Lydia (Parsons) (Shaw) Leaming, before mentioned. She was born September II, 1721, died January 26, 1769. They had two children: Thomas; Lydia, who married Jeremiah Eld- redge, of Cape May, by license dated September 8, 1775.
THOMAS LEAMING, JR., son of Thomas and Elizabeth Leaming, was born at Cape May, New Jersey, August 21, 1748, old style, corresponding to September I, 1748, new style. He studied law, and the certificate of his admission to the New Jersey bar, in 1772, is in the possession of his great-grandson, Thomas Leaming, Esq., of Philadelphia, the subject of this sketch. He removed to Philadelphia in 1778, and was admitted to the bar there, July 17, 1779.
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The Leaming family of Cape May were among the wealthiest people of South Jersey, and held a high and commanding position of influence in the Province, and casting their lot on the side of the Colonies in the earliest part of the strug- gle against measures of the British ministry that led up to the War for Inde- pendence, displayed great energy and zeal in the preparation for active armed resistance to these oppressive measures, contributing largely towards the equip- ment of troops and helping to mould public opinion in favor of the patriot cause in their locality. Thomas Leaming, Jr., was one of the leaders in the equipment and organization of a battalion of troops composed of residents of Cape May, which was placed at the disposal of the state authorities, of which Colonel John Macket was placed in command, and Thomas Leaming, Jr., was named as adju- tant. A large part of the fund required for their equipment was furnished by Thomas Leaming. The Journal of Continental Congress shows that he applied and agreed to pay for the powder for the use of the local militia, as on April 17, 1776, it was
"Resolved, That the Secret Committee be directed to supply Mr. Thomas Leaming with 200 pounds of powder for the militia at Cape May, he paying for the same."
Thomas Leaming, Jr., was selected as one of the five delegates from Cape May county to the Provincial Congress which convened at Burlington, June 10, 1776, and held subsequent sessions at Trenton and New Brunswick, and was one of the majority of that conference who on July 2, 1776, renounced all allegiance to the crown of Great Britain, and agreed upon a constitution for the state of New Jersey. Belonging as he did to the wealthy and aristocratic class, and more- over to a family long in commission under the crown, it was highly commenda- ble that he permitted his high sense of justice and patriotism to carry him into the forefront of the fight, where, like all the early patriots, he risked his life and wealth in the precarious cause of the Colonies, when so many similarly sit- uated pleaded their oath and long allegiance to the authority of the crown as an excuse to preserve their wealth from confiscation.
Having become a member of the Philadelphia Troop of Light Horse (the historic First Troop, Philadelphia Cavalry of to-day) in October, 1775, and probably having also decided to make Philadelphia the field of his professional work, Thomas Leaming resigned his commission as adjutant of the militia bat- talion of Cape May county, June 18, 1776, and went into the field with the Troop, participating with it in the battles of Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine and Germantown, and in the subsequent intermittent service of the Troop, and remained a member of the organization until his death, having been placed on the honorary roll, September 10, 1787. The sword which he carried during his service in the Troop, a Scotch claybeg, is a prized possession of his great-grand- son, Thomas Leaming, the subject of this sketch, and hangs above the fireplace in the library of his residence, 115 South Twenty-first Street, Philadelphia.
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