USA > Pennsylvania > Colonial and revolutionary families of Pennsylvania; genealogical and personal memoirs, Volume II > Part 63
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After the close of the war Captain Peter Slater married Zilpah Chapin, and
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took up his residence in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he died, October 13, 1831. He was commissioned captain of the Worcester artillery company by Governor Caleb Strong, May 3, 1803. In the Worcester Palladium of October, 1831, was published the following obituary notice of Captain Slater :
"In this town on the 13 inst. Captain Peter Slater died in the 72d year of his age. Captain Slater was one of those persons who disguised themselves and threw the tea overboard in Boston harbor, in December 1773. He was then but a boy, an apprentice to a rope maker in Boston. He attended the meeting of the citizens of Boston, at the Old South Church, in the afternoon, where the question was agitated relative to the landing of the tea, and some communications made to Roche, the consignee of the cargoes. His master, apprehensive that something would take place, relative to the cargoes of tea then in the harbor, took Peter home and shut him up in his chamber .. He escaped by the window, went to a blacksmith shop where he found a man disguised, who told him to tie a handkerchief round his frock, to black his face with charcoal and follow him. The company soon increased to about seventy persons. Captain Slater went on board the brig with five others; two of them brought the tea chests upon deck, two broke open the chests and threw them overboard and Captain Slater with one other stood with poles to push them under water. Not a word was exchanged between the parties from the time that they left Griffin's Wharf, till the cargo was emptied into the harbor, and they returned to the wharf and dispersed. This is the account of that memorable event as given by Captain Slater. He afterwards served five years as a soldier in the Revolution. He was a warm patriot, a brave soldier, a valuable citizen, and an honest man. His funeral will be attended this day at half-past two o'clock, P. M. at the Meeting House of the Second Parish."
William H. and Elizabeth (Slater ) Howard had ten children, several of whom died young. Children who married and reared families: George Chapin ; Dan- iel Waldo; John ; Samuel Blake; Mary Amanda.
DANIEL WALDO HOWARD, fifth child and third son of William H. and Eliza- beth (Slater) Howard, born July 20, 1829, in the city of Worcester, Massachu- setts, came to the vicinity of Philadelphia with his parents when a child. He received the major part of his education at the Central High School of Philadel- phia, and for thirty-five years, 1851-86, was a teacher and professor of history in that institution. He has always taken a deep interest in the cause of popular education and is an extensive writer on educational and other subjects. Mr. Howard was the founder of the Historical Society of Chester county, is a member of Philadelphia Chapter, Pennsylvania Society Sons of Revolution, and a member of the Alumni Association of the Central High School, and on March 9, 1909, was elected by the Board of Education, Professor Emeritus of History. In religion he is a Unitarian, and worships at Dr. Furniss' church, of which he is a member. He is a member of Mead Post, No. I, Grand Army of the Republic, having served in two successive years, 1862-63, in emergency regiments to repel invasion in Pennsylvania. He was appointed Valley Forge Commissioner by Governor Pattison, in June, 1893.
Daniel W. Howard married, February 15, 1881, Fannie Lousia, daughter of William and Annie (Ruggles) Mixter. Mrs. Howard died June 15, 1903. They had issue: William Mixter, born November 27, 1881; Cary, born July 10, 1883, died September 6, 1890; Margaret Stanley, born July 24, 1886, died May II, 1890; Dorothy Vernon, born April 29, 1889.
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H. S. PRENTISS NICHOLS
HENRY SARGENT PRENTISS NICHOLS, EsQ., of the Philadelphia bar, a native of Columbia, Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, is of New England ancestry on the paternal side, his grandfather, Dr. Joseph Nichols, an eminent physician, being a native of New Hampshire, and his father, Dr. Joseph Darwin Nichols, who died in 1874, was the proprietor of an academy at Columbia, Lancaster county.
THOMAS DARROCH, the maternal great-great-great-grandfather of H. S. Pren- tiss Nichols, was a native of Londonderry, Ireland, and about 1725, with his wife Mary and several children, emigrated to Pennsylvania and settled in Hors- ham township, Philadelphia (now Montgomery) county, just over the line of Warrington township, Bucks county, forming part of the colony of Ulster Scots who settled in the Neshaminy Valley, in the townships of Warrington and War- wick, Bucks county, and adjoining parts of Philadelphia, and founded in their midst, in 1726, Neshaminy Presbyterian Church of Warwick, which was fol- lowed a few years later by the founding of the historic Log College, nearby, from which sprang the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University, and where were educated some of the most prominent Presbyterian divines of Pennsylvania, including the first president of the College of New Jersey, and its leading founders. George Whitefield entered in his journal, November, 1739, the following description of this ancient temple of learning :
"It is a log house about twenty feet long and near as many broad; and to me it seemed to resemble the school of the old prophets, for their habitations were mean; and that they sought not great things for themselves is plain from those passages of Scripture wherein we are told that each of them took a beam to build them a house, and that at the feast of the sons of the prophets one of them put on the pot whilst the others went to fetch some herbs out of the field. All that we can say of most of our universities is, that they are glorious without. From this despised place seven or eight worthy ministers of Jesus have lately been sent forth; more are ready to be sent, and the foundation is now laying for the instruction of many others".
Among the founders and supporters of this historic institution and the ad- joining historic church, were several of the lineal ancestors of the subject of this sketch.
After a residence of more than a decade in this section, Thomas Darrah, or Darroch, as the name was originally spelled, purchased, in 1740, a tract of five hundred acres of land on the "Road to the Great Swamp" in what later became Bedminster township, in another little colony of Ulster Scots, including the Griers, Armstrongs, Fergusons, Caldwells, Kennedys and others whose descend- ants, now widely scattered over the United States, have achieved high eminence in the various walks of life. Here he was one of the founders of another his- toric church, the Deep Run Presbyterian Church, erected on land adjoining the Darroch plantation, and in the little churchyard adjoining he and many of his descendants lie buried. Beside the church was soon erected the ancient school house, ever the adjunct of the church with the progressive disciples of John Knox, where the Darrah boys received their early education.
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Thomas Darroch died on his Bedminster plantation in March, 1750, having previously conveyed to his two elder sons, Thomas and Robert, about one-half thereof, and devising the remainder to his three younger sons, William, Henry and James. Besides these five sons, Thomas and Mary Darroch had three daugh- ters, Agnes, who married John Davis; Esther, who married George Scott ; and Susanna. All five of the sons were members of the Associators of 1775, Thomas, Robert, William and James, in Captain, later Colonel Robinson's Bed- minster company, in the Third Battalion, of which William was first lieuten- ant, and Henry in the New Britain Company. Robert was the representative of his township in the Bucks County Committee of Safety, and an active patriot during the Revolutionary struggle. All have left descendants that have taken more or less prominent part in public affairs ; among the descendants of Wil- liam were the late Hon. William D. Kelly, long a member of Congress from Philadelphia, and known as the "Father of the House"; Commodore Thomp- son Darrah Shaw, of the United States Navy, and General Samuel Smith, com- mander of Fort McHenry, Baltimore, in the War of 1812.
CAPTAIN HENRY DARRAH, fourth son of Thomas and Mary Darroch, was probably born in Horsham township, Philadelphia county, Pennsylvania, soon after the settlement of the family there, as he was still a minor at the deatlı of his father in 1750, though apparently nearly of age. His parents removing to Bedminster township in 1740, he was reared and educated in that primitive community. He is said to have been a fine horseman and fond of outdoor sports. Tradition relates that when he went courting the handsome daughter of Henry Jamison, one of the large landholders and prominent men in the Scotch-Irish settlement of Warwick, her father seriously objected to the suit of the dashing young man because he was too fond of fast horses, and not steady enough to win a living from the tilling of the soil, practically the only means of livelihood in the primitive community ; however the young couple settled the mat- ter for themselves by his taking her up behind him on one of his fleet saddle horses, on August 13, 1760, and outdistancing the irate father in a race to the parson's house where they were married. He inherited one-third interest in the remaining part of his father's plantation (which was found to contain nearly eight hundred acres) after the conveyance of about one hundred and ninety acres each to his elder brothers, and one hundred and eighty-five acres of this remainder was set apart to him on which he resided until about 1767, when he purchased two hundred and seven acres of land on the Neshaminy in New Bri- tain township, along the Warrington line, formerly the property of his brother- in-law, John Davis. Here he took up his residence and resided until 1773, when he purchased a larger tract further north in the same township, on which he re- sided until his death in 1782.
Like most of his nationality, Henry Darrah, was an ardent supporter of the cause of the Colonies at the inception of the Revolutionary struggle. He was a member of the Associated Company of New Britain, August, 1775, and on the organization of the Flying Camp, for service in the national cause, he was ap- pointed by the Bucks County Committee of Safety, July 10, 1776, first lieutenant of Captain William Roberts company, in the Bucks County Battalion of the Fly- ing Camp, and served in the New Jersey and Long Island campaign of 1776. Returning to Bucks county in the autumn of that year, his company was one of
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the few who responded to the call for service in the winter of 1776-77. Cap- tain William Roberts was promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and on May 6, 1777, Lieutenant Darrah was commissioned captain. His company was almost constantly in active service, and in November, 1777, came under the com- mand of Colonel John Lacey, in the active service of the United States in Bucks, Philadelphia and Chester counties. Sometime in the year 1778 it was incorporated in the Militia Battalion of Colonel William Roberts.
HENRY JAMISON, SR,. the grandfather of Ann (Jamison) Darrah, is said to have been a native of Midlothian, Scotland, and removed from there to the prov- ince of Ulster, Ireland, in 1685. He was one of the patriarchs of the Colony of Ulster Scots who settled about the site of Neshaminy Church and the Log Col- lege, in Warwick township, in 1724. He purchased in that year one thousand acres of land partly in Northampton township, but chiefly in Warwick, where he settled. He was one of the founders and first trustees and elders of Neshaminy Church in 1727, and related through the marriage of his sons and daughters to inost of the principal persons and families in the settlement. The name was originally spelled Jemyson, and the Rev. E. O. Jameson, of Boston, the author of "The Jamesons in America" claims that Henry Jemyson was a son of Wil- liam Jemyson, of Leith, Midlothian, who removed with his family to Ireland in 1685. He also states that Henry was accompanied to America by a brother Robert, and that two other brothers, William and John, landed at Boston, Mas- sachusetts, August 4, 1718.
Henry Jemyson, in 1734, conveyed his Bucks county land to his sons and returned to Ireland, where he probably died as we have no further record of him. His son Robert accompanied him to Ireland, and later returned to Bucks county. Henry was accompanied to America by four children, Robert, Henry, Alexander, and Ann, the wife of William Miller, Jr., a son of the donor of the land on which Neshaminy Church was built in 1727. All three of the sons were prominently associated with Neshaminy Church, as trustees, elders, etc., and Robert was a captain in the Colonial service.
HENRY JAMISON, the father of Ann (Jamison) Darrah, was born in the province of Ulster, Ireland, and probably married there, Mary Stewart, whose brother, John Stewart, was associated with him in the purchase of land in War- wick. She was related to a number of other settlers in that section. Henry "Jemison", as he signed the name, became a large landowner and prominent man in the community. He made his will April 18, 1765, in which he refers to his being about to incur "the danger of the seas" and is said to have sailed from Florida soon after. He was never after heard of and his will was proved April 14, 1766.
Henry and Mary (Stewart) Jamison had eight children, four daughters, Isa- bel, wife of Tristram Davis, brother of John who married Captain Darrah's sister Agnes; Jean, the wife of Captain Thomas Craig, a distinguished officer of the Pennsylvania Line in the Revolution; Ann, the wife of Captain Henry Darrah; and Margaret, the wife of William Scott, of Warwick; and four sons, Alexander, William and John, who removed to Western Pennsylvania, and Robert, of Warwick. All were soldiers in the Revolution, John a captain in the Flying Camp, and afterwards of a militia company of which his brother Robert
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was ensign; and Alexander and William members of the Associated Company of Warwick and later of the militia.
In the possession of their descendants is a letter written by Ann Darrah to her husband, Captain Henry Darrah, while he was absent with the patriot army. They had six children, four of whom lived to mature years, two sons, James and William, and two daughters, Ann, who married Hugh Shaw, and Mar- garet, who married William Hewitt.
JAMES DARRAH, eldest son of Captain Henry and Ann (Jamison) Darrah, was born in Bucks county in 1764. He purchased in 1789 one hundred and seventy acres of the homestead tract in New Britain, but in 1794 purchased of his wife's sisters, the Henderson homestead in Warminster, near Hartsville, and settled thereon, and it is still owned and occupied by his descendants of the name. He died there February 17, 1842, at the age of seventy-eight years, and is buried at Neshaminy Church, of which he became one of the trustees in 1795, treasurer in 1812-14, and a collector of pew rents for his quarter in 1807. He married (first) Rachel Henderson, born in Warminster, Bucks county, July 27, 1762, daughter of Robert and Margaret (Archibald) Henderson, of War- minster, both of Scotch-Irish parentage. She died March 17, 1802, and he mar- ried (second) Rebecca McCrea. He had two sons by his first wife, Robert and Henry.
ROBERT DARRAH, eldest son of James and Rachel (Henderson) Darrah, and father of Emily (Darrah) Nichols, was born on the old Captain Darrah home- stead in New Britain township, Bucks county, February 8, 1789, and removed with his parents to the Warminster homestead, long the home of his maternal ancestors, at the age of nine years, and inheriting the latter at the death of his father, spent the remainder of his life there. At the outbreak of the second war with Great Britain, 1812, he enlisted in Captain Joseph Vandyck's company in the forty-eighth Regiment, Volunteer Artillery, of which he was later com- missioned ensign, and saw active service, under Brigadier General Samuel Smith. In possession of the Darrah family are the swords of Captain Henry Darrah, of the Revolution; of his grandson, Ensign Darrah, of the War of 1812-14; and of the latter's son, Lieutenant Robert Henderson Darrah, of the Civil war.
Robert Darrah married, September 4, 1819, Catharine Galt, or Gault, of Lan- caster county, born January 26, 1799, and took up his residence on the Warmins- ter homestead, where he followed farming in connection with the operation of a saw mill on the premises, until 1840, when he erected a fine stone mansion at the east end of the plantation on the Bristol road near Hartsville, where he spent the remainder of his days in retirement. He succeeded his father as a trustee of Neshaminy Presbyterian Church of Warwick, where the family occupied the same pew for over a century. In 1835 he erected a school house on the farm, where the youth of the neighborhood were instructed in the English branches and the rudiments of higher mathematics and the classics by the best instructors.
Robert Darrah died August 5, 1860; his wife Catharine surviving him thirty years, living to the ripe old age of ninety-one years. She was a woman of fine intellectual ability, refinement and education, and was a leader in social reforms, and church and educational work in the community in which she was much loved and respected. She was a daughter of James and Mary (Martin) Gault,
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of Salisbury township, Lancaster county, granddaughter of Thomas and Isabel (Wilson) Gault, great-granddaughter of James Gault, and great-great-grand- daughter of Robert Gault, who was one of the first Scotch-Irish settlers in the Pequea Valley of Lancaster county, being reputed the first white man to settle there permanently.
One of a colony of Ulster Scots, who landed at New Castle in or about the year 1710, Robert Gault, left his family there while he selected a home for them in the wilderness to the northward, or westward. After considerable prospecting he selected a site on the Pequea Creek, in what became in 1729 Salisbury township, Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, the region thereabout be- ing known prior to the organization of Lancaster county, in that year, as "The Pequea Valley", Chester county, a name locally applied to the several town- ships drained by the Pequea, a substantial tributary of the Susquehanna to the present time. Erecting a rude habitation on his plantation, he returned to New Castle and transported his family to their first permanent home in America. A portion of the original tract is still owned and occupied by the family.
ROBERT GALT, or Gault, as the name is variously spelled at that early date, was one of the founders and first trustees and elders of Pequea Presbyterian Church, to which Rev. Adam Boyd was called as the first pastor, July 29, 1724.
JAMES GALT, one of the children of Robert Galt who accompanied him to Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, from the North of Ireland, in 1710, married, in 1720, a Miss Allison. He succeeded to the Salisbury plantation and took up other lands adjoining, which descended to his five sons, Robert, who settled in Chester county ; John and James, who erected mills on the headquarters of Pe- quea Creek, in Salisbury, long known as the Galt Mills ; William and Thomas.
THOMAS GALT, the youngest of the five sons, was a pioneer in Cumberland county, in his youth, but was driven back by the Indians during the "great runa- way" of the early settlers caused by the horrible Indian depredations and out- rages between the years 1753 and 1763. Returning to Lancaster county, Thomas Galt located in the Conestoga Valley, in Earl township.
Both Thomas Galt and his elder brother James were members of Captain Robert Buyer's company, Fifth Battalion, Lancaster County Militia, under the command of Colonel James Crawford, and participated in the "Jersey Cam- paign" of 1776, both their names appearing on a muster roll of the company taken at "Baergen Town Camp" (Bergen county, N. J.), September 4, 1776, certified to by the lieutenant of the company, James Armour, which shows that it was part of the Flying Camp. Both James and Thomas Galt served later as members of the Lancaster county militia, as did James Galt, Jr., son of Thomas, and father of Mrs. Nichols, though the latter appears only in the later years of the Revolution, being even then a youth. Thomas Galt married Isabel Wilson and had two sons, James and Alexander.
James Galt, son of Thomas and Isabel (Wilson) Galt inherited from his uncles, John and James Galt, the old homestead in Salisbury township, Lancas- ter county, and settled thereon at the time of his marriage to Mary, daughter of Alexander and Catharine (Henry) Martin, and spent the remainder of his life there. He became an elder of Pequea Presbyterian Church in 1796. His wife was a granddaughter of Matthew Martin, who came from the north of Ireland and settled at Cedar Grove, Lancaster county, the site of Cedar Grove
Michals
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Presbyterian church. Her maternal ancestors, the Henry family, were very prominent in Lancaster county in both Colonial and Revolutionary periods, some account of them being given elsewhere in these volumes.
James and Mary (Martin) Galt had twelve children, nine of whom lived to mature years, viz : James, John, Thomas, Alexander, Eliza, Catharine (the wife of Robert Darrah) Lydia, Mary and Isabella.
Robert and Catharine (Galt) Darrah had three sons and six daughters. The eldest son, Rev. James Darrah, graduated at Princeton in the class of 1840, studied law and was admitted to the Bucks county bar in 1843, but in the same year entered the Theological Seminary of Yale College, and on September 23, 1846, was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Philadelphia and was for many years employed in missionary work in Virginia and the Western States. He was pastor of churches at St. Louis and West Ely, Missouri, for many years, later locating at Zanesville, Ohio, where he died February 14, 1882. The other two sons were John M. Darrah, still residing near Hartsville, Bucks county, and Robert Henderson Darrah, who recently died on the homestead. The daugh- ters were, Rachel H. and Rebecca, both of whom were successively wives of Rev. Douglass Kellog Turner, long pastor of Neshaminy Church, and the author of a number of historical works, among them a History of Neshaminy Church; Eliza M., the wife of Dr. Freeland, of Chester county; Emily, the wife of Dr. Joseph D. Nichols; Mary A., who died unmarried in 1857 at the age of twenty- nine years; and Katharine, wife of Theodore R. Graham.
EMILY (DARRAH) NICHOLS returned to Bucks county with her two sons, when the younger, Henry S. P. Nichols, was a child, and resided with her mother in the stone mansion on the Bristol Road, at Hartsville, before mentioned, now the property and summer home of Mr. Nichols. She died in 1898.
HENRY SARGENT PRENTISS NICHOLS, son of Dr. Joseph D. and Emily (Dar- rah) Nichols, was born at Columbia, Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, November 2, 1858. He received his elementary education under the care of his mother. In 1872 he came to Philadelphia to prepare for college, making his home with his mother and grandmother at Hartsville, Bucks county. He entered the college de- partment of the University of Pennsylvania in 1875, and graduated in the class of 1879. He studied law in the city of Philadelphia and was admitted to the bar of that city in 1881, and later to the bar of Bucks county, and has since prac- ticed his profession in Philadelphia, now being assistant general counsel of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. He is a member of the Law Association of Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania State Bar Association and the American Bar As- sociation, and was a delegate to the Universal Congress of Lawyers and Jurists at St. Louis, 1904. He is a trustee of the Presbyterian Hospital in Philadelphia, a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Bucks County Historical Society, the Presbyterian Historical Society, the Archaeological Society of Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Society Sons of the Revolution, and the University Club.
Mr. Nichols married, June 4, 1895, Isabel, daughter of John and Bernice (Bell) McIlhenny, of Germantown, formerly of North Carolina, where Mrs. Nichols was born, and both natives of the north of Ireland. Mr. and Mrs. Nichols reside at 346 Pelham Road, Germantown, and their country home at Harts- ville, Bucks county, Pennsylvania.
ALEXIS DUPONT SMITH
REVEREND HENRY SMITH, the founder in America of the Smith family to which the subject of this sketch belongs, was born in county Norfolk, England, in 1588. He graduated at Cambridge University and was ordained a minister of the Church of England by the Archbishop of Canterbury. In 1638, accom- panied by his three sons, he emigrated to New England. He died in 1648.
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