Colonial families of Philadelphia, Volume II, Part 74

Author: Jordan, John Woolf, 1840-1921, ed
Publication date: 1911
Publisher: New York : Lewis Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 978

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Issue of Isaac and Elisabeth (Longacre) Reifschneider:

Caroline, m. Jonas Shoemaker; Amelia, m. William Gilbert; Ferdinand;

ISRAEL LONGACRE, b. Ang. 11, 1825; of whom presently;

Sarah, m. Albert Haldeman ; Lydia, m. Richard W. Saylor ; Magdalena, d. young.

Issue of Isaac and Deborah (Bitting) Reifschneider:

Isaac J. B .; Melinda Bitting, m. Charles Fox; Amanda Bitting, m. (first) David Wood.

ISRAEL LONGACRE REIFSCHNEIDER, only son of Isaac and Elizabeth ( Longacre )

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Reifschneider, born at Limerick square, Montgomery county, Pennsylvania, Au- gust II, 1825, died in Philadelphia, April 8, 1892. He married, April 8, 1892, Ellen Lukens, born at Prospectville, Montgomery county, September 27, 1834, daughter of Amos Lewis Lukens, by his wife, Asenath Conrad, and their only child was :

Howard Reifschneider, of Phila., b. March 19, 1869; m., April 23, 1891, Hannah Gillam, of Middletown, Bucks co., Pa.

SMITH FAMILY.

This article is to reveal something hitherto mostly unpublished about several generations of several families of Colonial Philadelphia, the same being ancestors of T. Guilford Smith, LL. D., of late years a resident of Buffalo, New York, but who, born in Philadelphia, 1839, has since achieved eminent distinction in American iron and steel industries, in the fine arts and sciences, in social life, in ideas for educational progress, and in humane effort for the general welfare of humankind.

Men are wont to look upon their paternal line of descent as the most important, but is it so? And men are pleased to call themselves by a surname, repeating it from generation to generation; but does that surname indicate their "blood?" Scarcely! Thus, in attempting to portray somewhat of the activities of the Colo- nial Smiths, the student encounters an array of other ancestors of this son of Philadelphia, who contributed equally, if not more, to the early making of the most American of American cities, and who thus are entitled now to equal con- sideration.

These were the families of Meng, Ogden, and Eastwick, of Tunes, Klincken and Levering ; and in the dimmer perspective of still farther years, on neighboring Colonial fields, rises another host,-the unforgetable Allens of and from Cape Cod, the Newburys from Rhode Island honored, the Lloyds of Boston's com- merce, the Sylvesters of manorial independence, the Howlands of Plymouth piety, and the Brinleys, the exemplars of loyalty.

Contemplating them all, one sees what good citizenship in Philadelphia comes from; sees that it is no accident, but long in the making ; qualities anciently noted have continued their honorable sway even till now. Perceiving, as well, upon the charts of Dr. Smith, whereon the warp and woof of the human fabric that Time weaves is depicted in every strand, the student learns clearly from whence these early pioneers came, even back into medieval days; but Alas! whither they now have gone these charts do not show. Their living representative well might ask: Do they live in us? Are we not they? Are they not us? Why not? Where else should we look for them? Why seek them in the skies? Does not each bit of nature repeat itself after its own mould? Does not human nature restore itself of itself, perpetuate itself from itself ? How pertinent the poet's line !- "The dead who rule our spirits from their urns."

So how superficial is the remark that the portrayal of an ancestry is a matter of fancy, vanity, or pride merely. Surely such studies involve and illustrate one of the greatest themes of the universe-the theme of which God is the maker,- the theme which holds hidden the very secrets of human origin and destiny that man alone has never yet solved.

So much of the human handiwork of heaven as may be noted on these pages, of these particular descents that are from Great Britain and tributary to Philadel- phia, on the paternal side of Dr. Smith's lineage, might well begin with three worthies in England :- Thomas Brinley, Dr. Lloyd and Stephen Eastwick. Thomas Brinley is noted on the private charts, lying before the writer, as

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descendant out of a Staffordshire family already revealed in unbroken line from the twelfth century. Rising from a position in the Exchequer, he became Auditor- General to Charles I. and Keeper of the Dowry of Queen Henrietta Maria. Long was his service and intense his loyalty. Brief, however, must be our refer- ence to him. It is learned of official record that he refused to take the oath of allegiance to the Cromwellian government, after the execution of his royal master ; that he sought with others to secrete the youthful Charles II. in Staffordshire; was one of the few who dared to meet the fugitive monarch under the roof of Sir Henry Lee at Woodstock ; aided in the King's escape to the Continent. There he shared the royal exile, leaving his office, his estate and his life, subject to the confiscation and pleasure of the Commonwealth. Devotion to the Royalist cause, throughout the twelve years of exile, brought him increased honors and restora- tion to his office, and somewhat of his manors, upon the return of Charles II. in 1660. A year later death removed him at his home in Datchet Bucks, close to Windsor Castle. He bore the arms "per chevron, or and sable, three escallops counter changed." His son Francis became a marked man in the affairs of the Rhode Island Colony, while his daughter Grissell (Griselda), in the early days of her father's exile from England, married, 1652, Nathaniel Sylvester, son of a wealthy London and Midland merchant. Adventurous and ever independent in spirit, unyielding to the Puritan parliament, Sylvester avoided trouble at home by going to Holland; and having bought the most of Shelter Island, adjoining Long Island, New York, with his bride, reached its quiet shores, via Barbadoes, after storm and the wreck on Conanicut Island of their little ship the "Swallow." Too full of incident were their lives thereon for present narration. In a word, there they flourished as did few families in America ; there they succored and pro- tected Mary Dyer and the Quakers fleeing from Boston's persecution ; there they entertained George Fox; there penned the endearing letters to the Winthrops, now preserved by the Massachusetts Historical Society; there Sylvester was granted full manorial rights by royal patent dated "James fforte ye 31 day of May in ye year Anno Dom, 1666," "by fealty only paying yearly one lamb, if demanded ;" and the Manor of Shelter Island continued as one of the few veri- table manors in America for one hundred and nine years-to the War of the Revolution. Lord of the same and lordly in his ways, Sylvester would not yield his landed rights at their confiscation by the Dutch in 1673, when the man-of- war, Zeehond, committed an act of war at Shelter Island, but paid them thousands of pounds (present reckoning) to be left unmolested further. And so from 1680 till now he has rested in splendid isolation, on what was his own and still is the land of his descendants, at the edge of the forest of oaks, where the tide comes up close through the rushes, and under a monument worthy of the man,-and there all about many of the works of his hand are still visible.

Nathaniel and Grissell Sylvester's daughter, Grissell, born August 12, 1652, married, July 13, 1676, James Lloyd, a young merchant of Boston, afterwards lord of the manor of Queen's Village (three thousand acres) at Lloyd's Neck, Long Island. This manor was erected to him by royal patent through Gov. Thomas Dongan, dated March 18, 1685. This property, adjoining Oyster Bay, has remained ever since in the possession of some of his descendants. The Lloyds were Episcopalians, and in Boston prominent in King's Chapel. They bore "gules, a lion rampant or ; crest, a pelican feeding its young proper." James was

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the son of Sir John Lloyd, Mayor of Bristol, England, 1678, and great-grandson of Dr. Lloyd of Worcestershire, who, like Brinley, nobly served a queen. Dr. Lloyd was "Doctor in Physic to Queen Elizabeth." Sir John's wife was Cathe- rine Callowhill of Bristol, England, to whom William Penn was no stranger, for he married, in that same city, Catherine's relative Hannah Callowhill. Penn did not win the older Callowhills to his faith, however, for Catherine's father, Miles Callowhill, had been a warrior and a Royalist. While an officer of the garrison in Bristol Castle, under Prince Rupert, he was killed in an affray with Sir John Cada- man, Knight, 1645, as is told upon a tablet in the church of St. Peter and Paul in Bristol. Yet the Penn, Callowhill, and Lloyd descendants were to meet in Phila- delphia, in religious harmony, years later.

Singular also it is that Grissell Lloyd, daughter of James of Boston by her marriage there, 1703, to John Eastwick, a merchant late of the West Indies, brought the blood of the Brinleys and Lloyds into loving association with that of their former political enemies, the Eastwicks. That is another story, but it may be noted now that the grandparent of this John Eastwick was Stephen East- wick, alderman and sheriff of London, a civil officer of the Commonwealth, for whom the capture and punishment of this said Grissell's great-grandfather, the exiled Thomas Brinley, would have been a pleasure and a profit. Jolın East- wick was an alderman of Boston and a member of King's Chapel. The inventory of his estate reveals his possession of what was then an "up-to-date" library. He died in 1736, leaving his son, Capt. Thomas Eastwick, to become a man of many voyages and master of many a craft between the eastern seaboard and the West Indies. The Custom House records and Philadelphia Colonial newspapers mention his many arrivals and departures with passengers and cargoes. Capt. Thomas Eastwick is treasured in the tradition repeated by his great-grandson, the late Charles Eastwick Smith, President of Philadelphia & Reading R. R., as hav- ing, like his ancestor, Stephen Eastwick, of London, expressed his opinion of the rule of Kings, in a way that nearly cost him his head. Summoned with his boat, shortly before the Revolution broke out, by a British officer in Philadelphia, to transport some British soldiers, who were to suppress a patriotic demonstration by the Sons of Liberty at Burlington, New Jersey, Captain Eastwick contrived to land them at night on a sandbar opposite Beverly, New Jersey, where, ere long, the rising tide overcame them. The price put upon his head for this did not avail, for he escaped to sea, and did not enter the Port of Philadelphia again but twice in his life. When he did there appear it was in a schooner happily named the "Happy Return." He died 1773, having married in Christ Church, November 23, 1756, Margaret Bullock, who had been baptized within the same walls in 1740, as the daughter of John (baptized in Christ Church Jan. 6, 1717) and Rebecca Bullock. Margaret was granddaughter of Thomas and Margaret Bul- lock (from England), who Watson's Annals state :

"Kept a celebrated public house in the old two-storied house now (1850) adjoining the south end of the City Tavern. Besides its present front on Second Street, it had a front towards Walnut Street with a fine green court-yard all along that street quite down to Dock Creek. At that house Richard Penn and other governors, generals and gentry used to be feasted. The tavern was designated 'The Three Crowns.' The City Tavern was built ad- joining it in 1770."

These Eastwicks and Bullocks were laid in long rest in the yard of Christ

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Church ; and ere long after Capt. Thomas Eastwick's daughter, Grissell, (the name perpetuated from Grissell Brinley of 1650), born in Philadelphia, 1763, became the bride of Thomas Smith, September 26, 1782, at the First Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, and was won from her religion to that of her husband, the Friends. Thus the amelioration of time worked its mysteries, and an Eastwick took into her breast the very tenets of the Friends, which her Episcopalian for- bears, near and far on both shores of the Atlantic, ever had spurned; and her remains repose without the old Arch Street Meeting House, Philadelphia, while her descendants kept the faith of the Friends, down to the present generation. Her husband, Thomas Smith, the lumber merchant, great-grandfather of T. Guil- ford Smith, born in Philadelphia, 1761, was the son of Ralph Smith, who though born at Burlington, New Jersey, February 29, 1724, was the founder of the Smith family in Philadelphia, before 1749. His religion kept him from partici- pating in the War of the Revolution. Interesting, indeed, it is to note the con- formity of his Smith ancestors to the Established Church. His father, Ralph Smith, born on Cape Cod, (the grandson of an earlier Ralph, who came with Abraham Lincoln's emigrant ancestor from Norfolk, England, to Hingham, Massachusetts, by 1637), found Burlington on the Delaware, and its St. Mary's Church, soon after 1700, more to his heart. Therein their son, Ralph, as before noted, was baptized ; and there without in the sacred soil, the parents lay --- unfor- gotten. Near to their graves, at evening prayer, the light from within the church shines outward through a myriad-tinted window of cathedral glass erected in memory of their descendant Pemberton Smith and his wife. This window de- signed by Lavers & Westlake, of London, and representing The Descent from the Cross (after Rubens) and St. John leading St. Mary away, was the gift of Ralph Smith's great-great-great-grandson, Dr. Smith. Ralph Smith, Junior, dreamed away his early youth by the riverside; and then he made the dreams come true by establishing, about 1750, a system of transportation of passengers and merchandise on the Delaware between Burlington and Philadelphia. The larger town soon claimed him, as said; and he married there, in Christ Church, April 22, 1749, Margery Allen. The fair tale of their first meeting, as told around the family fireside, is this: "Margery went with a girl friend to a gipsy to have their fortunes told ; the gipsy read in the lines on their pretty hands great store of good luck and happiness. Margery, she said, had never seen the man whom she was to marry, but that on her return home that very day she would meet him. With wonderment at the words of the sibyl, the girls walked homeward just in time to meet Ralph Smith, a stranger. Suddenly overcome with the realization that here might be her fate, Margery fainted. The young man, unconscious of the effect of his presence, promptly came to the rescue. Needless to say there was but one ending to this acquaintance so romantically begun." Strong as was Ralph's influence upon Margery then, her later power with him was greater, and. married tho' they were in Christ Church, that event was the last in that church for them. Margery turned him, the first of the Smith's to Quakerism, effacing for one hundred years thereafter the Episcopalianism that had held all of the Smith and Eastwick forbears for centuries. And why not ?- for Margery was of those Allens never to be forgotten in American religious history. It should be here said that her people in America began with George Allen, the Anabaptist of Somersetshire, who sought peace on the lone shore of Cape Cod, and there

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found it. But his son Ralph, Margery's great-grandparent, and the brothers and sisters of Ralph, were the heroes and heroines of Quakerism at Sandwich, Massa- chusetts. Here, in 1657, that faith first fastened itself among the drifting sands; here the Allens were first to embrace it and to suffer ; here they yielded to no man and to no measure ; here persecution, extortion, imprisonment, fines amounting to robbery and cansing utter privation, even to the taking of the last cow, the last bag of corn and meal, and the only kettle remaining in which the cereals could be cooked, were inflicted upon them by the Puritanical authorities ; and the reply of an Allen to the sheriff's ironical query, "Now how will thee cook for thy family and friends, thee has no kettle?" was simply,-"That God who hears the young ravens when they cry, will provide for them. I trust in that God, and I verily believe the time will come when thy necessity will be greater than mine." And so come it did. And the beliefs of these early Allens have since then continued to be the beliefs of these of their unwavering descendants for three hundred years.

Jedediah Allen, born at Sandwich, 1643, son of Ralph Allen, took his religion through Rhode Island to New Jersey where he prospered largely as a patentee, and opposed Lord Cornbury in the first Colonial Legislature of New Jersey. He became one of the Judges of Monmouth county, who, in 1701, were trying the pirate Moses Butterworth, who "confessed yt he did sail wth Capt. William Kid in his last voyage," when the prisoner was rescued from the court room, despite the drawn swords of the justices, by a mob of his friends, "to ye number of about one hundred persons who did traytorously seize ye Governor & ye Justices, the King's Attorney General & ye Undersheriff & ye Clerk of ye Court & keept them close prisoners under a guard from twesday ye 25th March till ye 29th of ye same month and then Released them."

The wife of Jedediah Allen was Elizabeth, daughter of that other immovable rock in the Quaker faith, Henry Howland, of Duxbury, Massachusetts, on Ply- mouth Harbor, who had come to the Plymouth Colony with his older brother Arthur about 1632. Henry Howland was also a brother of that other "ancient professor in the wayes of Christ," John Howland, one of the "Mayflower's" im- mortals of 1620. These Howlands were formerly of the city of London, Eng- land, and members of that Essex family which also had produced Richard How- land, D. D., fourth Bishop of Peterborough, (1584-1600). It was he who offi- ciated Angust Ist, 1587, at the funeral services in his cathedral of Mary, Queen of Scots, the stately pageant and hollow mockery ordered by Queen Elizabeth, six months after Queen Mary's execution at Fotheringay to satisfy her own qualms of conscience, and to placate Queen Mary's son, afterward James I. of England.

The Howlands bore arms, "sable, two bars argent, in the chief three lions ram- pant, sable."

Nathan Allen, son of Jedediah, founded Allentown, New Jersey, about 1705. attended Crosswicks Friend's Meeting, married (thirdly), 1721, Martha, daugh- ter of Walter Newbury of Newport, a leading Friend in Rhode Island, Governor's assistant in that colony, and, 1686, appointed by the Crown a member of the Council of Sir Edmond Andros, Governor General of all His Majesty's Colonies in America.

Margery, daughter of Nathan and Martha (Newbury) Allen, and wife to Ralph Smith, saw her grandson, Charles Eastwick Smith (born Philadelphia,

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1783) surely inclined in the Quaker way of life, and then her sixty-seventh year closed her life, 1792.

With Charles Eastwick Smith's marriage, at North Meeting, Philadelphia, April 5, 1808, to Mary Ogden, our view is turned partly to the Philadelphians, so-called, upon Dr. Smith's maternal side, for Mary Ogden's sister Hannah married, (a civil marriage by "the Squire") in 1815, another Friend, named Thomas Zell of the Merion Zells, maternal grandparent to Dr. Smith. Of Mary and Hannah's father, Hugh Ogden, he was of the sixth generation from David Ogden, a passenger in the "Welcome" with Penn, 1682, whose armorial bearing was "Gyronny of eight, argent and gules, in dexter chief an oak branch fructed, proper; crest, an oak tree proper, a lion rampant against it ; motto, Et si ostendo non jacto." Though Hugh was born in Springfield, Pennsylvania, 1756, and became a citizen of Phila- delphia, we may not stop to mark him further, other than to observe that he was an original member of the Reliance Fire Company, organized by Friends from the Northern Monthly Meeting, in Key's Alley, and that his demise in the year 1803 was referred to in a city newspaper with these words: "Died about six o'clock yesterday evening, Mr. Hugh Ogden, coachmaker, a worthy and indus- trious citizen of whom it may be justly said-'Mark the perfect man and behold the upright, for the end of that man is peace !'"

With Hugh Ogden's marriage, October 16, 1783, to Anna Dorothea Meng, there opens a vista upon her interesting family in Germantown, that contrasts pleasantly with the hereinbefore.

And so with the foregoing respects to the suave Conformists and the graver Quakers of the paternal ancestry, in and tributary to Philadelphia, let us now review, briefly as may be, those of whom Whittier wrote :

"Whose fathers, of old, sang in concert with thine, On the banks of Swetara, the songs of the Rhine- The pure German pilgrims, who first dared to brave The scorn of the proud in the cause of the slave."

Meng, Levering, Tunes, Klicken-these are the names. The Mengs were para- mount ; out of Wesphalia in Germany they came, where the Meng bearing was "barre contre barre, d'azure de quatre pieces ; crest, un vol coupe alternativement, d'argent et d'azure." (Rietstap). Bland and picturesque, home-loving and indus- trious were the lives in Germantown of all of this family. First came John Christopher Meng. in the ship, "Mortonhouse," Captain John Coutlas, arriving at Philadelphia August 28, 1728, and subscribing to the oath of allegiance on that same day. Came also therein, with her four children, his wife Anna Dorothea Baumanin, Baroness Von Ebsten, a native of Mannheim, where her husband's birth is found recorded in the register of the Church of the Reformation, viz : (translation) "John Christopher Meng, born 22 Sept., 1697." His marriage is recorded in the same register, June 29, 1723, with his wife's mother's name "Anna Barbara" and "John Wetzler, Collector at Extein, father-in-law," (step-father). John Christopher Meng was of a gentle family, "to the manner born;" he so came, and so lived. Two documents he brought, both extant. The earliest was issued to him by the Master Mason's Association "in the Holy free city of Speyer," and affirms in part,-(translation) :

"Personally appeared before us John Christopher Mengen, the Honorable John Martin Mengen's son, now removed to the City of Mannheim with the intention of making it his

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home. At his request for recommendation of his former good behavior and knowledge of his trade, we can only tell the truth, and state herewith, in this open letter, that John Chris- topher Mengen has been honest, true, pious and a good worker, that in all honor we can say nothing but good about him." etc. "In witness we have here in to set the seal of the Asst. this 5th day of Sept. after the blessed birth of our beloved Master and Savior Jesus Christ, 1722.

The second certificate was recorded at the German Reformed Church, German- town ; translated it reads :

"Mannheim, 3d May, 1728.

"This Witnesses that John Christopher Meng, Burger and Master Mason of this place and Anna Dorothea (born Banmanin) his honorable housewife, intend to journey from this place to New England, and desire for their journeying a trust worthy certificate of their belief and precepts of life, also have I been willing to witness that these married people have acted according to God's Word of the Reformed Religion, and so through diligent attention to his honoured word, also in the use of the Holy Sacrament of the Last Supper, together with an honorable conduct to this day do Certify.

"Samuel Michael Dorgahf (seal)

"Preacher of the Reformation, District Alda."

But Meng's benign countenance soon won him more than could any writing- friends and favor. Both of these he kept for fifty-seven years. Builder as he was, arriving at Germantown when wealth had been attained by many citizens, he found the erection of the now-famous stone mansions ready for his under- taking. That he built the Germantown Academy, the records of that institu- tion give assurance. He was a member of the first committee to raise funds to erect the building, 1759; was himself one of the largest contributors. Placed at the head of the committee and "manager of the building," "the collections of money and the construction of the buildings were carried forward," states the printed pamphlet of the Academy's history, "with a vigor and energy that give evidence of remarkable administrative ability." A member of the board of trus- tees, Meng remained for many years, and ever the Academy's friend. He signed the petition to Thomas Penn for a renewal of the charter of Germantown.

By 1744 Mr. Meng was the owner of some sixteen acres, fronting on the main street in Germantown and reaching to beyond Green street. The apple-trees formerly of it remained until late years on that part which came into possession of the late Reed A. Williams. Mr. Meng also held a building thereon sufficient for both business and residential purposes. His house, before its destruction some years ago, had been modernly converted into a tin shop, numbered 4912 German- town avenue. Within a generation there was a building north of and connected with it; this was removed to allow for the making of what became the carriage- way to "Vernon," the home of the late John Wister, known as Vernon Park, the property of the City of Philadelphia since 1892. Meng's spring house in the meadow was preserved, while the Wisters dwelt at "Vernon."

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Colonial families of Philadelphia, Volume II, Part 74

Author: Jordan, John Woolf, 1840-1921, ed Publication date: 1911 Publisher: New York : Lewis Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 978

Author: Jordan, John Woolf, 1840-1921, ed
Publication date: 1911
Publisher: New York : Lewis Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 978