Colonial families of Philadelphia, Volume II, Part 75

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

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Warm-hearted, imaginative man that he was, Meng met none of the hard- ships of life that fell to the earlier settlers and to those less endowed with capacity and its rewards. No religious extremity or financial exigency drove him from the Fatherland. The spirit that moved him to transplant his family sprang from his judgment, as a man of the world, who saw an opportunity for expansion in settling in the rising Germantown, where his genius for construction would have less constraint. In 1741-42 he was a delegate to the Pennsylvania Synod, held at Germantown. The Reformed, or Lutheran Church, was ever his only devotional shrine. Its service in his native tongue was his delight, till

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a day came, late in his life, when the sermon was read in English. To him this seemed a sacrilege and never thereafter, when the service was to be in other than his redolent German, did he attend that or any other church. Something of a nature-lover, too, was he, and his pastime was not the destructive one of hunting or fishing, but creative instead, revealing his gentility. Early Mr. Meng had developed some banking business, in Germantown, and he is said to have been the financial agent of the Germans that sent Matthias Kin, the plant and seed collector, to America. Thus through association with Kin, he planned, upon his acres, an arboretum. Kin presented him with many rare trees. The great linden tree that long outlived him, as it grew near the house, is believed to have been there planted by Kin. Like its owner, this tree lived its full allotted life and died at a great age. There was also a very fine garden begun by Christopher Meng, larger than that of his neighbor, Kurtz; and it was later developed by the son, Melchior Meng, whose pleasure it was to live to enjoy something of the early beauty of the trees his father and Kin had set in the soil. Melchior took good care that they passed, in his last years, into appreciative hands, for John Wister bought the property, and built a spacious mansion. in 1803, calling it "Vernon," after Mount Vernon, Washington's home. Kurtz's garden disappeared many years ago, but the Wisters preserved and added to the sylvan attractions Meng had sold to them. While the residence is now used for the Germantown branch of the Philadelphia Free Library, the arboretum, still containing, as late as 1892, some of the finest specimens of rare trees to be found in private grounds in this country, met the fate of destruction at the hands of a so-called "city forester." after "Ver- non," became a public park.

Aged eighty-eight, John Christopher Meng died October 17, 1785, while temporarily in the house he had likely built in 1758-9, for his next-door neighbor and friend, Benjamin Engle, which dwelling of stone yet lingers on the rear of the property next above the town hall. Anna Dorothea (Baumanin) Meng had died July 18, 1759, and both are fittingly memorialized in marble in the Meng lot of the Union Cemetery. About them lie some of their children, of whom there were born seven, the first two in Germany: Anna Barbara, 1724; Jolin Melchior, 1726; Jacob, 1729; Ulric, 1731 ; John, 1734; Anna Dorothea, 1736; and Susanna, 1740. Of the son, John Meng, one may read in Wescott's History of Philadelphia :-

"One of our earliest native painters, who was cut off by death ere his undoubted talent had matured and had secured him to fame, was John Meng. * * * John, from early boyhood, evinced a decided vocation for the painter's art. He was gifted by nature with artistic tastes and soon acquired no little skill with the pencil and brush. But his father did not approve of his son's choice of a profession. His opposition made it unpleasant for John, moreover he felt he must have better tuition than he could get in Philadelphia. He (John) left home and went to the West Indies. He probably was not there more than a year or two,.and he died about 1754."

The accompanying portrait of John Christopher Meng, and another of John, the painter, both painted by himself before he was twenty years of age, were pre- sented to the Pennsylvania Historical Society by his kinsman, the late Charles Smith Ogden, of Philadelphia.

John Meng's elder brother, John Melchior Meng, born in Mannheim, Germany, April 10, 1726, became much in evidence in the social, educational and business affairs of Germantown. Educating his children at the Germantown Academy,

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of which he was a trustee, his official relations with one of the principals thereof, D. J. Dove, did not always suit that pedagogue's brittle temper, for he perpe- trated such bits of satirical doggerel, as,-

"Melchior Meng, the bell doth ring; Melchior Meng, the school is in."

"Be not surprised that Melchior cries on Sunday; He that cheats six, has cause to cry one day."

"Melchior Meng and old Huck We set down in our book As Continental Tories."

"Whenever Melchior Meng mows his meadow it rains."

Melchior lived on the estate that had been his father's and in the same stone house. Thereabouts he prospered as a retail merchant dealing in supplies for the sustenance of the community ; attended the Lutheran Church ; became an officer of the first Germantown Fire Company, 1764, with the title, "Inspector of the Fire." The family Bible brought from Germany by his parents, he religiously kept, and entered therein the family records. These cover the one hundred and five years, 1727 to 1833, which makes the book the valuable addition it is to the library of the Pennsylvania Historical Society.

Attaining to within one year the age of his father, Melchior Meng died, aged eighty-seven, October 13, 1812. Though thrice married, lastly to Elizabeth Fende, widow of Christian Lehman, the eight children were all by the first wife, Mary Magdalene Colladay, whom he married November 7, 1748, (whose sister, Sarah, married Ulric Meng). These sisters were daughters of Jacob and Juliana Catherine (Rubenkam) Colladay (written "Jallendin" or "Gallatin" in Germany). Both came with their elders in the ship "Thistle" from Rotterdam, reaching Phil- adelphia, September 19, 1738. The good wife Mary died August 6. 1764, and reposes beside her husband in Union Cemetery.

As aforesaid, the daughter Anna Dorothea married Hugh Ogden, 1783; and the close of the Colonial period must now shut some of the other children from further view, save the sons Christopher and Jacob. Their part in the Revolu- tion was too conspicuous to escape remark. Their father, deprecating war, remained neutral. At the battle of Germantown, while he was witnessing the skirmishing down the street, the daughters, Anna Dorothea and Susanna, left alone at home, were confronted by the British, who utilized the Meng home and its contents for a hospital. The sisters, though politely requested to remain upstairs, scarcely did so; they saw the body of Col. Bird brought to the porch, and most naturally their sympathies were moved to aid the suffering. The large supply of vinegar in the cellar was proffered for antiseptic bandages. As Anna Dorothea lived till 1844, aged 90, she related her experiences with the British to her granddaughter, Miss Hannah Ann Zell, now living in Germantown, aged 87, and sister of the late Col. T. Ellwood Zell, who is remembered as Lieutenant- Colonel of Third Battalion Pennsylvania Infantry, also a founder of the Loyal Legion, and its first commander.

While his sisters were ministering to the wounded in the higher cause of humanity, Christopher Meng was causing his name to be officially quoted with satisfaction and pleasure in the Continental army. Not so the son Jacob, how-

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ever. The favor and sympathies of this boy of nineteen were won by some young British officers, whose motives he may not have suspected. Jacob's father dis- suaded him from joining their military cause, but Jacob was led to help them in another cause. The charms of his pretty sisters had struck beneath "red coats" as well as deep under the patriotic blue; and it is a true tradition that when he was observed entertaining the gallant officers within his father's house, no harm was done to the cause of the blue, nor to any heart within a coat of that color. This truth was deemed only a transparent pretext, an excuse, by the vigilant neighbors, who communicated their notions of treason to the Committee of Safety.

Forthwith there issued a proclamation by the Supreme Executive Council of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, charging Melchior Meng and Jacob Meng, with the crime of treason, and demanding that they render themselves and their estates to the Commonwealth on a certain day, or, in default, stand attainted of high treason. The final judgment of the court was: "Melchior Meng, sur- rendered and discharged." "Jacob Meng, tried and acquitted."

The fact that John Roberts, who was convicted and hung for treason, looked with favor upon his daughter's acquaintance with Jacob Meng was not to the lat- ter's benefit. While imprisoned, before trial, at Third and High streets, Phila- delphia, Jacob found with the poet that,-

"Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage,"

for his lady-love came hither at her imprisoned father's wish, with Jacob's sisters, bringing delicacies and good cheer. Released, Jacob soon beheld the loyalist Robert's daughter turning from her father's memory, and false to her acquitted friend, and would marry a patriot soldier instead, Richard Tunes. Here the blood of Abraham Tunes, one of the thirteen founders of Germantown, inter- vened ; yet, singular, indeed, it was that the hand of fate soon after did unite the blood of Abraham Tunes with a Levering-Zell in the persons of (1) Jacob Meng's own niece, Hannah Ogden, daughter of his same sister Anna Dorothea, who with Miss Roberts had ministered to Jacob in prison, and (2) Thomas Zell, grandson of a Tunes, and grandparent of Dr. Smith. This incident is but one of others of the mysteries of natural selection, of destiny, of fate, so-called, which might be noted in this study of an ancestry. In such a field there is a new realm for the research of the psychologist.

Love and treason lodged not in the mind of Christopher Meng in the hour of duty. Born at Germantown, June 8, 1750, his brilliant record in the Continental army won sympathy and consideration for his accused father and brother, which lasted long after their acquittal. Christopher first enlisted in the Second Bat- talion Philadelphia Militia, and served seven years in the Continental army. Pro- moted to be Forage Master on Long Island, in Gen. Patten's Brigade, with the rank of Brigade Major, he was in command of the stores at West Point, partic- ipated in the battle of the Brandywine, and, September 18, 1779, was commis- sioned Assistant Deputy Quartermaster General of the army under Gen. Waslı- ington. Present at the battle of Yorktown, he was keeper there of the stores of both armies, those surrendered by Cornwallis having been received and receipted for by him with his own hand. At the close of the war, he retired to Huntington,

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Long Island. Here through him and partly unbeknown to himself, time healed more old differences, for his niece married Charles Eastwick Smith, descendant of the very Lloyds and Eastwicks who had owned the Manor of Queen's Village at Huntington, while "Squire" Lloyd, the last lord of the manor, deprived of manorial rights by the fortunes of the war, became somehow, nevertheless, Major Meng's most intimate friend. Meng died thereat, January 11, 1833, in his eighty- third year.

Of Tunes, Klincken and Levering, the very early settlers in Germantown, ancestors of T. Guilford Smith, through the marriage in 1757, of Hannah Lever- ing to his great-grandfather, Jacob Zell, of Walnut Grove, (an estate embracing many acres now lying about Merion Station on the Pennsylvania R. R.) it will suffice to state whom they were, since their descendants mostly lived without the confines of the present Philadelphia.

Abraham Tunes, a Quaker on the Rhine, was one of the religious pilgrims, and a convert there of Penn's, that founded Germantown. With thirteen other heads of families who followed Pastorius, he left Crefeld, in Germany, arriving at Phil- adelphia in the ship "Concord," July 24, 1683; and in the cave of Pastorius he drew lots for the first land apportioned in Germantown. The story of this little company being so fully told on other pages, it need only be quoted that Tunes was first a linen-weaver, married shortly before his departure from Germany, the lady who Pastorius wrote March 7. 1684, "was lying very ill in my little house for more than two months, was for a long while unconscious, but improved grad- ually from day to day." Purchasing of the Frankfort Land Company, seventy- five acres, and in 1693, with William Streepers, two hundred acres more of Pas- torius, he developed the same and still made linen. Some years later he became a partner of the Rittenhouses in the business of making paper, in the first paper mill in America. Published history has never till this moment credited him with this distinction ; the proofs of that undertaking are at hand, however, viz :-

(Philadelphia Deeds, E-7, vol. ix., p. 168).

"Abraham Tunes, of Germantown, on 4 March, 1713-4, together with William Streepers, Claus Ruttinghuysen, John Gorgas, all being paper makers, purchased from William de Wees of Germantown, for £144, all that tract of land in that part of Germantown called Crefeld, betwixt the lands of William Streepers and Thomas Tress (formerly Thomas Williams) and bounded on one end by Springfield Manor, being 100 acres, and the Paper Mill with all singular the Implements, Tools, Iron Potts and all other things belonging to the paper maker's trade, together with the dwelling house."

William de Wees thus sold out his interest in this famous mill, about which so much has been written. Abraham Tunes was conspicuous in Abington Friends' Meeting, and there were recorded the births of his children :

Elizabeth, born 1685; Trintje, (Catharine) born 1686-87; William, born 1688; Aeltje, (Alice), born 1691-92; and Anthony, born 1693-94.

Anthony Tunes, born 1694, moved to Lower Merion. He married, December 5, 1718, at Merion Meeting, Mary, daughter of John Williams, of Merion, for- merly of Germantown, probably of Dutch extraction, though his name and later environment suggest Welsh origin. He first appears in Germantown in Deputy Gov. Lloyd's naturalization papers as "Jan Williams." He married, June 3, 1696, Ellen Klincken, daughter of that other Dutch pilgrim, linen-weaver, and Friend, Arendt Klincken, Penn's convert on the Rhine. It was in 1687 that

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Arendt Klincken joined to make history by coming to Germantown. When past fifty years of age, he left "Galem" with wife Niscke, daughter Eleanor, born Utten-Kirk, 1670; and daughter Ann, born at Zoppenburk, 1683. Possessed of ample means, Arendt's first transactions were the purchase of seventy-five acres of land in Germantown and later of fifty acres more. Upon that part of his land where Tulpehocken street now is, he built, of brick, the first two-story house in the town. William Penn attended its raising, and the dwelling remained until about the opening of the Civil War. Though elected to several offices in the town, it is for his belief in the wickedness of slavery that his memory will live. With Abraham Tunes he affirmed to the first public protest made in America against slavery,-the formal document which issued from the little Friends' Meeting assembled April 18, 1688. "It may well be that the consciousness of having won immortality, never dawned upon any of the participants." Arendt Klincken passed from view in 1708.

Agnes Tunes, daughter of Anthony and Mary (Williams) Tunes and grand- daughter of Abraham Tunes, and Arendt Klincken, married, December 12, 1751, Anthony Levering of Lower Merion, and their daughter Hannah Lever- ing, became the mother of the Friend Thomas Zell, whose daughter, Margaret E. Zell, born 1817, married, 1838, the Friend, Pemberton Smith, father of T. Guil- ford Smith, LL. D., but in the religious inclinations of the last named gentleman, the Church of England has reclaimed its own.

Alice Tunes, own daughter of Abraham Tunes, born 1692, married, 1715, Jacob Levering, born January 21, 1693, in Roxborough, Philadelphia, where he held some eighty-five acres of land, bordering on the Schuylkill, and embracing a large part of what was Manayunk. His stone house in Green Lane there, built 1736, was demolished 1890.

Jacob Levering's father, John Wigard Levering, was another German Pilgrim, who settled first in Germantown, 1685, removing to Roxborough, 1691, on to a five hundred acre farm. Hereon he reached the age of ninety-seven years, dying 1745, and in the same ground was interred. This spot became the property of the Baptist Church, organized 1789, later known as Leverington Cemetery, but now in Fairmount Park.

Forethoughtfully, about 1697, Wigard Levering wrote in German, in his family Bible (now lost) this vital evidence :

"I, Wigard Levering, was born in Germany, in the Principality of Westphalia, in the District of Minster, and town of Gamen. My father's name was Rosier Levering, and my mother's maiden name was Elizabeth Van de Walle, who was born in Wesel.

"In the twenty-third year of my age I was married to my beloved wife, Magdalen Boker, Her father's name was William Boker, and her mother's maiden name was Sidonia Williams Braviers of the City of Leyden, in Holland. The above said Magdalena, my wife, was also born in Leyden, and God hath blessed me with the following children."

Then recording their names and births, Wigard Levering added, directly beneath, a prayer :--

"God, who is the Father of all that are called children in Heaven and Earth, have mercy on my children who are still in the land of the living, that they through grace of our Lord Jesus Christ may be born again and registered with their kindred in Heaven; that they, after they are taken from this vain world, the parents with the children, and the children with the parents, may rejoice before God in a blessed and happy eternity. Amen."

ELKINS FAMILY.

Families, like individuals, have character, for character has its foundation amid the complexities of inherited tendencies, and from the time that Ralph Elkins, in his young manhood, sailed across the seas to Virginia, more than two and one-half centuries ago, until now, the Elkins family has been dominated by a forceful and distinguishing individuality, which inevitably indicates descent from a sound, sane, vigorous stock. It may be that Ralph Elkins was of the family of John Elkin, of London, an incorporator of the London Company of Virginia, and that he was drawn to the first Commonwealth of America through his kinsman's interest and influence. Coming with the last of the cavaliers and settling, in 1660, between the fairest of Virginia's tidal rivers, the Potomac and the Rappahannock, in what was then Westmoreland, but later King George county, Ralph Elkins, the founder of his surname in the Old Dominion, followed the usual occupation of the gentleman of the day, and became a planter of tobacco, that staple which was the ally of the church and the currency of the colony, and his early shipment of the commodity bore testimony to his immediate prosperity. He enjoyed the life of the early tide-water Virginian. His neighbors were the "Barons of the Potomack and the Rappahonnock"; his religion, political creed, and amusements, were as theirs, and his environment, that with which Thackeray has so graphically en- circled his Esmonds.

Two sons survived him-Ralph Elkins, Jr., and Richard Elkins-respectively the ancestors of Hon. Stephen B. Elkins, of West Virginia, and the late William Lukens Elkins, of Philadelphia. It is to the latter, his ancestors and descendants, that this sketch is limited.

WILLIAM ELKINS, the first of the name in Philadelphia, left his southern home in early manhood and journeyed on business to the City of Penn, then the metrop- olis of the colonies, where, on January 10, 1774, just as the war-clouds of the Revolution were about to burst, he married Mary Points, the ceremony being per- formed by the Rev. Andrew Goeransson, rector of Gloria Dei (Old Swedes) Church. Shortly after marriage he became connected with the parish of Christ Church, and, at the ancient font of this mother of the Episcopal Church in Phila- delphia, most of his children were baptized by Rt. Rev. Bishop White, the first bishop of English consecration in the United States.

In the war with the mother country, William Elkins espoused the cause of the colonies, and served in the First Maryland Regiment. With this intermission, he continued to reside in Philadelphia until his death, July 29, 1798, from yellow fever, which, in the years 1793, 1797, and 1798, crippled the business enterprise of the city and decimated its population. Mrs. Elkins did not long survive her husband, but "departed this life 21 September, 1798, aged fifty years," after seven days illness from the same dread infection. Nine children were born to William Elkins by his wife, Mary Points, and of these, four married and had issue.

GEORGE ELKINS, the seventh child and youngest son of William and Mary Elkins, was born at Philadelphia, July 1I, 1786, and was baptized by Bishop White, at Christ Church, August 15th, of the same year. He early turned his

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attention to the art of paper-making, one of Philadelphia's most important indus- tries, and was later extensively engaged in its manufacture, erecting his first mills at Black Horse Hill, Delaware county, Pennsylvania. He subsequently started other paper mills a few miles distant from Coatesville, Chester county, and at Elkton, Maryland, also one near Wheeling, West Virginia. He was a man of large and intelligent activity, but in the notable panic which paralyzed the indus- tries of 1837, while conducting his mills in West Virginia, he met with financial reverses, after which he returned to and remained in Philadelphia. Inheriting the soldierly instincts of his father, he served six months in the militia force of his native state, during the second war with England. On December 24, 1812, he married, at Philadelphia, Susanna, daughter of Daniel Howell, by his wife, Eliza- betlı Yerkes, who, in her own person, united many of the early families of promi- nence in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, as well as of Rhode Island and Massachu- setts. She was born in Moreland township, Montgomery county, Pennsylvania, December 5, 1794, and died at Philadelphia, August 12, 1867, being survived by six of her seven children.

Mrs. George Elkins was sixtli in descent from THOMAS HOWELL, EsQ., of Tam- worth, Warwickshire, England, who, acquiring, in 1676, a proprietary right in West New Jersey, left his estate in England in 1682, to occupy his new posses- sions, embarking on the ship, "Welcome," with William Penn, on the voyage made historic by the presence of the latter, then on his way to place himself at the head of the government he had established in Pennsylvania. This embarkment is evidenced by the testimony of Mordecai Howell, Esq., one of the earliest of Philadelphia's long line of successful gentlemen brewers, who, as a witness for the Penns, in the celebrated boundary dispute between Pennsylvania and Mary- land, stated that he "came up the Bay of Delaware, in company with the ship in which * * William Penn was, That he landed some time before Mr. Penn, at New Castle, and was there when he landed at the said Town." After his arrival, Thomas Howell located some six hundred and fifty acres of his possessions, which doubtless contained a much larger quantity of land, on the north side of Cooper's Creek, in Waterford (now Delaware) township, Gloucester (now Cam- den) county, New Jersey, and there resided for the little time he lived after the settlement. He was heartily welcomed by the colonists who had preceded him, and was almost immediately chosen to the legislative councils, where he served in 1683 and 1685, and, but for his early decease in 1687, he would doubtless have figured prominently in the affairs of the colony. His widow, Katharine, did not come to the New World until after her husband's death, when she took up her residence in Philadelphia, and there died in September or October, 1695, survived by five children-Daniel Howell, Mordecai Howell, Esq., and three daughters.

DANIEL HOWELL, eldest son of Thomas Howell, Esq., born in England in 1660, settled near his father, on a plantation at Cooper's Creek, containing two hundred and fifty acres, called "Livewell." Besides this he had other large and valuable landed interests. As the eldest son and heir-at-law, he inherited the proprietary rights of his father in West New Jersey, and also the ancestral estate in England, which he afterwards conveyed to his brother. In 1690 he removed to Philadelphia, and later to Solebury township, Bucks county, Pennsylvania, where he died in September, 1739. By his wife, Hannalı Lakin, whom he married September 4,

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Colonial families of Philadelphia, Volume II, Part 75

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