USA > Pennsylvania > Encyclopedia of genealogy and biography of the state of Pennsylvania with a compendium of history. A record of the achievements of her people in the making of a commonwealth and the founding of a nation, Volume II > Part 12
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Jenkins
Robert
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He came from a foreign land to America as a young man, being de- pendent upon his own resources for a livelihood, and he attained, during the long years of a significantly active and useful business career, a notable and definite success, finally retiring to enjoy the fruits of his protracted toil and endeavor. It is a "far cry" from being a humble toiler in the coal mines to being one of the principals in industrial enter- prises of broad scope and importance, and yet this typifies the worthy career of Mr. Jenkins, who is specially worthy of representation in a comprehensive work of this nature. He has ever been broad in his mentality and in his human sympathies, and whatever he has accom- plished in life has not been gained by methods that infringed in the slightest particular on the rights of others.
Robert Jenkins is of Scotch-Irish lineage, and is himself a native of the fair Emerald Isle, having been born in county Tyrone, Ireland, on the 14th of .August, 1827, the son of Frank and Elizabeth ( Williams) Jenkins. Of the three children born to Mr. and Mrs. Frank Jenkins two are yet living, Robert, and Elinor, who is the wife of Robert Burt, of Winona, Minnesota. The father was a Protestant in his religious views, as were his parents, and was a stanch follower of the teachings of John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Episcopal church. When he was a child of two years the Roman Catholic element in Ireland was in a state of revolt, showing marked animosity against those of the Pro- testant faith, and to escape irate papists on one occasion his mother took him in her arms and hid in a cornfield, thus saving his and her own life, one of his brothers having been killed during the riot. He became one of the pioneers of the Methodist church in Ireland, that fair land whose annals have been marked by much of wrong and oppression in divers ways. Frank Jenkins passed his entire life in the Emerald Isle. his death occurring when his son Robert was a lad. and his devoted wife
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soon afterward following him to "that undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns."
Robert was then placed in charge of family friends in Scotland. where he was reared and educated and where he continued to make his home until 1848, when, at the age of twenty-one years, he emigrated to America, believing that here were to be found better opportunities for personal accomplishment and advancement. He was accompanied by his young bride, and they courageously faced the stern problem which confronted them as strangers in a strange land. He came to this country with one hundred pounds sterling that he had saved from his carnings in the mines of the old country. A party of neighbors ac- companied him, and it was his original intention to go further west, but one of these neighbors borrowed two hundred dollars of Mr. Jenkins, and shortly sickened and died, without being able to repay this loaned money. He secured employment in the coal mines of Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, and was thus employed until 1852, when lie gave inception to his singulariy active and successful business career and gave evidence of that self-reliant spirit which has ever animated him, by engaging in the coal business in the city of Pittsburg.
Energetic, indomitable in his perseverance, endowed with marked business sagacity and judgment, his rise was rapid. He was one of the early members of the Youghiogheny Coal Company, whose opera- tions eventually became of wide scope and importance, and he owned the first tow-boat on the Youghiogheny river, this being long antecedent to the advent of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. With this important enterprise Mr. Jenkins continued to be actively identified for a long term of years, accumulating a competence through his well directed efforts and being also identified with other capitalistic and industrial interests of important nature. He became a prominent factor in the industrial and
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commercial circles of western Pennsylvania, owning a large plant, in- cluding a sawmill and other appurtenances. He was also the inventor of the chute for loading coal that is used on all coal mines at the present day. Mr. Jenkins retired from active business in 1900. leaving the active management of his interests in competent hands, and he is now passing the goklen evening of his days in that dignified repose which is the fitting crown of a life of earnest and indefatigable application.
Ever maintaining a public-spirited attitude and ever true to the duties of citizenship, Mr. Jenkins has never sought the honors of public office, realizing that his business interests called for his undivided time 'and attention, but he has been a stanch and loyal supporter of the princi- ples and policies of the Republican party from the time of attaining the right of franchise in his adopted country. He recognizes no particular creed in religious belief, but has the deepest reverence for spiritual verities and has aimed to order his life in harmony with the Golden Rule, and the high esteem in which he is held by all who know him indicates that he has been successful in this regard, even as he has in his business life. Fraternally he is identified with the Masonic Order, of which he became a member when twenty years of age, being then initiated as an entered apprentice in St. John Lodge No. HO, F. & A. M., at Holytown, in the county of Lanark, Scotland, where he was at the time employed in the coal mines.
In the town of Airdrie, Scotland, on the 2nd of April, 1847, Mr. Jenkins was united in marriage to Miss Jane Morton, daughter of Thomas Morton, who was from the original Wallace stock, as Wallace had no direct descendants. Of this union were born four sons and six daughters, of whom one son and four of the daughters are living at the present time, namely : Robert, Jr., who is one of Pittsburg's leading business men, and the practical successor of his father : Marion G. Jen-
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kins; Elizabeth, wife of Rev. H. L. McMurray, pastor of the Lutheran church in Ligonier, Pennsylvania : Mary, wife of W. II. Hagus, of Connellsville, Pennsylvania, and Jennie Morton Jenkins, of Pittsburg.
JONATHAN E. WOODBRIDGE.
While Rev. Timothy Woodbridge, D. D., in his "Autobiography of a Blind Preacher," states that a genealogist of distinguished reputa- tion has asserted that the family is descended from the great Earl of Warwick, "the King Maker," the hero of Bulwer's "Last of the Barons," the New England family finds as its first representative the Rev. John Woodbridge, of Stanton, Wiltshire. England, whose wife was a daughter of Rev. Robert Parker.
Their son, John Woodbridge, born at Stanton, 1613, when he attained manhood in 1634. emigrated to the colonies, locating at New- bury, Massachusetts, and in 1638 married Mercy Dudley, daughter of Thomas and Dorothy Dudley, the father having served three terms as governor and a like number of terms as deputy governor of the colony. John Woodbridge entered Harvard University, and graduated there- from with honors. For a number of years he was a justice of the peace, and elected repeatedly first magistrate of the colony. He died in March, 1695. To John and Mercy (Dudley) Woodbridge, among other chil- dren, was born John Woodbridge, the third, and to John (3) was born a son John (4), and to the latter (John 4) was born a son, Jahleel Wood- bridge.
Hon. Jahleel Woodbridge graduated from Princeton College, New Jersey, in 1761, located at Stockbridge. Massachusetts, where he be- came a man of position, serving in both houses of the legislature, was a captain in the Revolutionary struggle, an associate judge, and after-
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ward president judge of the court of common pleas, and for many years held the office of judge of probate for the county of Berkshire.1 While a student at Princeton he became enamored with Lucy Edwards. daughter of Dr. Jonathan Edwards, president of Princeton College, who was then a young lady in her twenty-fifth year. She was born August 31, 1736, and died in October, 1786. They were married in June, 1764. The eldest son of that marriage was Jonathan Wood- bridge.
Jonathan Woodbridge was born at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in 1766, and married Sarah Meach. He was a man of affairs in his native place, and was brigadier general of the militia of the state. He died in 1808. His son. Rev. George Woodbridge, was born in Worthington, Massachusetts, in 1804, his father dying when his son was an infant of only four years. When about sixteen. George Woodbridge was ad- mitted to the United States Military Academy at West Point, and graduated therefrom the sixth in the fourteenth class sent forth from that institution July 1. 1822. He was brevetted second lieutenant in the First Artillery ; July 1. 1826, he was commissioned second lieutenant. Third Artillery; resigned from the service June 30, 1828 .? He studied theology, received holy orders, and was rector of Monumental church, at Richmond, Virginia. for forty-five years. Rev. Dr. Woodbridge was one of the trustees of William and Mary College, was one of the examiners of the Alexandria Theological Seminary and president of the
1Edward Bellamy, in his novel, "The Duke of Stockbridge," describes the Iwo- story red house of Squire Jahleel Woodbridge (the great-grandfather of J. Edwards Woodbridge, of Chester, Pennsylvania), and gives him prominence in the story, as he also does to Timothy Edwards. Aaron Burr, Justice Elijah Dwight and other his- torical characters, whose lines of ancestry are those of J. Edwards Woodbridge. William Woodbridge, the second governor of Michigan, runs in the main the same ancestral descent.
"See Heitman's "Historical Register and Dietionary of the United States Army." Vol. I. p. 1056.
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Virginia Bible Society. The degree of Doctor of Divinity was con- ferred upon him by William and Mary College. Rev. George Wood- bridge died February 14, 1878. He married Rebecca Nicolson, and among the children born to that union was Jonathan Edwards Wood- bridge, of Chester, Pennsylvania.
The Dudley line is one that extends back into the Saxon period of English history. The family is said to trace descent from King Athelstan, the grandson of Alfred the Great, who was also known as "Dudo," hence Dudley Castle, built by him early in the ninth century, the oldest ruins in Great Britain, was so called because located at Dudo's lea or leigh, which finally assumed the name Dudley, and became the surname of the branch of his descendants to whom that estate belonged. The title is the Earldom of Leicester. It was Robert Dudley. Earl of Leicester, who entertained Queen Elizabeth at Kenil- worth, as related by Sir Walter Scott in his famous novel of that name. Captain Roger Dudley, a Huguenot adherent, was slain in France in an engagement antedating the battle of Ivry seven years. His son Thomas Dudley was born in Northamptonshire. in 1576. The latter and his wife Dorothy Dudley, were passengers on the ship "Arbella," landing at Salem, Massachusetts, June 12, 1630. He settled at Newtown, afterwards known as Cambridge. From him Oliver Wendell Holmes is descended. Governor Dudley's daughter AAnn married Governor Simon Bradstreet, and she holds place in our literature as the first American poetess. Mercy, another daughter, became the wife of . John Wood- bridge, as already stated. Governor Thomas Dudley died July 31, 1654. aged seventy-seven years.
The Edwards family is of Welsh origin. The first of the name known in that line is the Rev. Richard Edwards, D. D., of London, whose widow. Ann, married James Coles. and with her husband, ac-
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companied by William Edwards, then a young man, her son by her first husband, emigrated to the colonies, settling in Hartford. Con- necticut, in 1645. William Edwards married, in 1645. Agnes Spencer. But one child was born to the marriage. Richard Edwards, whose birth occurred in May. 1647. He was a merchant in Hartford. Their son Richard was twice married, first to Elizabeth, daughter of William and Elizabeth Tuttle, of New Haven, and (second) to Mary Talcott, of Hartford. Richard Edwards died April 20, 1718. in his seventy- first year. Among the children born to the first marriage was Timothy Edwards, who married Esther Stoddard, of Northampton, Massa- chusetts, November 6, 1694. He graduated at Harvard in 1691, be- came a clergyman, settled at East Windsor. Connecticut, in 1694, and continued in one pastorate for over sixty years. He died January 27. 1758, aged eighty-nine years, and his wife on January 19, 1770, aged ninety-eight years. To that marriage were born ten daughters and one son, the latter being Jonathan Edwards, who Dr. Chalmers, Sir James Mackintosh and Dugal Stewart unite in declaring the most eminent metaphysician America has ever produced. a rank that is still accorded him.
Jonathan Edwards was born October 5. 1703, at East Windsor, Connecticut. He began the study of Latin when a child of six years. He graduated at Yale College in 1720, and before he was twenty years old he was assistant pastor of a Presbyterian, church at Northampton. Massachusetts, of which his grandfather, Rev. Mr. Stoddard. was in charge. He subsequently was pastor, but gave the congregation offense. for which he was dismissed. He then became a missionary among the Stockbridge Indians, and while so employed prepared his treatise on "The Freedom of the Will," which Mackintosh asserts is the greatest metaphysical work in any language. Mr. Edwards married, July 28.
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1727. Sarah Pierrepont, of New Haven. . He was inaugurated third pres- ident of Princeton College. New Jersey, February 16, 1758, and died from smallpox, March 22 of the same year. Ilis fourth daughter, Lucy, married Jahleel Woodbridge, as before stated.
In the Stoddard line J. E. Woodbridge is descended from Anthony Stoddard, who came from the west of England, locating in Boston. He had four wives, the first being Mary Downing, a sister of Sir George Downing. To that marriage was born in 1643 a son. Rev. Solomon Stoddard, who. succeeding to the church of which Mr. Mathers had been pastor, married his predecessor's widow. Esther Mathers, the daughter of Rev. John Warham. To that marriage was born Esther Stoddard, who in 1694 became the wife of Timothy Edwards, and mother of the distinguished Jonathan Edwards.
Mrs. Rebecca Woodbridge, mother of Jonathan Edwards Wood- bridge, was a daughter of Andrew Nicolson, of Richmond, Virginia. owner of the Clover Hills Coal Pits in Chesterfield county. Virginia, whose wife, Judith Diggs, was the granddaughter of Dudley Diggs. of Bellefield. a member of the house of burgesses, and who held many places of trust and honor in colonial Virginia. Dudley Diggs was a grandson of Edward Diggs. (See genealogical sketch accompanying this.)
Jonathan Edwards Woodbridge, son of Rev. George and Rebecca ( Nicolson) Woodbridge: was born in Richmond, Virginia, January 16, 184.4, and when seventeen, in 1861, entered as a cadet the Virginia Military Institute at Lexington, from which he graduated in the class of 1865. While in attendance there, the cadets were called to the field by President Davis, to repel the advance of General Sigel up the valley of the Shenandoah, and were ordered to join the column commanded by General John C. Breckenridge. At the battle of New Market, young
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Woodbridge, who was sergeant major of the Battalion of Cadets of the Virginia Military Institute, exhibited conspicuous gallantry.1 The cadets, who fought with the utmost bravery, capturing a Union bat- tery in a splendid dash in which they lost heavily, were complimented by General Breckenridge, while the veteran soldiers of the South cheered "the baby boys," as the battalion had been termed when it first reported for duty in actual war. The cadets served during the remainder of that struggle. taking part in several engagements, and were the last troops withdrawn from the fortifications below Richmond when that city was evacuated by the Confederate forces, Sunday night. April 2. 1865. During the entire campaign Mr. Woodbridge was in active service and took part in every battle in which the battalion was engaged. After graduation Mr. Woodbridge removed to Chester, Pennsylvania, where he entered the drafting department of the ship- building yards of Raney, Son & Archibald, and continued in the same employment after the plant was purchased by the late John Roach, when it obtained world-wide reputation as the Delaware River Iron Shipbuilding and Engine Works, in all covering twenty years. In 1885 Mr. Woodbridge entered the U. S. government service in civil capacity and was employed at the noted Cramp shipbuilding establishment in Philadelphia. For nearly forty years he has been employed as a naval architect and mechanical engineer, during which time he has been en- gaged in the construction of many of the largest and finest vessels in the American merchant marine, as well as most of the great fighting ships of the United States navy .
'John S. Wise gave this account of the incident: "At-ten-tion-n-n! Battalion forward! Guide center-r-r! shouted Shipp, and up the slope we started. From the left of the line, Sergeant Major Woodbridge ran ont and posted himself forty paces in advance of the colors as directing guide, as if it had been upon the drill grounds That boy would have remained there. had not Shipp ordered him back to his post, for this was no dress parade."-" The End of an Era," p. 298.
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May, 1876, Mr. Woodbridge married Louise, only daughter of John Odenheimer Deshong, an influential and wealthy citizen of Chester. The private residence of Mr. Woodbridge is by many persons regarded as the best specimen of modern house architecture in the city.
THE DIGGS LINE. Edward Diggs, a descendant of one of the most ancient and distinguished families of English gentry, and son of Sir Dudley Diggs, of Chilham, Kent. Master of the Rolls, was bred to the bar, being admitted to Gray's Inn on May 19, 1637, and came to Virginia in or before 1654. and November 22 of that year was chosen a member of the Council. the House of Burgesses declaring that he had "given signal testimony of his fidelity to this Colony and the Commonwealth of England." On March 30, 1655. he was elected governor, and served until March 13, 1658, when he was sent to Eng- land as one of the agents of the colony. In a letter to Cromwell the assembly praised him for the "moderation, prudence and justice with which he had conducted the government." The restoration did not affect his position. for he remained a member of the council until his death. In 1664 he was again one of the agents of Virginia in England, and in 1670, when a vacancy occurred he was appointed auditor general. the reversion of which he had been long before granted. He was active in promoting the prosperity of the colony, and was especially interested in the silk culture. "importing two Armenians who were skilled in the business." He lived at Bellefield. York county, where his tomb remains. He married Elizabeth Page. Colonel John Page in his will names his sister Elizabeth Diggs.
The eldest son William, after being a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, removed to Maryland and became a prominent member of the council of that colony, while a younger son, Dudley Diggs ( 1663-1710) inherited Bellefield, and was appointed a member
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of the council in 1698, and auditor and surveyor-general in 1705. By his wife, Susanna, daughter of Colonel William Cole, of "Bolthorpe," Warwick county, he had & son, Cole Diggs, of "Bellefield" (died 1744). who was appointed to the Council in 1719, and became president of that body.
His son. Dudley Diggs, of York county and Williamsburg, was one of the leading men during the Revolutionary period in Virginia. Ile was a member of the House of Burgesses from York county from 1753 to 1772. continuously: member of the conventions of 1775 and 1776; of the committees of safety and correspondence; and elected to the first state council. a member of which he remained during the war. He married Martha Armstead, and was the father of Martha, born August 10. 1757, who married Captain Nathaniel Burwell.
Dudley Diggs married twice : his second wife was Judith Wormley. of Rosegill. Judith Diggs, daughter of Dudley Diggs and Judith Wormley, married Andrew Nicolson. The third daughter of Andrew Nicolson and Judith ( Wormley) Nicolson was Rebecca Nicolson. who married the Rev. George Woodbridge. the parents of Jonathan Edwards Woodbridge, of Chester. Pennsylvania, their fourth child.
WILLIAM HALL HODGSON.
William Hall Hodgson, of West Chester, Pennsylvania, is a native of the state, born in Doylestown. Bucks county, October 15. 1830.
His father. John Hodgson, came from England to America when five years of age, with his father, William, and mother, Ann, a brother. Francis, and sisters, Sarah, Ann, Mary and Jane. In this country three more children were born to them: Benjamin, William and Esther.
John Hodgson, father of the family, learned the printing trade in
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the office of the l'illage Record, in West Chester, and soon after went to Doylestown, Bucks county, where he worked as a compositor on the Intelligencer of that place.
There he was married to Elizabeth Hall, and after a time located in Norristown, Pennsylvania, and purchased the Herald, which he published for a few years, then selling it and removing to Philadelphia to engage in mercantile pursuits, and there it was that his wife died. She was the mother of five children, namely: William (the subject), Elizabeth, Annie, Charles and John: of these all are now deceased ex- cepting William and Elizabeth, the latter being the wife of J. Atwood Pyle, ex-postmaster of West Grove, Pennsylvania. All of the sons, like their father, learned the printing trade, and it is worthy of men- tion that all of the three children deceased died from accidental causes.
In 1842 John Hodgson, the father of the family named, returned to West Chester and established The Jeffersonian, a Democratic weekly which is still in existence, the property of the son William. Mr. Hodg- son remained owner of this paper until he disposed of it to his sons, William and Charles, hie continuing in the capacity of its editor up to 1865. when his son William became its sole proprietor.
In 1857 John Hodgson was elected a Democratic member of the Pennsylvania legislature, at which time the two political parties were so evenly balanced in strength as to require the change of only a few votes to win victory. He died in 1877, in Chester, Pennsylvania, shortly after establishing the Times, which is now a prosperous paper of that city.
William H. Hodgson. eldest son of John Hodgson, became ap- prenticed to the trade of printing when he was only twelve years of age, and up to this time he has never engaged in any other business.
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As an artist in the "art preservative," Mr. Hodgson has always been regarded by members of the craft as well as the general public. a master. Because of his clean and intelligent work and the excellent taste displayed by him in job printing and in the "make up" of his newspaper. he has won the distinction of bringing into these lines examples which have been of value to his fellows, as well as a means of education to all who have been brought in contact with the results of his painstaking efforts. In 1872, on November 19, the West Chester Daily Local News was started by him as publisher, with W. W. Thomson as editor, and these names have been uninterruptedly at the head of the paper up to this time. a period of nearly thirty-two years. In this connection it is not out of place to mention that the business manager, all of the reportorial corps, the foreman, pressman and several others in the various departments of the paper. have been in their re- spective positions from twenty to twenty-eight years, thus proving that such ties of association could not have existed but for a mutual respect and satisfaction felt alike by employer and employes.
The News has won a place in the affections and esteem of the people of Chester county and in many places beyond the county line. because of its newsy features, its fairness to all parties and sects, and its correct manner of serving its clientage, which is the largest of any of the inland dailies in Pennsylvania. Its equipment in the way of presses, typesetting machines and other features necessary to the pub- lication is not surpassed in any borough in the United States, and its general success is a marvel to newspaper makers throughout the country. This enviable position it has won upon its merits; by a strict attention to business, and an unfaltering determination to make it a paper for the people. a fireside necessity, and a welcome daily visitor to the homes of an enlightened public.
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