USA > Pennsylvania > Luzerne County > Families of the Wyoming Valley: biographical, genealogical and historical. Sketches of the bench and bar of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, vol. I > Part 17
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academies. It is not contended that to the trio of gentlemen we have named is due the sole credit of bringing the schools to their present state of perfection. Wilkes-Barre has a present popula- tion of perhaps 30,000. It is one of the most important industrial centers in the State. Many of its citizens are possessed of great wealth. And it has an exceptionally bright future. In such a city all possible opportunities for general education at the public expense were certain to come sooner or later. Messrs. Miles, Rhone, and the writer were but the initiators of the remarkable improvements in the system which have since been effected. They merely hastened the glad coming. The beginning of their term saw, as already stated, but 187 scholars in the schools. By the close of its first year the number had increased to 676. To- day Wilkes-Barre is educating 4,883 of her boys and girls in the three school districts of the city, and has seventy-four schools in operation.
In 1867, Judge Rhone was again an applicant for the Demo- cratic nomination for District Attorney. This time he achieved his ambition, successfully running the gauntlet of the convention, and being chosen at the ensuing election by a majority of 2,916 over his Republican competitor, A. M. Bailey, Esq. He was a masterly pleader for the Commonwealth, and earned and was accorded universal commendation for his faithful performance of that duty.
In 1868, Judge Rhone was appointed one of the Board of Trustees of the Franklin Street Methodist Episcopal Church, of which he is a consistent me nber.
In October, 1872, he was elected a member of the Constitu- tional Convention from the Thirteenth district. He took his seat in that body on the 12th of the succeeding month. The follow- ing day he tendered his resignation, which was accepted. The convention elected Hon. Caleb E. Wright to fill the vacancy thus created. Judge Rhone had consented to serve in the convention under the impression that its sessions would not consume a period of more than six months. Before it assembled, however, it be- came apparent that a full year at least would be required for a proper performance of the grave work in hand. He was not a man of means, but he had a rapidly growing practice which he
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did not feel that he could afford to neglect. Neither did he think it would be fair to the people of his district, or to the State, for him to neglect the convention for the sake of his clients. One or the other, however, he was convinced he would have to neg- lect; hence his resignation.
Though Judge Rhone found himself unable to do anything for or in the convention, the convention did something for him in making constitutional provision for the creation of separate Orphans' Courts in the larger counties. Under this provision, at the first session of the Legislature after the adoption of the con- stitution, Luzerne county was made a separate Orphans' Court district. In 1874, Judge Rhone was nominated for Judge thereof. His contestants for the honor of the Democratic nomination were Hon. Caleb E. Wright and Michael Regan, Esq. Judge Rhone was nominated on the first ballot, receiving fifty-eight votes in excess of the combined strength of the other two. The Repub- lican nominee was Hon. Charles' E. Rice, the present President Judge of Luzerne county. At the polls, Judge Rhone had 1,482 majority.
On the 6th of December, 1861, Judge Rhone married Emma Hale Kinsey, daughter of John Kinsey, of Montgomery Station, Lycoming county, Pa., and a sister of L. C. Kinsey, a member of the Luzerne bar. She died February 18, 1878. A daughter, Mary Panthea, is the only surviving issue of this marriage.
On the 31st day of December, 1879, he was again mar- ried, this time to Rosamond L. Dodson, a daughter of Osborne Dodson, of the township of Huntington. This union yielded him another daughter, who is named after her mother's cousin, Alice Buckalew, daughter of Hon. C. R. Buckalew, of Columbia county. Mrs. Rhone is a descendant of Samuel Dodson, who, in 1780, was a resident of Penn township, Northampton county (now Mahoning township, Carbon county), Pennsylvania. At that date, with a settlement here and there, it was the frontier of Pennsylvania, and not far from where Fort Allen (now Weissport) was erected. Her greatgrandfather, Joseph Dodson, located in Huntington township, on the farm where he died, in 1851; and in that township her father, Osborne Dodson, was born and buried. Her grandfather, Samuel Dodson, is still living, aged 80.
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She was born in Downieville, Sierra county, California, during the residence of her father in that State, while acting as a civil engineer. An incident occurred in connection with the Dodson family while they were residents of Northampton county that is worth relating here. Benjamin Gilbert, a Quaker from Byberry, near the city of Philadelphia, in 1775, removed with his family to a farm on Mahoning creek, five or six miles from Fort Allen. He was soon comfortably situated, with a good. log dwelling house, barn, saw and grist mill. The Gilbert family, consisting of eleven persons, were alarmed about sunrise on the -25th day of April, 1780, the year after Sullivan's expedition, by a party of eleven Indians, whose appearance struck them with terror. To attempt to escape was death. The Indians who made this incursion were of different tribes or nations, who had abandoned their country on the approach of Gen. Sullivan's army, and fled within command of the British forts in Canada, promiscuously settling within their neighborhood, and, according to Indian cus- tom of carrying on war, frequently invading the frontier settle- ments, taking captive the weak and defenseless. They made captives of the Gilbert family, consisting of Mr. Gilbert, his wife, three sons, two daughters, two daughters-in-law, a servant, and Benjamin Gilbert, son of John Gilbert, of Philadelphia. Abigail Dodson, a daughter of Samuel Dodson, first above mentioned, aged fourteen, lived with her father on a farm about one mile distant from the mill, and who came that morning with grist, was also captured. The Indians proceeded about half a mile, and captured the Peart family, consisting of three persons. The for- lorn band were dragged over the wild and rugged region between the Lehigh and Chemung rivers, while their beds were hemlock branches strewed on the ground and blankets for a covering. They were often ready to faint by the way, but the cruel threat of immediate death urged them again to the march. They reached Niagara on May 25. Abigail Dodson was given to one of the families of the Cayuga nation, and was finally surrendered to her relatives at a place now known as the city of Detroit, Michigan, after having been in captivity about three years. In September, 1780, occurred what was then called the Scotch (now Sugarloaf) Valley massacre. A company of thirty-three men,
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under Captain Klader or Myers, had come up from the south- eastern part of the State, crossing over Broad and Buck mountains, passed down through the ravine southeast from Conyngham, and halted at the spring, now owned by the Conyngham Water Co., north of the road and west of the Little Nescopeck creek where it crosses the Butler road, on the east side of Conyngham. Feel- ing, no doubt, a degree of safety, the little band set their guns around a tree, and were refreshing the inner man with the pure water from the spring. While thus employed, they suddenly found themselves separated from their trusty old firelocks by a band of Indians, with here and there a heartless tory among them. The enemy had come down through the same ravine, and, taking the troops at such disadvantage, completely discom- fited them. The Indians took thirteen scalps, and all the sur- vivors were made prisoners. They then burnt several buildings, and escaped to Niagara. The massacre occurring after the cap- ture of Abigail Dodson, she obtained her information from a prisoner in Canada, whom the savages spared and turned over to the British, and she told the story as here given. She afterwards married Peter Brink, of Huntington township, and lived to a good old age.
The mother of Mrs. Rhone is Lucy Miller Dodson, nee Wads- worth, a granddaughter of Epaphras Wadsworth, a Revolutionary soldier, who located in Huntington township, near Town Hill, in 1794. He was the first blacksmith in the township, and was also the pioneer horticulturist, having set out an orchard on his lot in 1799, in which most of the trees are still in bearing, and afford a good quality of fruit. Mr. Wadsworth was quite an extensive land operator for those days, and was a local preacher of the Methodist Episcopal Church, as was also his son, Epaphras, her father.
As a lawyer, Judge Rhone ranks with the brightest in the profession. As a judge, he is patient, painstaking, rigorous, and severely impartial. He is a tireless student, and intensely methodical. It was these qualities that enabled him to organize the Orphans' Court of Luzerne county on such a basis, and to so conduct its operations as that, at the expiration of a very few years, its machinery was moving with the precision of clock-work.
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Attorneys who had been practicing for a quarter of a century found their accounts returned to them to be reconstructed in stricter accordance with the terms of the law. Judge Rhone was not the man to make fish of one and flesh of another. He treated all alike. He had acquainted himself thoroughly with every detail of Orphans' Court practice, and insisted that all, attorneys, executors, administrators, guardians, or whoever else had business in his court, should conform rigidly to the requirements of every law and rule. He scrutinized the accounts of guardians with exceptional care, and a few years ago elicited commendation from every quarter of the State by disallowing, in a certain case, an excessive bill for funeral expenses, which would have absorbed nearly the whole of the decedent's estate, and declaring that if administrators in his court had a hankering for costly funerals they must appease it at their own expense, as they would not be allowed to rob orphans of their meagre inheritance for such a purpose. In this and other ways Judge Rhone has labored con- scientiously, earnestly, and fearlessly to make the Orphans' Court a protection to its wards, instead of the curse and cost such courts have too frequently proven.
The crowning achievement of Judge Rhone's career, and the one by which he will become most widely known, is, however, his recent compilation and issuance of two large volumes on the subject of Orphans' Court practice, the only work of the kind that has been published, except Scott on Intestates, since Hood on Executors made its appearance in 1847. There are other treatises on Orphans' Court law extant, but none are so complete and efficacious a guide to the profession as Judge Rhone's "Practice and Process in the Orphans' Courts of Pennsylvania," which, to use the author's words, embraces also "the laws relating to the settlement and distribution of the estates of decedents, the management of the estates of minors, and the construction of testamentary trusts and wills in the Courts of Common Pleas and Equity." Next after completeness of detail and precision of statement, the value of a work on law and its practice depends most largely upon a systematic arrangement of the subjects treated. So admirably has the method followed by Judge Rhone in his book met this necessity, that he who opens it for informa -
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tion will find grouped under its proper title (the titles being alphabetically arranged) everything appertaining thereto-the law, the forms, the rules of procedure, and the pertinent decisions, the whole compressed into the fewest possible words, and yet fully and clearly explained. A few weeks after the book came from the press, a Luzerne countian happened into the office of the publishers. A lawyer and his client, a farmer from one of the upper counties, entered a few minutes later. A copy of the book lay upon the table. The client picked it up and opened it. After a few moments had elapsed, he turned to his adviser, a pleased smile overspreading his countenance, and said: "See here, J_, this is just what we want; this is the whole thing in a nut shell." The limb of the law took the book, read what his client pointed out, and responded: "With the aid of this work any man of ordi- nary intelligence can be his own lawyer, so far at least as Orphans' - Court business goes." Over four thousand cases are cited in the work, and the point of each decision is stated, not in the language of the syllabus, so often inaccurate, but in the Judge's own clear and forcible style. The first edition of one thousand copies is already nearly exhausted.
At the bar, on the bench, and in the field of legal literature, Judge Rhone, comparatively young as he still is, has achieved, not success only, but distinction. He is a man of medium height and slight build. His face betrays the French in his origin. His habits are sedentary. He studies as he walks the streets. Yet, upon occasion, he is a most genial companion, witty himself, and quick to recognize and appreciate wit in others. He enjoys, as he merits, the esteem of all who know him.
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CHARLES DORRANCE FOSTER.
Charles Dorrance Foster is a native of the township of Dallas, Luzerne county, Pa., where he was born, November 25, 1836.
His father was Phineas Nash Foster, whose birthplace was at Montpelier, Vt., where he was ushered into the world in the year 1796. When Phineas was but seven years of age, that is to say in 1803, he was brought by his father, Edward, the grandfather of our subject, to this valley. Phineas lived more than three- quarters of a century on his farm in Jackson township, and died there. He was one of the solid men of the county, exerting at . all times a marked influence among his neighbors, and manifest- ing in an unostentatious and useful life the many virtues of his Green Mountain ancestry.
On the 26th of July, 1637, from the ship " Hector," a company landed at Boston, Mass., formed principally by merchants of London, whose wealth and standing at home entitled them to come out under more favorable auspices than any company that had hitherto sought our shores. They were accompanied by the Rev. John Davenport as their pastor, and are supposed to have been mostly members of his church and congregation in London (Coleman street). The leaders were men of good, practical under- standing, and had probably provided for the anticipated wants of an infant colony by bringing with them inen skilled in such arts as were likely to be most needed. In that company came Thomas Nash with a wife and five children. He was by occupation a gunsmith, a trade which admitted of an easy transition to that of blacksmith, thus rendering him doubly useful to a people whose situation required that both arms and instruments of husbandry should be kept in repair.
The people of Massachusetts Bay were solicitous that this company should choose a location within their limits, and made very advantageous offers to induce them to do so. But, being resolved to plant a new colony, they, in the fall of that year, sent out Mr. Eaton and others of their company to explore. This
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committee selected a place called Quinipiac (now New Haven), then owned by a small tribe of Indians, whose principal chief was Momauguin. In March, 1638, the whole company sailed from Boston, and in about a fortnight landed at Quinipiac. In November following they entered into an agreement with Momauguin and his counsellors for the purchase of the lands. They appear not to have been in haste to settle the form of gov- ernment, but spent the first summer and winter in erecting the necessary buildings, laying out their lands, and in other respects preparing for a permanent residence. On the 4th of June, 1639, they met together in Mr. Newman's barn, and after solemn relig- ious exercises drew up what they termed a "fundamental agree- ment" for the regulation of the civil and religious affairs of the colony. This instrument was signed on the spot by sixty-three individuals. It was then copied, names and all, into the Book of Records, and afterwards to have been signed by forty-eight others in the book. Thomas Nash's name is the third of these after subscribers. The alleged early resolve of the New Haven colonists "to adopt the law of God until they should have time to make a better," has been the subject of much merriment, and many have been the sneers at the absurdity of it. The following extract probably constitutes the passage which gave rise to the story: "Att a Gen. Court, held att Newhaven, the 2d of March, 1641," in the decision of a perplexing case, the court laid it down as a principle, "According to the fundamental agreem't made and published by the full and gen'l consent when the plantation began and government was settled, thatt the judiciall Law of God, given by Moses, and expounded in other parts of Scriptures, so far as itt is a hedg and a fence to the Morall Law, and neither ceremonial nor typical, nor had any reference to Canaan, hath an everlasting equity in it, and shall be the rule of their proceedings."
Thomas Nash was probably one of the congregation of Rev. John Robinson at Leyden, Holland, part of whom were the first settlers at Plymouth, 1620. November 30, 1625, five of those at Leyden addressed a letter to their brethren at Plymouth, and signed it as brethren in the Lord. One of the five was Thomas Nash, and it is possible that he found his way back to England and came over with the New Haven settlers some years after.
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He died May 12, 1658, and in his will, made in 1657, he expressly mentions his old age.
Timothy Nash, usually called Lieut. Timothy Nash, was the youngest son of Thomas Nash, and was born in England, or at Leyden, in Holland, in 1626. The first notice of him in the records of New Haven appears to be the following, dated the 3d of December, 1645: "Bro. Thomas Nash for his son's absence at a generall trayning pleaded his necessity of business in fetch- ing home his hay by watter. The court overruled, and ordered him to pay his fine." His wife, Rebekah, was the daughter of the Rev. Samuel Stone, of Hartford. The last mention of him in the records of New Haven is dated April 23, 1660, when he was fined for absence from town meeting. He subsequently removed to Hadley, Mass., where he was frequently employed in town affairs, and held the office of Lieutenant in the militia, He rep- resented the town of Hadley at the General Court of Massachu- setts in 1690, 1691, and 1695. He died March 13, 1699.
Daniel Nash, son of Lieut. Timothy Nash, was born in 1676. He died at Great Barrington, Mass., March 10, 1760.
Phinehas Nash, youngest son of Daniel Nash, was born in 1726. He spent a portion of his youthful days in Greenfield, Deerfield, and Sunderland, Mass., and taught school there. His marriage is recorded in Sheffield, and he was taxed in Great Barrington in 1762. He removed to Plymouth, Pa., five or six years before the Massacre at Wyoming, and was residing there at the time of that occurrence. His son, Asahel, was in the fight. He (Phinehas) was one of the three first directors appointed for Plymouth under the frame of law adopted and promulgated by the Susquehanna company in June, 1773, and in 1774 was voted at a town meeting one of the twelve grand jurors for that year. Hon. Hendrick B. Wright, in his "History of Plymouth," says: "I have not been able to ascertain, after diligent inquiry, where our first Triumvirate held their court. Phinehas Nash, Captain David Marvin, and J. Gaylord, clothed as they were with the municipal power of Plymouth, must have had a court, and undoubtedly a whipping post and stocks; but the locality of these things, deemed neces- sary in a past age, has become somewhat obscure. These men and their successors were to Plymouth what the three Triumvirs
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were to Rome after the fall of Cæsar, or the three Consuls to France who preceded the first Empire. Holding, therefore, the commissions of the peace and the balances of justice for old Ply- mouth, it is to be regretted that not only the records of their court, but the place of administration, are gone." After the Massacre he returned and spent a few years in Massachusetts or Connecticut, but he returned again to Wyoming, where his wife died. In his eighty-third year he left Wyoming and rode on horseback four hundred miles to Shelburn, Vt., where his son, Asahel, then resided. He died at Greenfield, Saratoga county, N. Y., in 1824, aged ninety-eight. He married, May 15, 1755, Mary Hamlin, of Sheffield, Mass. His daughter, Lowly, the grandmother of the subject of our sketch, was born December 12, 1760. She was married, February 10, 1791, to Edward Foster, the grandfather of Chas. D. Foster. They removed to Wyoming in 1803, where Mrs. Foster died October 10, 1852. Edward Foster died in 1814.
The mother of Mr. Foster was Mary Bailey Foster, daughter of Jacob Johnson, the third. Her first husband was Albon Bul- ford, who soon left her a widow. She then became the wife of Phineas Nash Foster and the mother of Charles D.
No biographical facts are more important, or, as a rule, more interesting, than those which trace the subject as far back to the stock from which he came as the preserved records will permit. The origin of the vast, and, in many respects, remarkable, Amer- ican family of Johnsons, or that branch of it of which Mrs. Foster was a descendant, is full of interest.
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Fitz John came from Normandy to England with William the Conquerer in the eleventh century, and settled in the north of the island. It was customary before the conquest to change names by the addition of the syllable "son." Thus we find in the time of Edward the Confessor, if not earlier, the name Gamelson, and others similarly constructed. The Norman Fitz, a corruption of fils, was used in the same way, and was the fashion sometimes adopted by the conquered Saxons. Thus Fitz Harding, meaning the same, became Hardingson, and Fitz John, Johnson.
The Fitz John mentioned above changed his name to Johnson, and had a numerous family. One branch of it went to Scotland,
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where the name became common. Some of these added a "t," and made it Johnston. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth a branch emigrated to Ireland, and also became numerous. Sir William Johnson was of this branch. In later ages the family were settled in Kingston-on-Hull. At the time of Dr. Johnson's visit as agent from Connecticut to England he found the name almost extinct, there being but one (a maiden lady of thirty years) left in the place. On visiting the church-yard, however, he dis- covered a large number of tombstones and monuments with the name of Johnson inscribed upon them. Three brothers had gone from Kingston to North America, one of whom, a clergyman, settled near Boston, and was afterwards killed by the Indians. He left a considerable family, from whom have descended most of the name in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. One settled in the western part of Connecticut. Most of his descendants went to New Jersey, and were numerous. Robert, the third brother, settled in New Haven, Conn., and was one of its first founders.
William Johnson, son of Robert, the emigrant, appeared early in New Haven. He was one of the original subscribers to the compact for the settlement of Wallingford, Conn.
Jacob Johnson, son of William, married Abigail Hitchcock, December 14, 1693. He was a tailor by trade, and died July 26, 1749, aged eighty years.
Rev. Jacob Johnson, born April, 1713, was the tenth child of Jacob Johnson. His son, Jacob, was the father of Mrs. Foster.
Rev. Jacob Johnson, or Jacob Johnson, the second, as he is sometimes called, was one of the most conspicuous characters in the early history of Wyoming. In the year 1772 he was a resi- dent of Groton, Conn., and on the 11th of August, of that year, a town meeting was held in Wilkes-Barre to consider the religious needs of the community, and it was voted to invite Mr. Johnson to "come and labor with the people as their pastor." The invi- tation was accepted. A year later, August 23, 1773, his minis- trations having, in the meantime, been eminently satisfactory to his flock, he was invited to permanently settle in Wilkes-Barre; and this was the first actual settlement of any minister of the gospel west of the Blue Mountains, in the territory now com- prising the State of Pennsylvania. Mr. Johnson held to the
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tenets of the New England Congregationalists, which, for more than fifty years, constituted the prevailing religion of the people of the valley. In 1778 a meeting-house had been nearly com- pleted, when it was swept away by the Indians. Mr. Johnson's contract with his parishoners was for a salary of £60 the first year, and £5 a year additional until it should reach £100, besides which a liberal donation in land was made him. He seems to have been especially fitted to the place and the people. He was born in Wallingford, Conn., in 1713, graduated at Yale in '40, and was ordained in '49. After serving as pastor at New Groton (now Ledyard), Conn., he became a missionary among the Oneida Indians, on the Mohawk, quickly acquired their language, and exerted over them a strong influence. The Indians conceived both respect and liking for him, and he was frequently employed by them as interpreter when important treaty negotiations were to be entered into. Conrad Weiser feared his influence with the Indians, for when Penn, in 1768, sought to obtain a relinquish- ment from the Six Nations of their title to the lands on the upper Susquehanna, he wrote Penn to "beware of the wicked priest of Canojoharie," lest he might frustrate the design. When Forty Fort was capitulated, after the dreadful massacre, Mr. Johnson and Col. Denison were chosen commissioners to treat with the invaders. The articles of capitulation were written by him, and, under the circumstances, the terms were highly creditable to the judgment and courage of himself and his co-commissioner. His oldest daughter was the wife of Col. Zebulon Butler, the American commander, and escaped with him after the battle, riding behind him on his horse, with a bed for a saddle, through the wilderness. Mr. Johnson fled with the rest of his family to Connecticut, as did most of the other settlers, but returned, in 1781, a zealous expounder of the gospel, an ardent patriot, and a determined contestant for the rights of the Connecticut settlers in their con- flict with the Pennsylvania claimants. So pronounced was he in this latter particular, so vigorous in his denunciations of the Pennamites, that he was arrested in 1784, and held to bail to answer the charge of sedition, but the case was never brought to trial. He labored earnestly for the building of Wilkes-Barre's first church, but did not live to see its completion. On March
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