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 23
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45
John Moss, Jr., son of John the emigrant, was born October 12, 1650; died March 31, 1717; married Martha Lathrop, and resided in New Haven and Wallingford.
Solomon Moss, son of John and Martha Moss, was born July 9, 1690; died October 10, 1752. He married for his first wife Ruth Peck, who died March 29, 1728, at Wallingford.
Solomon Moss, Jr., son of Solomon and Ruth Moss, was born October 31, 1719; died in 1755. He married Elizabeth Fenn, November 30, 1743. He was jailor at New Haven, and died suddenly at Nine Partners.
Moses Moss, son of Solomon and Elizabeth Moss, was born August 15, 1751, at Nine Partners; died May 7, 1847. He mar- ried Mary Dutton, November 20, 1775.
Asahel Morse, son of Moses and Mary Moss, was born Sep- tember 16, 1778, and died October 19, 1827. He married Rhoda Lewis, May 11, 1801. He resided at Litchfield, Conn.
Aldson Morse, son of Asahel Morse, was born at Litchfield, Conn., May 20, 1811. He removed to Wilkes-Barre in 1835, and until the time of his death, July 22, 1874, was a prominent citizen of Wilkes-Barre. He was actively connected with the First Presbyterian Church of this city. Mr. Morse was married twice. His first wife, who died childless, was Eliza Fairchild, of
247
EDWARD KENDALL MORSE.
New Britain, Conn. He married for a second wife Marcia Ken- dall, daughter of Joshua Kendall, of Granby, Conn. She is the mother of the subject of our sketch. Mr. Morse's only other child is Jennie Fenn Dana, wife of George S. Dana, of Utica, N. Y.
Edward K. Morse was educated at Wyoming Seminary, Kingston, Pa .; studied law with Andrew T. McClintock, of this city, and was admitted to the bar of Luzerne county, May 2, 1864. During the late civil war he was a member of Captain Ricketts' Company I, Third Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers. This was during the Sharpsburg campaign, in 1862. In 1863 he was a member of Captain Finch's Company K, Thirtieth Regi- ment Pennsylvania Volunteers. He filled the position of quar- termaster's clerk. This was known as the Gettysburg campaign. He enlisted under Captain Ricketts, but as the latter refused to be sworn into the service of the United States, E. W. Finch, of this city, was elected to fill the vacancy.
Mr. Morse continued in the practice of his profession for about six years, devoting himself wholly to what is known as office practice. He had no inclination whatever for those forensic dis- plays which serve most frequently to bring lawyers to the notice of the public. He possessed, however, an admirable conception of the branch of duties to which he applied himself, especially of conveyancing; wrote an excellent hand; and would probably have achieved both profit and distinction therein had he adhered to them; but other and more congenial fields of labor, at the period stated, lured him out of the practice of the profession entirely.
Mr. Morse is a Democrat in politics, and, while not given to active campaigning, any more than he was to activity in what might be called the field work of the law, he nevertheless always takes a deep, quiet interest in the affairs of his party.
He is a gentleman of first rate general attainments ; possesses, by inheritance, a moderate fortune; and is one of the to-be-envied few, who, by happy content with what they have, are protected against the multiplied, grievous vexations of constant strife for more.
248
RUFUS JAMES BELL.
RUFUS JAMES BELL.
Rufus James Bell was born September 9, 1829, at Troy, N. Y. He was educated at Burr Seminary, Manchester, Vt., at Wil- liam's College, Williamstown, Mass., and at Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Mass., where he graduated in 1852. He was ad- mitted to practice at Albany, N. Y., in 1853, and until his removal to Wilkes-Barre in 1864, practiced in the city of New York. Mr. Bell is of New England descent, his grandfather, Jonathan Bell, as also his father, Ebenezer Bell, being natives of Stamford, Conn. His father removed to Troy, N. Y., and was a prominent merchant in that city. Mr. Bell was admitted to the bar of Luzerne county, September 27, 1864. He married April 25, 1860, Mary Catharine, daughter of the late O. B. Hillard, of this city. The fruits of this union are three children ; Oliver Hillard Bell, Mary Conyngham Bell, and Emma Gertrude Bell.
Mr. Bell is well known throughout Luzerne county, more, however, as a writer than as a practicing attorney: He was the first clerk to the upper end mine inspectors under the ventilation law and its supplements, and from the time of his appointment to that position has always been more or less actively identified with the labor movement in the county, of which the miners, constituting the most numerous branch of our workmen, have been at once the substance and the subject. During the years 1877 to '79, when the labor movement, having united with the greenbackers, so-called, in the formation of an independent party, played so important a part in our local and state politics, Mr. Bell served constantly on the party committees and as an editorial writer on their official organ, the Reformer. He is a writer of much force and fluency, and being radical in his convictions and enthusiastic by nature, indited, during the pendency of the power of the greenback-labor party, as it was named, many very elo- quent appeals to its followers, and many very bitter excoriations of the systems it antagonized. He was by odds the best of all the
249
GEORGE SHOEMAKER.
quill-wielders, so to speak, of the organization named, and the mainstay of their paper. Before connecting himself with the new party Mr. Bell had been a democrat (and is still one) and a fre- quent contributor to the Luserne Union, under the management of Beardslee & Co. He has not for some years been in active practice in his profession.
GEORGE SHOEMAKER.
George Shoemaker was born June 28, 1844, at Forty Fort, Luzerne county, Pa., where he now resides. His father was George Shoemaker, long a well known resident of Luzerne county, and a brother of Lazarus Denison Shoemaker, of the Luzerne county bar. The mother of George Shoemaker, Jr., was Rebecca, daughter of John Jones, of Berwick, Pa.
Mr. Shoemaker was educated at the Wyoming Seminary, Kingston, Pa., and at the High School, Freehold, N. J. He studied law with his uncle, L. D. Shoemaker, and was admitted to the bar of Luzerne county, January 6, 186 ;. He is now extensively engaged in agricultural pursuits and in the raising and sale of stock.
On October 10, 1873, Mr. Shoemaker was married to Ann E., daughter of John D. Hoyt, of Kingston. They have no children.
In a series of biographies of members of the legal profession, it is difficult to say much of one, who, though educated to the law and passing a creditable examination as to its principles, has never practiced. Mr. Shoemaker is a gentleman of quiet and unobtrusive demeanor, who, probably, would not have achieved much distinction as a pleader; but his correct business habits and his successful adventures in the financial and industrial world forbid the belief that, had he entered upon a practitioner's career, his advice would have been otherwise than safe and shrewd, and, as a consequence, largely sought and liberally compensated. He did not need, however, to burden himself with its trials and troubles. His inclinations led him to agriculture, and in that and
250
JAMES MAHON.
incidental fields of labor he has found ample and genial occupa- tion for the active mind and physical vigor with which he has been by nature endowed. He is a good citizen, well read, and an enjoyable companion.
JAMES MAHON.
James Mahon was born March 17, 1837, at Carbondale, Luz- erne (now Lackawanna) county, Pa. He was educated in the public schools of his native state, and admitted to the bar of Luzerne county, January 6, 1865. In 1866 Mr. Mahon was elected district attorney of the Mayor's Court of Scranton, The term was for three years. In 1876 Mr. Mahon was the democratic candidate for state senator in the Twentieth sena- torial district, but was defeated by George B. Seamans, the republican candidate. Patrick Mahon, the father of the sub- ject of our sketch, is a native of Kilbride, Mayo county, Ireland. He emigrated to America in 1829, when twenty-eight years of age, and is now a resident of Shamokin, Pa. The mother of James Mal on is Catharine, daughter of Michael Kelly, also of Kilbride, Ireland. Mr. and Mrs. Mahon were married previous to their arrival in this country. Peter Mahon, of Shamokin, a member of the Northumberland county bar, and district attor- ney of that county, is a brother of James Mahon.
Mr. Mahon married May 25, 1866, Margaret Ann Heffron, a native of the city of New York. She was the daughter of Patrick Heffron, a native of County Mayo, Ireland. Mr. and Mrs. Mahon have a family of three children living, one son, Anthony, and two daughters.
James Mahon's tall form and well cut features are familiar to all habitues of the courts of Luzerne county. He looks older than he is, having been more or less afflicted by illness during a number of years, though he is now enjoying comparatively fair health. He has many of the attributes upon which great politi- cal popularity is frequently builded, as is attested by his election
25 1
CHARLES LYTLE LAMBERTON.
to the district attorneyship of Scranton, and by the fact that all who know him have a kind word to say in his behalf. Al- though his education was only such as the public schools afforded, yet he is an industrious and apt student of the theories of the law and of the statutes; and having always been an extensive reader of both legal and general literature, he has acquired a stock of information to which many a client has found occasion to be thankful. He is a conscientious adviser, too, who would rather lose a fee than dupe a client. His practice, perhaps, on this account, might otherwise be larger.
CHARLES LYTLE LAMBERTON.
The family name of Lamberton is of pure Scottish origin, and, like all of the ancient surnames of Scotland, territorial in its derivation and associated with the earliest historic times of that country. Dr. Gordon, in his Ecclesiastical Chronicles of Scot- land, says "it was a family of some note in the south of Scotland ; an ancient lowland name." Frequent mention is made of the De Lambertons, chiefly in Berwickshire, where their estates principally lay, as well as in Ayrshire. The name occurs, he states, as early as the reign of Edgar (1097-1107), in a charter granted by him to the monks of St. Cuthbert, and subsequently in other grants.
To the letter sent by the Scottish barons to the Pope in 1320,- the seal of Alexander de Lamberton is appended; its bearings corresponding so far with those of Bishop de Lamberton, being three escallop shells reversed.
John de Lamberton, the son of Richard de Lamberton, bound himself to pay twelve boles of wheat to King Edward of England, and his bond is extant in the public record office. This same John de Lamberton appears on the roll of Scottish nobles and others invited to accompany King Edward into Flanders, May 24, 1297. This roll comprises some of the first names now existing in Scotland and the border country.
252
CHARLES LYTLE LAMBERTON.
John de Lamberton was sheriff of Stirling 1263, 1265, and 1266, in the reign of Alexander III., but whether this is the same John de Lamberton is not known. It is also said that various persons of the name signed the famous Ragmans' Roll.
In 1336 Robert de Lamberton grants a charter of his lands of Eyton, Eymouth, Coldingham, and Flemington to William Stute, of Berwick, and seals it with his seal.
The ruins of the chapel of Lamberton are still extant about three miles north from Berwick, in the parish of Mordington. Within this chapel, in 1502, Margaret, eldest daughter of Henry VII. of England, was espoused to James IV.
In the reign of Robert I., William Lamberton, bishop of St. Andrews, in consequence of the severity of the times, granted · to the monks of Kelso power to apply to themselves certain rev- enues of the church ; and in a papal taxation of Coldingham and its dependent chapels, of the fifteenth century, the moiety due from the " Ecclesia de Lambertone " is specifically set down.
Perhaps the most famous one of the name in early historic times was William de Lamberton, bishop of St. Andrews from A. D. 1298 to 1328. He was chancellor of Glasgow in 1292, and in the charter was called William de Lambyrton. He was elected bishop in September, 1297, and was by Pope Boniface VIII., on June 17, 1298, preferred to the episcopate of St. Andrews, and is in the papal rescript styled " Willelmo de Lamberton." Gordon says "Lamberton was indebted for his nomination partly to his friend, Sir William Wallace, whose influence in Scotland at that juncture was almost unbounded. He passed the first years of his episcopate in France as the representative of Wallace. His name is to be met with in many ancient writs and charters. He strenuously opposed the encroachments made by King Ed- ward I. of England upon the constitution of Scotland, and con- tributed his hearty endeavors to set and keep King Robert the Bruce upon the Scottish throne.
Lamberton, along with Wishart, of Glasgow, and David, of Murray, were the three bishops who crowned Bruce as king, at Scone, on March 27, 1306. For this Lamberton and Wishart were made prisoners and conveyed in fetters to England. He was afterwards liberated, and the next year presided at an assen-
253
CHARLES LYTLE LAMBERTON.
bly of his clergy at Dundee, asserting in the strongest terms Robert the Bruce's right to the crown of Scotland. He com- pleted the cathedral of St. Andrews, which had been one hun- dred and fifty-eight years in building, and had it consecrated in the presence of King Robert the Bruce, and of the clergy and most of the knights and barons of the kingdom. It was, in 1559, demolished in one day by a mob excited by a sermon of John Knox. In 1324, at York, he was one of the commissioners of Scotland for endeavoring to effect a peace between it and Eng- land.
Burton, in his history of Scotland, says, "while he was in power . indeed, Wallace kept a sort of ambassador in France in William Lamberton, bishop of St. Andrews. Lamberton was, in fact, his own bishop. When the See became vacant William Comyn was the candidate favored by King Edward, who, in an eccles- iastical process at the Vatican, and other charges, set forth that the bishop had gone to France, where he advocated the cause of the rebellious Scots and excited the traitor Wallace by prospects of French aid. After the death of Red Comyn at the hands of Bruce, the bishop of St. Andrews, assisted by Wishart and Mur- ray, crowned Robert de Bruce King of Scotland.
"Among the illustrious captives were two great prelates, Lam- berton, of St. Andrews, and Wishart, of Glasgow. None had been so versatile and so indefatigable in stirring up the people, and no laymen had broken so many oaths of allegiance to Ed- ward; yet he was content to imprison them, afraid to dip his hands in clerical blood. We have seen that Lamberton, bishop of St. Andrews, was a zealous partaker with Wallace in his strug- gle for the purely national party. Whether it was the bishop's advice or not, Bruce met him in the abbey of Cambus Kenneth, the scene of Wallace's great victory in June, 1304, and there the two entered into a league with each other, which was put in writing and sealed and authenticated by all the solemn rites of the period. It is the earliest existing specimen of a kind of doc- ument which we shall frequently meet with afterward. There are no engagements as to any distinct course of action, but the two bound themselves to general co-operation. Having discussed possible future perils, they resolve to aid and comfort each other
254
CHARLES LYTLE LAMBERTON.
when these come to pass. They are to stand by each other against all enemies. If either learns of any danger to the other, immediate warning is to be sent and co-operation in averting it, is the most material clause, perhaps, of all. Neither is to under- take any serious affair without taking counsel of the other. They bind themselves to this obligation by solemn oath ; at the same time, as in any such modern contract for the supply of goods as a court of law would give effect to, either party failing to keep the engagement, is to be subject to a pecuniary penalty. It is fixed at £10,000. The purpose it was to be put to, when secured, takes us back from the attorneys' style book to the age and its conditions. The money was to be applied for the recovery of the Holy Land, and be dropped into the great fund lost in the crusades." This document is given at length by Sir Francis Palgrave.
Subsequent events showed that Lamberton represented the feelings of the churchmen who had their own independence to .protect.
" Then the allegiance of the church to Bruce meant a great deal more than spiritual or ecclesiastical support, important as that might be. The religious houses held large baronies, and could call out a great population, probably not much less than a third of the fighting men of the country." Burton, Vol. II., p. 238.
Bruce in his deadly quarrel with Comyn charged him with betraying certain secrets of his. Burton says probably the bond with Lamberton.
After the defeat of Wallace at Falkirk by the English under Edward I., in 1298, Lamberton, the elder Bruce, and John Comyn were appointed regents of Scotland.
Lamberton, according to Wynton, died "in the Priors' cham- ber of the abbey in June, 1328, and was buried on the north half of the High Kirk;" i. e., on the north side of the High altar, but no vestige can be traced.
From earliest times the family of Lamberton have lived in Ayrshire, Scotland, near the barony of Lambrochton, and in and near the village of Kilmaurs, in that shire. Some have thought that the name, being territorial, might have originated from the
255
CHARLES LYTLE LAMBERTON.
barony above named. But though the names are introconverti- ble, and in the burial ground of the parish church of Kilmaurs may be seen a headstone with the two names of the same kins- people on it, this origin is not probable. The barony of Lam- brochton never belonged to any of that name, or of the name of Lamberton, but was in earliest times the estate of the de More- villes, de Ferrars, and the de la Zuches and their descendants, who were partisans of Baloil in his contention for the Scottish crown. On the accession of Bruce these estates were confis- cated and granted to his adherents, the Cunynghames, earls .of Glencairn, who possessed them until the sixteenth century, when they passed to the Montgomerys, earls of Eglington.
Besides, at and before the time of the grant by Bruce, the name of Lamberton was pure and distinct and well known, for William de Lamberton, the bishop of St. Andrews, was then the friend of Bruce and Wallace.
Only by tradition can the family name be traced through the long period intervening between the time of Bruce and the time of the anti-prelacy agitation in the latter part of the seventeenth century. During this latter period the tradition is distinct and well defined that in consequence of the religious persecution some members of the family fled to the north of Ireland, clearly indicating the affinity between the two branches of the family in Scotland and Ireland.
"The times of the religious persecution," mentioned both in Ulster and Ayrshire as a descriptive term, and which drove so . many of the Covenanters to Ireland, must have been after the attempt of Charles II. to revive Episcopacy in Scotland in 1661, and after the defeat of the Covenanters on the Pentland hills in 1666, and at Bothwell bridge June 22, 1679, and during the dra- gonnades of Claverhouse, which followed.
General James Lamberton, the grandfather of Charles Lytle Lamberton, the subject of our sketch, was born near London- derry, in the province of Ulster, according to the statement of one of his daughters, now deceased, in the year 1755, and by another account some four years earlier. He was the son of Robert Lamberton, who lived at Oughill, four miles from Londonderry, and who was a prosperous cloth merchant. His mother's name
256
CHARLES LYTLE LAMBERTON.
was Finley. Robert had one brother, James, and another whose name is not now known. He died at about the age of eighty. A generation or two preceding him his ancestor, with two brothers, fled from Scotland, in consequence of the religious persecution there, and sought refuge among the Presbyterians of Ulster; one of the brothers settling in county Antrim, and the other two in the adjoining county of Derry. The family tradition in the lat- ter county is that they came from a place called "Lambrochton," and " that the family there are of the original stock from which they have sprung," which, as we have already stated, is a barony of that name near the village of Kilmaurs, in Ayrshire. From the shores of Antrim and Derry, which look out upon the north Atlantic, the highlands of Scotland are distinctly visible in the distance, and the crossing could easily be made in a day or night by an ordinary fishing smack. The family traditional history is that the grandmother of James Lamberton was in Londonderry during the siege in 1689, at which time this branch of the family .must have been in Ulster.
General Davis, in his History of Bucks County, Pa., says: "The third race to arrive [in Pennsylvania] was the Scotch-Irish, as they are generally called, but properly Scotch, and not the offspring of the marriage of Gaelic and Celt. They were almost exclu- sively Presbyterians, the immigration of the Catholic Irish setting in at a later period. The Scotch-Irish began to arrive about 1716-18. Timid James Logan had the same fear of these immi- grants that he had of the Germans. They came in such numbers about 1729 that he said it looked as if ' Ireland is to send all her inhabitants to this province,' and feared they would make them selves masters of it. He charged them of possessing themselves of the Conestoga manor 'in an audacious and disorderly man- ner'in 1730. The twenty shillings head tax laid the year before had no effect to restrain them, and the stream flowed on in spite of unfriendly legislation. No wonder! It was an exodus from a land of oppression to one of civil and religious liberty.
"The Scotch-Irish have a history full of interest. In the six- teenth century the province of Ulster, in Ireland, which had nearly been depopulated during the Irish rebellions in the reign of Elizabeth, was peopled by immigrants from Scotland. The
257
CHARLES LYTLE LAMBERTON.
offer of land, and other inducements, soon drew a large popula- tion, distinguished for thrift and industry, across the narrow strait that separates the two countries. They were Presbyterians, and built their first church in the county of Antrim in 1613. The population was largely increased the next fifty years under the persecutions of Charles II. and James II. in their effort to estab- lish the Church of England over Scotland. There has been but little intermarriage between the Irish and these Scotch-Saxons, and the race is nearly as distinct as the day it settled in Ireland. In the course of time persecution followed these Scotch-Irish into the land of their exile, and after bearing it as long as it became men of spirit to bear, they resolved to seek new homes in America, where they hoped to find a free and open field for their industry and skill, and where there would be no interference with their religious belief.
"Their immigration commenced the first quarter of the last century. Six thousand arrived in 1729; and it is stated that, for several years prior to the middle of the century, twelve thousand came annually. A thousand families sailed from Belfast in 1736, and it is estimated that twenty-five thousand arrived between 1771 and 1773. Nearly the whole of them were Presbyterians, and they settled in Pennsylvania."
General Lamberton emigrated towards the close of the war of independence and before the definitive treaty of peace, and settled in the Cumberland valley of Pennsylvania, amongst the Scotch- Irish Presbyterians who had preceded him there in such great numbers. It is also a tradition of the family that General Lam- berton emigrated in the same ship with the father of the late Pres- ident Buchanan. He arrived at Carlisle in the year 1783, before that having been for some time in Philadelphia, and for two years was in business with Major William Alexander, late a soldier of the Pennsylvania line, and a merchant of Carlisle: after which time he entered into business at Carlisle as a merchant on his own account, and for many years was one of the most successful mer- chants and business men of the Cumberland valley, sending across the passes of the Alleghenies, in packers' trains, goods to the west and southwest. On January 4, 1785, he was married to Jane McKeehen, a daughter of Alexander McKeehen-John
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.