History of Chester County, Pennsylvania, with genealogical and biographical sketches, Part 139

Author: Futhey, John Smith, 1820-1888; Cope, Gilbert, 1840-1928
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Philadelphia, L. H. Everts
Number of Pages: 1162

USA > Pennsylvania > Chester County > History of Chester County, Pennsylvania, with genealogical and biographical sketches > Part 139

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discipline to assist in or encourage war in any manner whatever. In 1806, Dr. Darlington was appointed sur- geon to an East India merchantman belonging to Phila- delphiia, and made a voyage to Calcutta, whence he returned the following year. A sketch of the observations made during this voyage was, some years afterwards, published in the form of familiar letters in the Analectic Magazine. In the year succeeding his return from Calcutta he settled in West Chester and resumed the practice of medicine, and was soon in the enjoyment of an extensive and profita- ble practice. He was married, June 1, 1808, to Catharine, daughter of Gen. John Lacey, of New Jersey, an officer of distinction in the Revolutionary war. In 1811 he was made a trustee and secretary of the West Chester Academy, then about to be built, and these offices, then conferred

in Congress he was distinguished for untiring and assiduous industry and attention to the duties of his station. In 1822 he was appointed by the Secretary of War a Visitor to West Point, and his report attracted great attention throughout the country.

In 1825 Pennsylvania commenced her grand scheme of canals and railroads, and Dr. Darlington was one of the members of the first Board of Canal Commissioners, and was associated with such men as Albert Gallatin, John Sergeant, Robert W. Patterson, and David Scott, whose names hold a distinguished place in our country's annals. He served in that station two years, during the last of which he was president of the board. In 1826, in con- junction with some of his intimate friends, he assisted in organizing the Chester County Cabinet of Natural Sciences,

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on him, were continued more than half a century, and up to his death. In September, 1814, during the war of 1812, he went to the camp on the Delaware River as an ensign in the American Grays, a volunteer company of West Chester, and there was chosen major of the first battalion, in which his company was assigned, in which post he served until the corps was disbanded. In 1814 he was elected to the Fourteenth Congress of the United States, and in 1818 and 1820 elected to the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Con- gresses from the same district. During his second term the celebrated Missouri question agitated the Union from one end to the other, and called forth the ablest efforts of the best men in Congress. On that question Dr. Darling- ton was found ranked with those who were desirous to re- strict slavery, and raised his voice in a most able speech in opposition to its extension. While serving his three terms

of which institution he was president from its origin ; and in the same year he published his " Cestrica," being a catalogue of plants growing around the borough of West Chester. The arduous duties of the office of canal commis- sioner calling him away from home more than was either convenient or agreeable, he resigned that office the next year, and was almost immediately thereafter appointed pro- thonotary and clerk of the courts of his native county by his political and personal friend, the late lamented Governor Shulze, the duties of which office he continued to discharge till 1830. In 1828 he and some of his medical friends co- operated and formed the Medical Society of Chester County, of which he was unanimously placed at its head, which po- sition he held until 1852, when he resigned, and was im- mediately elected an honorary member. In 1830 the Leg- islature appointed him one of the commissioners to lay out

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a State road from the Delaware River, near New Hope, to the Maryland line, in a direction towards Baltimore. About the same time, through the exertions of himself and other prominent citizens, the West Chester Railroad was built by a company of which he was the first president, and super- intended the construction of the road. In 1830 he was elected president of the Bank of Chester County, of which institution he had been one of the commissioners named in the charter for receiving subscriptions of its capital stoek, and a director almost ever since its establishment in 1814. He was re-elected annually, and continued in that station at the time of his death. In 1837, Dr. Darlington pub- lished his " Flora Cestrica," a description of the flowering plants of Chester County, which was a new edition of his former work, much enlarged and greatly improved. In 1847 he prepared and published his " Agricultural Botany," and in 1843 he collected the letters, memoranda, etc., of Dr. William Baldwin, a native of his own county, who was also passionately devoted to botany, but who died at an early age while on the expedition up the Missouri under Maj. Long. These remains were given to the world in a volume entitled " Reliquia Baldwinianæ." The pioneers of botany in Pennsylvania were Humphry Marshall and John Bartram, both of Chester County ; and Dr. Darling- ton collected in 1849 such portions of their correspondence as still remained in existence, comprising, together with their own letters, those of many eminent botanists of the day, and published them in one large volume, with illustra- tions of their homes, under the title of " Memorials of Bar- tram and Marshall." The doctor's son, Lieut. B. S. B. Darlington, who for seventeen years had been an officer in the United States navy, died at Portsmouth, N. H., in 1845, of a disease contracted during the first cruise of our squadron en the coast of Africa, under the stipulations of the Ashburton treaty which concern the slave-trade. His youngest son, who bore his name, was acting colonel of the Eighteenth Pennsylvania Cavalry during the war of the Rebellion of 1861-65. In 1853 the name of Darling- tonia Californica was given in his honor by Dr. Torrey, of New York, to a new and remarkable variety of pitcher- plant found in California, and a similar honor had been con- ferred on him in 1825 by Prof. De Candolle, of Geneva, for the doctor's eminent services in the beautiful science of botany. Shortly after the death of Lieut. Darlington, that afflicting dispensation was followed by one still more severe and poignant in the death of the doctor's wife. She had borne him four sons and four daughters, and for nearly forty years had been his faithful counselor and partner. Soon after her death he became a member of the Protestant Episcopal Church, the congregation of which he had years before assisted in forming, as well as in aiding in the erection of its church edifice.

Dr. Darlington died April 23, 1863, aged nearly eighty- one years, with his mental vigor unimpaired, but his phys- ical system worn out by a long and active life. In his earlier years he was an ardent politician, and a warm Repub- liean of the school of 1800, and was long a leader of the Democratic party of his county. He was a zealous sup- porter of the administrations of Jefferson and Madison, and of the economical doctrines of the American system, as ad-

vocated by Clay, Carey, Niles, and Calhoun, before the lat- ter turned nullifier. The radical tendencies of the Demo- cratic party, in the campaign of 1824, caused him to aban- dou that party for the more conservative principles of the men who supported Adams and Clay, and he was from that time onward a Whig and Republican. As a political writer, he was bold, nervous, and sententious, with a strong vein of sarcasm running through his compositions, whilst as the author of numerous literary addresses and scientific dissertations, delivered before bodies of that character, his style was easy, plain, and flowing, mingling wit and humor with knowledge and instruction. As a physician, he en- joyed an extensive practice, and whilst he continued his medical labors he was confessedly at the head of his pro- fession in Chester County. He received the degree of Doctor of Laws from Yale College, and that of Doctor of Physical Science from Dickinson College, and he was elected a member of more than forty literary and scientific associations, among which may be mentioned the Ameri- can Philosophical Society of Philadelphia and the Botani- cal Society of the Netherlands at Leyden.

The last work in which he was engaged was " Notæ Cestrienses," or notices of Chester men and events, the joint production of himself and his friend, J. Smith Futhey, each contributing a portion thereof. Dr. Darling- ton was then nearly eighty years of age, and the work was only finished a few months before his death.

His extensive herbarium of plants and his scientific works he bequeathed to the Chester County Cabinet of Natural Science.

His remains repose in the Oaklands Cemetery, near West Chester, in the establishment and embellishment of which he took a deep interest. The following is the epi- taph inscribed upon his memorial stone, written by himself twenty years before his death :

" Plantæ Cestrienses, quas dilexit atque illustravit, super tumulum ejus semper floreant." (The plants of Chester, which he loved and described, may they blossom forever above his tomb.)

ISAAC DARLINGTON, eldest son of Abraham and Su- sanna (Chandler) Darlington, was born in the township of Westtown, Chester Co., Dec. 13, 1781. He was of the fourth generation from Abraham Darlington, the first im- migrant of the family, which at a sesqui-centennial gather- ing of the clan in 1853 mustered nearly four hundred, and reckoned altogether upwards of one thousand living members.

While Isaac was yet young, his father and family re- moved to Thornbury township, near Birmingham Meeting- house, where he was brought up and had his home until he had nearly reaelied the age of eighteen. years. His father had been taught the trade of a blacksmith (for in those days it was usual for young men of reputable family to learn some mechanic art), and was an excellent work- man ; but he was also a practical farmer, and carried on both occupations with extraordinary energy, skill, and suc- cess. He likewise, for a number of years, filled the office of justice of the peace with great credit to himself, and to the entire satisfaction of the vicinage. He was a hard worker on the farm through the day, and did the smith-work for the neighborhood during the noon intermission, and in the

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evening, often wielding the hammer until late bedtime. His sons were early initiated into the same industrious habits, and Isaac, being the eldest, as soon as he acquired suf- ficient strength to swing a sledge-hammer, labored con- tinually with his father in the fields, and was moreover taught to blow and strike in the smith-shop at noon and in the evening. Probably no boy in Chester County was trained to more laborious habits in early life than Isaac Darlington.

His education was simply English, with a fair start in mathematics, and his schooling was limited to the winter season as soon as he reached an age or was strong enough to work on the farm or take his stand by the anvil. It is true he had the benefit of the instructions of John For- sythe, the best schoolmaster of that period and region of

teacher, whose pupils were often his seniors. In his eight- eenth year, dissatisfied with the drudgery, and impatient under the routine duties of a rural pedagogue, as then practiced, he turned his attention to the profession of the law and became a student in the office of Joseph Hemphill, Esq., at that time a distinguished member of the bar at West Chester. Although, like most county towns of that day, West Chester was a place of perilous dissipation, es- pecially among the young men of the legal profession and sundry idle hangers-on of society, Isaac Darlington, amid it all, applied himself so successfully to his studies that he was found duly qualified, and admitted to the bar at the early age of twenty years .* The powerful grasp of his intellect enabled him-maugre the prevalent, unpropitious habits of the time-speedily to take a high and influential position

country, and under that tuition he made extraordinary pro- gress. Isaac Darlington's physical constitution was remark- ably sound and vigorous, and from his earliest youth his in- tellectual powers and attainments so far exceeded those of his juvenile contemporaries as to excite the admiration of all who knew him. At the age of fifteen years his aspira- tions reached beyond the farm and smith-shop; but as his father did not then perceive the importance of a thorough education for such faculties (a circumstance much to be re- gretted, for he was endowed with a singular aptitude for learning), instead of sending the boy of so much promise to a seminary, where his powers could be adequately trained and developed, he was merely permitted to take charge of an insignificant country school. In this occupation Isaac Darlington was engaged for two or three winters, and ac- quitted himself with remarkable success for so juvenile a

among his professional seniors who then attended the county courts and adorned the West Chester bar ..

In the years 1807 and 1808 he was elected to the State Legislature, where he was an active member ; but, finding the position to interfere with his practice, he declined a further continuance in that station. At a special election,

# In a chronological list of West Chester lawyers, showing the dates of their admission respectively, it appears that Isaac Darlington was admitted at November term, 1801, some two or three weeks before he was twenty years old. Tradition says that when the committee asked him if he was of age he carelessly replied, "Not quite;" and, judging from his finely-developed, manly form and nonchalant manner that he must have nearly reached that period, one of them remarked that a few days more or less were of little consequence : and, with a complimentary report in his favor, the precocious minor forthwith took his stand among the veterans of the Chester County bar.

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however, in February, 1816, to supply a vacancy, he was chosen to the same body without opposition. During the war of 1812-15, although a zealous member of the polit- ical party opposed to that war, when the strife began to be serious Isaac Darlington aided in raising a company of volunteer infantry for the defense of altars and firesides ; was the first lieutenant and master-spirit of the corps, and on the call of the Governor, in 1814, after the sack of Washington City, marched with it to the camp formed for the protection of Philadelphia. He there served as adju- tant of the Second Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers until the close of the campaign.

At the general election in 1816 he was elected by the district composed of Chester and Montgomery Counties a member of the Fifteenth Congress, and served through the term, but declined being again a candidate.

In December, 1820, he was appointed deputy attorney- general for Chester County, which office he held until May, 1821, when he received the appointment of president judge of the judicial district composed of the counties of Chester and Delaware. This situation he held until his death, April 27,*1839.

Judge Darlington was twice married, first to Miss Mary Peters, by whom he had two interesting daughters, the eldest of whom especially was distinguished for rare per- sonal and mental endowments; but he survived them both, and has left no descendants. His second wife was Miss Rebecca Fairlamb, who survived him nearly twenty years.

WILLIAM DARLINGTON, youngest son of Abraham and Susanna, was born 10th mo. 19, 1804, and married, 3d mo. 19, 1829, Catharine Paxson. Their children-fifth gen- eration in America-were Charles, d. in childhood; Wil- liam H., m. Hettie, daughter of Caleb Brinton ; Stephen P., m. Josephine, daughter of Hon. Joseph J. Lewis; Francis J., m. Annie M. Biles, of Maryland; Isabella, m. Maj. L. G. McCauley ; and Catharine Mary, m. Jerome B. Gray. William Darlington studied law with his brother, Judge Darlington. On Jan. 31, 1826, he was examined by Ziba Pyle, William H. Dillingham, and Townsend Haines, a committee appointed by the court, who reported " that they find him well qualified to practice as an attorney of this court," whereupon he was admitted and sworn in at the bar on same day before his brother, who was then the presiding judge. The discipline, flexibility, and ease which collegiate education is supposed to best supply were in his case attaincd by self-culture, quick observation, engrafted into the stock of native good sense, superadded to such educational facilities as the local schools afforded ; and with a natural aptitude for the practical adaptation of circum- stances and means to ends, he became, like his illustrious brother, a man of intuitions. He soon achieved a deserved prominence at the bar. He was steadfast to his profession from the commencement of his practice, in 1826, to the moment of his death, when he sank down in the corridor of the court-house, Dec. 6, 1879, while on his way to the court-room to try a cause. His practice was chiefly con- fined to the county courts in Eastern Pennsylvania and the Supreme Court of the State, although he was frequently engaged in the District Court of the United States at

Philadelphia, and was a member of the Supreme Court of the United States at Washington. As the committee of. the Philosophical Society of West Chester, of which Mr. Darlington was a distinguished member, has aptly said, "There was nothing dramatic nor startling in his career, but he kept right on in the higher levels of local practice, surrounded by a large and wealthy clientage, whom he served always with the utmost alacrity and fidelity.

"'Untainted by the guilty bribe, Uncursed amid the harpy tribe.'"

In 1837, when less than thirty years of age, he was elected a member of the State convention to remodel the constitution, where he bore so active and discreet a part that thirty-five years later, when further amendments were to be considered, the people with one accord recommissioned him to represent them in the Constitutional Convention of 1873, in which he took a most conspicuous and honorable part. He served as deputy attorney-general for Chester County from 1835 to 1838, under Governor Ritner, but had a dis- taste for the practice of criminal jurisprudence, as it was in the deeper and richer mines of legal science that he most loved to delve, consequently his practice was of the most desirable and lucrative kind. About the year 1857 he traveled in Europe, attended the " World's Fair," and kept a journal of all he witnessed worthy of preservation. He visited the locality where his progenitor, Job Darlington, lived, at Darnhall, and discovered many facts relative to the Darlington lineage. He lived to see all his children mar- ried, well established, and flourishing, and it was his delight to prosper thien. He was a great student, and his literary tastes, although varied and quite ardent, seemed to incline more to modern history, which, it is believed, he read more as a record of events than as showing a development of thought in a strictly literary sense. As the " memorial" of the Philosophical Society happily said,-

" He was a man who, in the strong language of Napoleon, was ' victory organized.' He rose up out of the common level, lifting up others with him,

"Not propped by ancestry, Whose grace chalks successors their way,"

but by the force of his own merits acquired high station and great wealth ; yet he was not puffed up, proud, or aristocratical, but re- mained plain and unpretending and true-hearted; was easily ap- proached, and always interested in the wants and purposes of the people, countenanoing worthy young people, and taking an active part in affairs."

RICHARD DARLINGTON, son of Richard and Edith, was born Aug. 14, 1834, and first educated in the common schools of West Marlborough township. At sixteen years of age he went to Jonathan Gause's academy, near Mar- shallton, and afterwards was for two years or more a pupil at Ercildoun Boarding-School. He now entered upon the work of instruction, teaching for a while in this last-named school ; then a select school near Green Tree; at Westfield, N. J .; and at Friends' Central High School, Philadelphia. During all his spare hours from teaching he was engaged in the study of French, Latin, phonography, and many other branches, and in 1858 entered Harvard University, directing his attention chiefly to the studies of the Law- rence Scientific School of that institution, to which he added geology, botany, chemistry, and other branches, under

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Agassiz, Gray, Cook, Horsford, and other noted professors of that day. In 1861 he bought the Ercildoun Seminary for Young Ladies (since removed to West Chester), and conducted it from that to the present time. This school is now known as " Darlington Seminary," named after its pro- prietor, and which for the last twenty years he has managed with marked success. In 1857 he began reading law, but his educational duties engrossed so much of his time that he abandoned the study and resumed teaching and lectur- ing. He is one of the leading educators of the county ; takes an active part as a lecturer in teachers' institutes and in the State Teachers' Association. He was president of the West Chester Philosophical Society, in which he takes a deep interest. He married, in 1861, Lizzie F. Alexan- der, of Bucks County, formerly a teacher in Ercildoun Seminary, an accomplished scholar, and deeply interested in the various departments of the institution over which she presides. He gives most of his time to his profession, but does not fail to take an active interest in all scientific, liter- ary, and political movements that are transpiring around him. Darlington Seminary was founded in 1854 as " Er- cildoun Seminary," at Ercildoun, but in 1877, Mr. Darling- ton purchased a valuable property three-fourths of a mile southwest of West Chester, to which he removed that school in October, on the completion of the new buildings, where the new school opened. The grounds are beautifully laid ont, and the surroundings are most tasteful and satis- factory. The grounds include twenty-six acres, and the school buildings, commodious and elegant, admit of about sixty boarders. It is the largest private school in the county, and one of the largest in Eastern Pennsylvania. He and his wife conducted the Ercildonn Seminary from 1861 until 1877, when the buildings were partially destroyed by a tornado,* after which the school was removed to its pres- ent location. They had while the Ercildoun school was under their control over 1200 boarders, and in their four years at West Chester have frequently been unable to accommodate all who desired to attend. Four teachers are employed, and the pupils, from every section of the Union, embrace in part those designing to become teachers. It is in no sense a local school, but extends its influence to the most remote parts of the country, and its direct control and management have always been under the care of its learned and popular principal and his accomplished wife, who de- vote their time and attention to its minutest details. The great secret of its success has been in the careful supervis- ion exercised over its various departments, and in the char- acter of the instruction bestowed upon its pupils.t

WILLIAM DARLINGTON, a settler in West Nantmeal about 1730, came perhaps from Ireland, judging from his associations. He died in the fall of 1757, leaving a wife, Mary, and children,-Joseph, Robert, John, and Meredith.

Saffell gives the following notice of a member of this family :

"Lieut. Robert Darlington, of Col. Watts' Regiment of Flying Camp, was enptured at Fort Washington, Nov. 16, 1776, and was eon- fined on Long Island. He was admitted to parole May 26, 1777, but was ordered into the New York eity prisons on the 17th of Angust, 1779, where he was supplied by Mr. Pintard and Mr. Beatty, and was honored, on the 6th of June, 1777, with a warrant for one hundred and sixty-seven dollars from His Excelleney Gen. Washington. He was exchanged at Elizabethtown, May 14, 1781, and returned to his home in Chester Co., Pa. Lient. Darlington was an able officer, a ripe seholar, and polite gentleman."

Robert Darlington had seen military service prior to the Revolution, and abont 1770 was keeping tavern near the Brandywine Manor church. He was an Episcopalian.

JOSEPH DARLINGTON was a single man in Aston in 1715, and in 1718-19, of Goshen, but in 1721 was a married man in Caln township, where he probably resided until his death.

DAVID, JAMES, of Tredyffrin, purchased land there in 1711, which he conveyed to his grandson of the same name in 1741. He died in or about 1744, leaving a daughter Margaret, wife of James Abraham, Jane (mar- ried to Thomas James, May 15, 1722), Eleanor, unmarried, and some grandchildren by a deceased son, viz .: James David, Elizabeth (married to David Parry, Sept. 27, 1735, and secondly to - Hackett), Mary (married to Henry Owen), etc.

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History of Chester County, Pennsylvania, with genealogical and biographical sketches, Part 139

Author: Futhey, John Smith, 1820-1888; Cope, Gilbert, 1840-1928 Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Philadelphia, L. H. Everts Number of Pages: 1162

Author: Futhey, John Smith, 1820-1888; Cope, Gilbert, 1840-1928
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Philadelphia, L. H. Everts
Number of Pages: 1162