History of Chester County, Pennsylvania, with genealogical and biographical sketches, Part 144

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 144

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Abington Monthly Meeting, in Pennsylvania, contains the following: 26th of 5th month, 1725, " A certificate was produced by Moses Embree and wife from Little Egg Harbor, in order to settle within the verge of this Monthly Meeting." Minute, 30th of 1st month, 1731 : " Oxford Friends having made application for some relief for Moses Embree, this Meeting orders each Particular Meeting to raise a collection for that purpose." Minute, 28th of 4th month, 1731 : " Paid to Moses Embree for the relief of his family in the smallpox, the sum of £4 10s." Let us bless the . memory of Jenner that we are nearly exempt from the scourge; and all who have the blood of Friends in their veins be thankful for the uniform human- ity in their ancestors, of whom this act was characteristic. " At Haverford Monthly Meeting of Friends, held 13th

: # By Eli K. Price.

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HISTORY OF CHESTER COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.

of 5th month, 1732, a certificate was received from Abing- ton Monthly Meeting of 29th 3d month, 1732, for Moses Embree and wife and daughter Martha, and the rest of the children ;" and 8th of 11th month, 1735, one was received there from Abington for Sarah Embree. The 13th of 10th month, 1736, Thomas Thomas and Martha Embry pass meeting a second time, " and are left to their liberty," and two Friends are appointed and " ordered to see them mar- ried, safely united, and bring an account to the next Monthly Meeting." The 13th of 10th month, 1739, cer- tificate was granted for Moses Embree and wife to Oley Monthly Meeting (in Berks County).

Oley Monthly Meeting records, at Maiden Creek, show that Moses Embree produced certificate from Haverford Monthly Meeting, 5th month 31, 1740, wife and son Samuel; and at same date Mary Embree produced in the Women's Mecting a certificate from Haverford. Moses Embree, Junior, came from Abington 4th month 27, 1745, and married Margaret Eleman in 1752. Samuel Embree, son of Moses (senior), of Robeson township, Lan- caster Co., and married Rachel, daughter of James Lewis, of Comru township, Berks Co .* March 10, 1761, Samuel bought of Jona. Stephens a traet of 53 acres 119 perches in Comru, and on May 18, 1769, bought of William Thomas a tract of 191 acres 40 perches in Comru township. Samuel devised his lands to his sons, James and Moses ; and in 1786 James conveys 160 acres in Comru to Moscs. Samuel died 2d month 24, 1777, leaving issue but those two sons.t

Of other children of Moses and Mary Embree, it may be added that Abigail, the eldest, married Charles Townsend, of Philadelphia ; Sarah married John Hughes, of Merion, and (secondly) Owen Humphrey; Moses, Jr., went to North Carolina, and probably to Georgia; John was living near Wrightsborough, Ga., in 1800.

JAMES EMBREE, son of Samucl Embree, of Comru town- ship, Berks Co., and Phebe Starr, daughter of Merrick Starr, of Maiden Creck, were married 5th month 15, 1771, at Maiden Creek. Their children were Samuel, b. 3d mo. 7, 1772; Merrick, b. 9th mo. 7, 1774; James, b. 7th mo. 5, 1776; Phebc, b. 2d mo. 1, 1778. Their mother died 2d mo. 15, 1778.

JAMES EMBREE, son of Samuel, married, 12th mo. 11, 1782, Rebecca Kirk, daughter of William Kirk, of East Nantmeal, at Nantmeal Meeting. Their children were Wil- liam, b. 9th mo. 16, 1783, d. 1st mo. 25, 1865 ; Rachel, b.

8th mo. 15, 1785, d. 2d mo. 14, 1813; Davis, b. 6th mo. 9, 1787; Hannah, b. 9th mo. 19, 1788, d. 1st mo. 15, 1867; Jesse, b. 1st mo. 2, 1790, d. 8th mo. 9, 1823; Daniel, b. 7th mo. 25, 1791 ; Sibbilla, b. 4th mo. 1, 1793, d. 1793 ; Sibilla, b. 4th mo. 12, 1794, d. 4th mo. 30, 1873; Rebecca, b. 1st mo. 31, 1796, d. 9th mo. 27, 1877 ; Elisha, b. 4th mo. 25, 1797 ; Anna, b. 5th mo. 22, 1799, d. 6th mo. 4, 1862.

James Embree purchased the place in West Bradford where Israel Lamborn now lives, about two miles westward of Marshallton, in 3d month, and moved to it 4th mo. 1, 1791. He brought a certificate from Exeter to Bradford Monthly Meeting in the same spring, for himself, wife, and all his children to Jesse inclusive.

James Embree farmed his place during the residue of his life, and also malted barley. He and his wife Rebecca both became elders of Bradford Monthly Meeting. They were faithful to their dutics and careful to take their chil- dren to mectings, and to give them all the education that the schools and their means could afford, and the school- house on the road running south from the Strasburg road to the poor-house was the place of their schooling, and where several of them commenced to teach. Phebe, Sib- billa, Rebecca, and Anna liad the advantage of a Westtown School education. James Embrce, boro 6th mo. 3, 1748, died 8th mo. 5, 1815; Pliebe, his wife, born 8th mo. 8, 1750, died 2d mo. 15, 1778; Rebecca, his wife, born 2d mo. 3, 1858, died 9th mo. 7, 1808.

Now what more can I say of James Embrce ? Not a scrap of his writing is found, except the Bible entries of the births and deaths of his children. I have a memory of him, and can say of him that he was a dignified, serious, and earnest man. He was intelligent in business and in mechanical inventions. He was well informed and faith- fully practical in the affairs of religious society. The weight of these and the responsibility of providing for fif- teen children was a constant pressure upon him. If all men had to bear the weight he bore, life would be too anx- ious for human happiness ; but in his religion and his fam- ily he had great consolation.

Well, James Embree did this, the best thing a man can do, if he has the courage, health, and energy to do it : he chose wisely his wives; he raised fourteen children to manhood and womanhood, all in good reputation, and all well fitted for usefulness in society. That is more credita- ble than even first-rate farming. Shall I not then speak briefly of these, and of how they struggled with life when cast upon their own resources ? It is more interesting to observe this strife than that of the children of the rich, who have all they need provided for them, which the pru- dent save and grow richer, and the improvident waste and grow worse and poor. The history of the Embree children has its lessons and deep pathos.

The children of the first wife were constitutionally grave and correct. Samuel went to Ohio, was a farmer, and has left a worthy posterity. Merrick was a farmer, and kept a nursery at the south end of the Embree farm, on the Stras- burg road. His worthy descendants are in and about Mar- shallton. James was a farmer and store-keeper, and is rep- resented in West Chester by his son Pearson and family,

# Robeson township was next southeast of Comru, and is now in Berks.

t The pursuit to the early source of the Embrees in America has had the interest of a chase after game, or for new plants or minerals, with a zest even more emotional than science or mining profits, for it enlisted a human sympatby for those whose blood is yet young and fresh in the veins of my children and grandchildren, whose ancestry came through the persecutions the Huguenots and Quakers endured, and the trials of successive settlements in new frontiers in the wil- derness. The names of those to whom I owe thanks for aid in this genealogical pursuit are Charles B. Moore, Robert C. Embree, John Jordan, Archelaus R. Tharo, Leah Blackman, Isaac Mather, Dr. James Levick, Joseph W. George, Tyson Embree, John S. Pearson, J. Willis Martin, Charles R. Miller, and, as to later events, Pearson und Anna Embree, William J. Jenks, Charles Stokes, and his grand- danghter, Anna Albertson.

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BIOGRAPHICAL AND GENEALOGICAL.

where the mechanical tendency of his grandfather has well cropped out. Phebe died unmarried.

The children of the second wife had another element, and it is interesting to study the law of heredity in the two sets. Something is indicated when it is said Rebecca's grandfather was an Irishman, and more when it is stated that he was of the vigorous race of the province of Ulster, in the north of Ireland, peopled centuries back by adven- turous Scotchmen.

But I forbear to speak of these until I have spoken of their mother, Rebecca Kirk, whose father, William Kirk, was son of Alphonsus Kirk, who left Lurgan, Ireland, in 1688, with the approval of his meeting and his parents, Roger and Elizabeth Kirk, and reached New Castle County, near the lower border of this State, old Chester County, and settled on the east side of the Brandywine in 1689. He married Abigail, daughter of Adam Sharpley, 12th month, 1692-3. The subjoined letter of Rebecca is copied here for good reasons, for she was the faithful help- meet of James Embree during all her married life; it shows her own mind, feelings, and characteristics, and inferentially those of Rachel, the beloved daughter addressed, who during the next year was to replace her mother in the care of her many children, and to become the comforter of her father in his old age and great bereavement. It shows her familiarity with the Scriptures when these were more read than now, and there was a keener relish for their religious truths and poetical beauties :

" WEST BRADFORD, 5th Mo. 18th, 1807.

" DEAR CHILD,-I don't know that I have much to tell thee that will be likely to produce much satisfaction, or feel very interesting to thee, as it seems as if I had to pass of late through a winter season ; a season wherein the heauties of creation lay obscured, and the voice of the turtle is not heard, though nature is wearing her brightest gar- ment, the fields spreading forth their most beautiful foliage, and the gardens displaying their liveliest colors, the little birds uttering their sweet notes on almost every hranch; yet to me it is like » winter season.

"I don't mention these things to cast a gloom over thy tender mind. I know thee has enough to hear, and I am sometimes afraid too much. I feel concerned lest thee should suffer thy situation to impress thy mind too seriously. I want thee to be as cheerful as is becoming, and what thee can't help try to think but little about it. I have been under the necessity to do so, and have been helped thus far to my admiration ; and although it has been with me as above de- scribed, yet I am thankful that it is not worse than it is. . . .

"We have had the company of dear Mary Wichell, of Frankford, and dear Ruth Richardson, of Philadelphia, at our Quarterly Meeting, and at Bradford Meeting, and at our house. I told R. Richardson I had a daughter in town and where thee lived. She said she would be glad to know thec, etc. . . .

"I remain thy ever affectionate mother, " REBECCA EMBREE."

This is the only letter I have found written by James Embree, or Rebecca his wife. It shows the tender mater- nal spirit of her mind in loving sympathy with her beloved daughter, as first entering upon the trials of life. It shows that the " seed" of life were yet living in the Society of Friends here in America, and here in Chester County, as George Fox had foreseen them in ascendency on his death- bed in 1690, when his last words were, " All is well, and the seed of God reigns over all, and over death itself; and though I am weak in body, the power of the Lord is over all, and over all disorderly spirits." In making the ex-

tracts I feel as one who has exhumed a sacred secd that las laid under ground for three-fourths of a century, to take a new growth in the light and warmth of the sun, in " good ground." May it fructify in good fruits.

The letter shows that she waited for the Lord to be gra- cious, as was the wont of faithful Friends in all times; to watch observantly the guidance of God, with sincere solici- tude to follow the intimations given, and if for a season it pleased Him to withhold the evidence of his gracious presence, patiently to wait his reappearance, in the faith that He would never desert his faithful children. It is plain she was then under the preparing Hand for her im- mortal life. In the following year she died.

Rachel then, or soon after, had her severe trial, and bore it as women often do, silently, though knowing the grief was hastening her to the grave. He who had proffered his love was worthy ; but her parents thought they saw that her happiness would not be secured by leaving their home. Her few remaining years were beautifully holy and instruc- tive. I speak of what I saw. She died 2d month 14, 1813.

Rebecca Einbree, wife of James, as all her sisters, had an education that fitted her well for all household duties, and for those of a wife and mother whose husband was not rich and whose children were many ; for they were four by a first wife and eleven by the second. For these she provided clothing; kept them in condition to go respecta- bly to school, to meeting, and into society ; she trained them well in intellect, manners, and morals ; was their nurse and largely their physician ; she was a sympathizing visitor to the sick and poor; and as an elder was a mother in the Church of the Society of Friends. In the administration of their discipline she was humane and merciful. She ever remembered that " Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him ; for He knoweth our frame." She remembered that we are all his children, and that we are all liable to err. I have heard her daughter Hannah repeat that as a child she heard when sitting in the Women's Meeting of business. A member was under treatment for marrying "out of meeting," whom Rebecca, as one of a committee, had visited, and knew her tender condition of mind and her desire to remain in membership with Friends. Finding a disposition to disown the offender she said, " I would have Friends seriously to consider the step they are about to take. Here is a contrite woman, of tender spirit, asking to be kept in membership with us, and to share our sisterly sympathy and religious fellowship and cares. If we drive her from us she will go out with feelings hardened towards us ; she will be the more exposed to temptation because we have thus done, and because she . will not have our loving care. On our action may depend her safety, and on us may rest the responsibility of the loss of an immortal soul !" The appeal was availing. Truly it requires more than human wisdom to know when the higher duty is, to clear the religious society of the re- proach of unworthy members, or to forbear to disown, to continue to labor, and to try to save. It may not be for- gotten that the door of Christ's mercy is never closed to those who will repent and live. No touch of selfishness may inhere in the performance of hallowed duties.

I will speak of the ten children of James and Rebecca

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HISTORY OF CHESTER COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.

Embree who grew up, in the order of their deaths. Rachel was the first to go. Her brother Jesse, in a letter to his friend, Charles Stokes, of Rancocas, N. J., dated 3d month 24, 1813, speaks of being at home before the death of his " worthy sister," and much "in her edifying society." He describes the scene as very affecting, to see the aged father take final leave of his beloved daughter, who had acted the part of a mother to the younger children, who was his im- plicit confidant, who had soothed him in sickness, and was his greatest comfort in declining ycars. He also speaks of the impressive solemnity of the meeting held at her funeral, wherein Jesse Kersey drew very forcibly the contrasted feel- ings of the parent who loscs a virtuous with those of one who burics a vicious child. I remember her in her years of decay as one sweetly devout in her religion, affec- tionate, kind; whose spirit longed for a more perfect exist- ence; whose countenance already bore a heavenly sweet- ness and angelic beauty.

Jesse Embree was the next of these children to pass out of this life. Before 1812 he had been keeping school at Moorestown, N. J., and there formed an intimate acquaint- ance with Charles Stokes, of Rancocas, now in his nine- tietli year, who has kindly furnished me with copies of eleven of his letters, written from 1st month, 1812, to 8th montlı, 1816; the dates from Baltimore being from 12th month 3, 1812, to 5th month 21, 1813, where he taught school, and from 2d month, 1814, they came from Cincin- nati, Ohio. In his last letter from Baltimore he said his father had given his consent to his going Westward, appre- hending that his health would no longer stand the confine- ment of teaching. Jesse exclaimed, " He is a dear, good old man, and is very tender of his son."

I have read all Jesse's side of the correspondence, writ- ten in the freedom of the most intimate and confiding friendship. It details the trials of a teacher, also the trials of one constitutionally nervous; of ane refined by nature and culture when brought into contact with the rough customers of a brewery and of a Western steam- boat captain. But every line of his letters shows him to have been true to his parental and social training, in morals and religion, and his own refining culture, and not a trace of the modern scepticism is to be scen.

His brother Davis and himself were brewers in Cincin- nati, and were occupicd in the effort to extend their busi- ness hy sending their ale down the rivers at the date of the last letter from Cincinnati. I remember to liave met Davis when their business included the buying and selling of real estate, in which they thought they were prospering. . But they as well as others were, while floating on a paper currency at high flood-tide, unconscious how high the nom- inal values were above the real priccs when to be paid in specie, when sheriffs' sales should close their transactions. From this height paper inflation prices were declining after 1816 until Aug. 17, 1822, and hence the lines in the letter of Jesse of that date, written at St. Louis, to the widow of his deceased friend : " Nominally possessed of an estate at home, I labored under the most mortifying and persecuting financial embarrassment." The letter was to Eliza W. Hinchman, of Philadelphia. He endeavored to afford consolation to hier, when he sadly needed it himself.

"ST. LOUIS, August 17, 1822.

" DEAR ELIZA,- A long train of painful and adverse events has sent me a melancholy and almost hopeless wanderer through the limitless and perilous regions of the Mississippi; my mind a wreck of misfortune; my heart the victim of separation, and my person the subject of disease. Nominally possessed of an estate at home, (I) labored under the most mortifying and persecuting financial embar- rassments ; and possessed of all that is amiable, affectionate, and soothing and kind in the conjugal state, I am doomed to consume nine- tenths of my time at an almost unmeasureable distance from my fam- ily, and generally without the reach of their correspondence. But callous and apathetio as the unmeasureable weight of woe is calen- lated to render my feelings, and much as these feelings, while their sensibility remains, might be exercised selfishly upon my own calam- ities, yet I found this morning, and I rejoiced in the discovery, that my nature can be moved, and my indurate feelings of sympathy awakened by the afflictions of my friends. Some indisposition, ex- treme debility, and an unusual depression of spirits have made me for the last week the guest of a young relative and friend of this vil- lage, who was raised in your city, and from some unknown cause I was daily impressing upon him the peculiar nature and the almost unexampled strength of my attachment to thy late amiable and worthy consort. I told him that we loved each other in our yonth, and that our affection was strongly corroborated by his memorable visit to my little family in Cincinnati. My Mary ranked him highest in the list of my Eastern friends, and always spoke of him in the most affectionate terms. Judge then of my emotions when transiently pe- rusing the newspaper I met the annunciation of his death.

"His innocent, useful, and charitable life, and his smooth and happy passage to a world of spirits and 'the world of bliss,' first filled my imagination ; but a melancholy train of memories, a be- reaved and disconsolate widow, a helpless family of orphans, and a wecping circle of friends succeeded, awakened all the tender emotions of my earlier ycars, and moistened those eyes, (to) which the sulleo- ness of grief has recently refused that consoling tribute. May thy fortitude, oh my afflicted and mourning friend, he strengthened by the Guardian who watched over your conjugal felicity, and who will keep a charitable register of thy widowed woes. And may I never more murmur at my afflicted destiny while the cords of my connubial love are unbroken, and the wife of my choice, the consort of my life, remains. But let us under the mantle of grief, no less than in the sunshine of joy, render Him the tribute of gratitude in the room of disaffection, and praise in the room of complaint.

"Thy sincere and sympathetic friend,

"JESSE EMBREE."

This is the last letter from Jesse Embree that I have seen. He was commanding the steamboat the brothers owned, and which he was commanding at the time of his death, and which Davis commanded in 10th month, 1823, when he obtained the information of his last hours from M. C. Comstock, of whom Davis wrote, " We all owe him the greatest debt of gratitude for leaving his business and going on shore in the wilderness country to wait upon him, which he did, never leaving his bedside till his death." This is Mr. Comstock's statement :

" ARKANSAS TERRITORY, PHILLIPS COUNTY, WALNUT BEND. " Arrived here on the 6th of August, 1823, at 10 o'clock P.M., in the Steam Boat ' Cincinnati,' went on shore with Captain Embree, who was dangerously ill with a remittent fever, and took lodgings at the house of William Dunn, Esquire, where I waited on Captain Embree during his sickness, which terminated on the 9th instant, at 4 P.M., and on the following day ot 12 meridian (Sabbath) buried him in a Christian like manner. Of Captain Jesse Embree it might truly be said, he did hide the faults he saw in others, and always felt another's woe. M. C. C."

This is a terse and telling eulogy, which no tombstone recorded ; but, better, it will go on a page in the " History of Chester County," whose people he ever loved, the imagery of whose beautiful scenery faded not from his mind while

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he lived. His poetic sensibilities there had their birth, but the fruits of his poetic culture have disappeared.

Daniel took the parental homestead and malt-house and carried on his father's business ; but working on the ebb- ing tide of the inflated currency towards a specie basis, while debts must be paid at their face amount, he came to insolvency. He removed to Washington, D. C., and after a time to Dayton, Ohio, where he left children and grand- children.

Elisha took the degree of Doctor of Medicine, went West and Southwest, married and had a son; was in the drug business, and failing to have success, entered the quiet community of Shaking Quakers, in Indiana, where he and his son carried their intelligence and received the requital of a livelihood. There we see in our country the extreme of celibacy, that, if general, would bring the race to an end ; while in Utah we have the other extreme, where the sanctity of the Christian family of one wife and one mother is lost, and the race suffers deterioration.

Anna married Eli K. Price. She died 6th mo. 4, 1862, leaving to survive a son, John Sergeant Price, and a daughter, Sibyl, married to Rev. Starr H. Nichols, and four grandchildren. Her husband has paid his tribute of affection to her memory in the memoir of their beloved daughter Rebecca, privately printed in 1862.

William died 1st mo. 23, 1865. He, as had his brothers, had a hard struggle with life. He was a brewer, maltster, and store-keeper. He founded Embreeville ; took an active part in the meetings of Friends ; was clerk in them ; as a young man was their agent among the Indians under their care. He was treasurer of Chester County ; came to live at West Chester, and there died, leaving a son, Norris, and daughter, Rebecca, and grand and great-grandchildren. The daughter married James House, who came to live at West Chester, and there died, after having been miller and farmer on the Pocopson, and a useful member in civil and religions society ; a man of intelligence, right feelings, and excellent judgment. William Embree's greatest loss came by the failure of his principal customer for malted barley.

Hannah Embree was a teacher of children in country schools, and during many of her later years in West Chester. She had a love for the occupation, and the children loved their teacher. Many worthy citizens, of various ages, re- member with affection her cheerful and useful teachings and good life.

Davis Embree was a brewer in Cincinnati at the begin- ning of 1814, when his brother Jesse joined him. Their affairs were connected from that time to the death of the latter, with what result and from what cause we have seen. In the latter period of their partnership they owned for several years a steamboat, which at first Jesse commanded, but afterwards Davis was her commander, and thereby became familiar with steam navigation on the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. Explosions of boilers, running into sawyers or snags and upon shifting shoals, and racing of boats were so common as to make the navigation of those rivers the most dangerous that could be made. The public were treated to pictures of those explosions in a way that was horribly amusing. The vessel and its varied cargo were blown up, the fragments flying in all directions, with

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History of Chester County, Pennsylvania, with genealogical and biographical sketches, Part 144

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