History of Chester County, Pennsylvania, with genealogical and biographical sketches, Part 182

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

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Jonas, youngest son of William aud Jane Preston, was born in Yorkshire, 19th of 11th mo., 1710, and died in New Castle, Del., 2d mo. 1, 1772, aged sixty-two. He married Jane Paxson, of Bucks County, and had children, viz. : William, b. 11, 25, 1732-3 ; Mary, b. 9, 20, 1734 ; John, b. 10, 20, 1736, d. 6, 4, 1740 ; Jane, b. 10, 16, 1738, d. 6, 8, 1740 ; Sarah, b. 10, 13, 1740, m. Joshua Richard- son; Jonas, b. 7, 24, 1742, d. 7, 10, 1748; Martha, b. 6, 22, 1744, m. Thomas Sharpless; Ann, b. 12, 15, 1745-6, m. Isaac Eyre ; Hannah, b. 10, 22, 1747, m. Nicholas Fair- lamb. Jane (Paxson) Preston, wife of Jonas, died 10, 29, 1749. He afterwards married a widow, Sarah (Plumley) Carter, and had one child, Jonas, who died young, the mother dying the day of his birth, 7th mo. 29, 1754. Jo- nas moved to Chester County about 1752, where he mar- ried, in 1756, (his third wife) Hannah Lewis, widow of William Lewis, of Haverford, by whom he had no issue. He married (fourth), 4, 14, 1763, at Chester Meeting, Mary, widow of John Lea, of Chester, and daughter of John and Abigail Yarnall, of Edgmont, and mother of Thomas Lea, founder of the Brandywine Flour-Mills, in Wilmington. By her he had one son, Jonas (Dr. Preston), born 1st mo. 25, 1764, and who died 4th mo. 4, 1836, in Philadelphia, and was buried at his request in his mother's grave in Friends' graveyard, at Chester. His remains were disinterred 6th mo. 24, 1867, and removed to Friends' graveyard at Downingtown.

Dr. Preston road medicine under Dr. Bond, 1782-83, and attended to his practice in Penn Hospital, after which he spent several years in medical schools at Edinburgh and Paris, graduating from the former in 1785 or '86. Upon returning he located himself in Wilmington, Del., for a time, after which he went to Georgia, but returning, set- tled for some time in Chester, Delaware Co., and succeeded

in acquiring an extensive practice, both in Chester and Del- aware Counties, particularly in obstetrics, in which he was celebrated, and was called upon in consultation far and near.

He represented his county in the House and Senate of Pennsylvania for many years, and was active in building a bridge over the Susquehanna at McCall's, with Dr. Abra- ham Baily, which in the end proved a failure. At the period of the Whisky Insurrection he volunteered his ser- vices, and was with the troops sent out on that occasion. His first wife was Orpha, daughter of William and Mary Reece, of Newtown, and he afterwards married Jane, daughter of George and Sarah Thomas, of West Whiteland, 8th mo. 19, 1812, leaving no children by cither wife. He soon after relinquished his profession and removed to Phila- delphia, where he continued till his death, taking an active interest in various benevolent and other institutions, such as Pennsylvania Hospital, Friends' Asylum at Frankford, Penn Bank, Schuylkill Navigation Company, etc., and to crown the works of a long life of activity and usefulness he left some four hundred thousand dollars or more, in addi- tion to other benevolent bequests, towards founding an " in- stitution for the relief of indigent married women of good character, distinct and unconnected with any other hospital, where they may be received and provided with proper ob- stetric aid for their delivery, with suitable attendance and comforts during their period of weakness and susceptibility which ensues," etc., which is now in active operation under the wise supervision of Dr. William Goodell, and has done and is doing, in a quiet, unostentatious way, an incalculable amount of good.

PRICE, PHILIP .*- In the " History of Chester County" I have been invited to fill a space with a sketch of the life of my father. I appreciate the privilege, and will not abuse it. It is my native county, and it and its people have always had the strongest hold upon my affections, and wherever I have lived or traveled there my untraveled heart has ever turned as to a home and scenes the most beautiful of earth.

Philip Price was born on the 8th of the first month (January), 1764, in Kingsessing, Philadelphia, on the brow of the first upland overlooking the meadows and the lower Schuylkill and the Delaware Rivers, within five miles of the southwest corner of William Penn's city of two square miles, and in the beautiful but little varied scenery of that home of the Bonsalls his youth was spent.

It has been a labor of love to trace the aneestry of my parents in all their branches back to the first settlers, all of whom came direct to Pennsylvania and the " three Lower Counties," and seated themselves under the benign auspices of William Penn and a civil and religious government of the Society of Friends. No colony was ever planted under influences so beneficent, none ever had to endure evils so few, none so fully enjoyed the just fruits of wise principles, and a good moral and religious life. The true history of that colony is the brightest oasis in the dreary records of wrongs and misgovernment which all other histories pre- sent to our view. We can never cease to love to contem- plate it, and reproduce it for the loving admiration of all who love the good, the true, and the righteous. From the

* By Eli K. Price.

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wise institutions of Penn all our declarations of rights and constitutions have borrowed some of their best principles.

All the immigrant ancestors of our parents came with William Penn in 1682, or within a few years afterwards. There was but one male in each of the four generations of the name of Price who preceded my father, thus named : Philip, Isaac, Isaac, and Philip. The first Isaac Price married Susannah Shoemaker, who came to Pennsylvania with Sarah, her mother, and her uncles Jacob and Peter Shoemaker, 8th mo. 12, 1685, some of whose descendants were Millers, of Shoemaker Town, near Abington. These were German Friends from the Palatinate of the Rhine. The second Isaac married Margaret, daughter of the second Henry Lewis, whose father was the loved and trusted friend of William Penn.

Philip Price's father was a farmer and grazier, and his son assisted and was trained in his business. During the war of the Revolution the farm was twice swept of its cattle, alternately, for the British and American army, and for a short time Gen. Howe had his headquarters at the father's house, by the Kingsessing church.

Philip Price remained, after his marriage on the 20th of the tenth month, 1784, about three years with his father, and afterwards occupied a farm in East Nantmeal, Chester Co., for four years. In 1791, by deed 23d of third month, he bought the farm within two miles southwest of West Chester, the birthplace of all his children except the first four. Here it was that he began his improvements of grounds, then exhausted, gully-washed, and overgrown with poverty-grass and weeds. Those 317 acres 104 perches are now in the ownership of the widow and children of Philip P. Paxson, the widow and children of William P. Foulke, Esq., of Dr. Alfred Elwyn, of Richard Strode, and parts of it are in the farms of Alfred Sharples and John Yerkes.

Writing to Judge Peters in 1796, Philip Price said, "In the spring of the year 1792 I fenced off a piece of about four acres" (to fold his cattle), " being a part of a large field that was much reduced, washed into deep gullies in many parts, and which had been totally neglected for many years. The appearance was so disagreeable that I put no value on it when I purchased the place, though the field contained fifty acres." The best efforts made in agri- cultural improvement at that time in the neighborhood were those of meadow-bank irrigation. Philip Price was in communication with the best theoretical and practical information of the period, and made his own observation and experiment with skill and judgment. Judge Peters and Dr. Mease were then our best writers and most zealous patrons of agriculture. Philip Price saved and spread his stable-manure, used lime, and was among the first in Chester County to begin the use of plaster of Paris. Judge Peters writes, " I have heard of none who have been more re- markably successful in the plaster system than Mr. West and Mr. Price. They have brought old, worn-out lands to an astonishing degree of fertility and profit by combining the plaster with other manures."-(Mem. of Agl. Soc., 2 vols., 34.)

The rotation of crops adopted was to plow in the fall or early spring, for the spring planting of Indian corn ; the

next year to sow barley or oats, and in the fall to sow the wheat crop; and upon this to sow the clover- and timothy- seed, and the product of these in the following year was a fine crop of hay, with a fall crop of clover, and this for some years, until it became expedient to repeat the same rotation.

In 1796, Philip Price answered the queries of Judge Peters to the following effect as to the use of gypsum. On a high, loamy soil it operated better than on low-lying clay ground. One to one and a half bushels per acre are suffi- cient, repeated yearly while in clover ; the effect being good with or without recent plowing, and is without liability to leave the soil exhausted, where the increased product is returned in increase of the stable-manure. It is most benc- ficially applied to Indian corn and red clover, but usefully on other grain- and grass-crops, with or without other ma- nuring, but with most striking effect if not immediately preceded by other manure. The best time to sow it is at the first harrowing of Indian corn, and on clover, in small quantity, soon after it comes up, to be repeated as soon as vegetation takes place in the spring. The effect is most visible on a poor soil. Eight acres sowed plentifully with it, without other manure, in five years, said Philip Price, " became worth ten times what it was before I plastered it, the face of the soil appearing to be entirely changed, and is admired by all who have hitherto known it."

In 1799 the first trials were made in London of Dr. Jenner's new discovery of vaccination to prevent the loath- some scourge of smallpox. Within a few years Philip Price brought the vaccine scab, and with his own hand, as I remember, vaccinated successfully all his children ; and all escaped the disease from which immunity was sought. Yet, strange perversity ! there are now those who oppose that invaluable preventive.

Philip Price was deputed by his neighbors, about the end of the first decade of this century, to go into Virginia and bring into Chester County the seeds of the Virginia thorn for hedging. The writer was present at the division of the seeds, and helped to plant the first hedges. These became of extended use, and added an ornament to the landscape. This thorn is now falling into disuse, and it is largely replaced by the osage orange, of larger and more vigorous growth and a more permanent verdure.

When the Chester County Agricultural Society was formed, many years after, the remembrance of what Philip Price had done for their cause was held reason sufficing for his being elected its first president.

Farming was then more picturesque than now. Then farmers would in turn join their forces, and it was a sight pleasing to behold when ten to twenty men reaped beside each other, he to the left being successively a few feet in advance; and more so when they swung so many cradles in concert, as by one impulse. The sickle was the primi- tive instrument for cutting wheat; but early in the con- tury the cradle, with scythe and four fingers, came into general use; but still the sickle or naked scythe was needed where the wheat, barley, or oats was lodged. In 1809, on my twelfth birthday, I reaped my dozen sheaves.

At the beginning of the century most of the traveling was done on horseback, and but few kept their carriages. Philip Price was equipped to face the storm on horseback.

It was unknown to his family that he ever failed in any appointment on account of weather. He wore high boots and a light-colored glazed silk water-proof, with a hood and skirts that covered him from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet, and so spread as to protect the saddle and the body of the horse. Though a less manly exercise, car- riages were a good institution and a step taken in civiliza- tion, for then more women and children could be taken to meetings and in making social visits.

At that period Philip Price, as was the custom, was a liberal smoker of cigars, the worst thing I ever knew him to do ; but others inveighed against the habit, aud William Townsend with peculiar emphasis. Philip Price resolved to quit the practice, and he did it at once.

Philip Price never served spiritnous liqours to his hands in harvest, or at other times, though many of his neighbors did. Friends were always a temperance society, but did not formerly absolutely abstain from wine, and more habitually drank malt liquor ; but I do not remember its use in our family ; indeed, but a little currant wine and some cider occasionally. Modern Friends have made an advance in this respect.

Here I am brought to a pause. I am asked to give a sketch of the life of Philip Price. That life I never knew in separation from his wife. It cannot be told in separa- tion from his wife without being defective; a failure in de- lineation, when it should not be so, for in reality there was none in his life. All the descendants of Philip and Rachel Price, all their friends, visitors, and neighbors, have ever known and spoken of their names unitedly, and as insepa- rably connected. Two trees that have so long stood to- gether that their branches and leaves have blended into one harmonious canopy must be viewed as one picture. Sepa- rate them, and either is imperfect ; the symmetry is gone ; a chasm appears. And what would the men of Chester County have achieved without the wife and mother of the household, the mistress of the dairy, the provider for the harvesters ? Yet more, what is a Friend, in the Friends' Church, without his or her sympathizing and sustaining companion ? Almost a withered branch. The Friends are yet, or ought to be, a peculiar people ; a missionary so- ciety to raise mankind to higher conceptions of the good and a more perfect example of Christianity. I must speak of my mother, or I feel that I both wrong her memory and that of my father. The primitive command was, " Honor thy father and thy mother." The child equally inherits the qualities of her blood, and, even more, the influences of her mind are impressed upon the minds of her children. Our civilization and refinement depend more upon woman than man. Let us, then, hold her at least in cqual honor. This Friends have done beyond all other religious persua- sions. She repeats the same marriage ceremony as her husband; is his social companion, his most trusted friend, and safest counselor; and the spirit of the gospel is alike given unto her, and more readily accepted by her.

Alphonsus Kirk came, a young man, from Lurgan, prov- ince of Ulster, in Ireland, with certificate from his meet- ing and his parents, Rogor Kirk and Elizabeth Kirk, dated 9th of 10th month, 1688 ; settled on the east side of the Brandywine, New Castle Co., and on the 22d of 12th

month, 1692-3, married Abigail Sharpley, daughter of Adam Sharpley, who had arrived in 1682. Their tenth child was William Kirk, who removed to East Nantmeal, Chester Co., whose second wife was Sibilla Davis, of Welsh ancestry, a granddaughter of David Harris, who arrived the 17th of 10th month, 1684. Rachel Kirk was the sixth child of William and Sibilla Kirk, and became the wife of Philip Price.

Since my earliest memory, which reaches to A.D. 1800, my parents were constant attendants of meetings for disci- pline and worship; my father acted much as clerk, was an elder, and my mother a recommended minister of the gos- pel back into the last century. They took me with them to Birmingham Meeting; and as probably my memory ex- tends farther back than that of nearly all others, I think it would now interest many descendants to record the names of those who sat facing that meeting when its bounds in- eluded West Chester and vicinity, before the end of the first decade of this century. If an artist, I could portray their venerable faces and forms. Joshua Sharpless would have been there, but was absent as superintendent of West- town school. At the head of the higher bench sat Richard Strode, then came John Forsythe, Philip Price, Cheyney Jefferis, William Sharpless, Abraliam Sharpless. On the second bench were James Painter, Abraham Darlington, William Townsend, Caleb Brinton, Thomas Wistar ; the latter, an invalid, was carried in and out by Cheyney Jefferis, who was stalwart. My mother was the only member I re- member as a minister at that time.

I may not pass by the name of John Forsythe, my mother's teacher, without saying that he was more learned than any of his farming neighbors whom I knew. He was familiar with the writings of Dugald Stewart, and his mental philosophy was quite reconcilable with his religious faith. I heard him say in my youth that the evidence of the presence of the Divine Spirit was to him as plain as if the Creator had given him the proof by a sixth outward sense. He had this sense distinctly within. Friends held this from the first. Thomas Ellis brought here in his certificate from Friends in Wales, in 1683, a testimony, now among Merion Moet- ing records, wherein it is said, he being " a man of a tender spirit, and often broken before the Lord ; the sense of the power of an endless life being upon him." And Henry Thomas Buckle, an English philosopher, after writ- ing volumes on European eivilization in a spirit but too skeptical, was constrained at last to say, " It is, then, to that sense of immortality with which the affections inspire us that I would appeal for the best proof of reality of a fu- ture." He had deeply sympathized with a beloved mother during her slow decay, and was only cousoled for her loss by the undoubting belief that he would rejoin her. This event was not long delayed. He died at Damasens, May 31, 1867. In the end his philosophy became the religion of the Friends ; and by the same induction the religion of the Friends is the true philosophy. Thus the religious belief is real, and more than theological theory. In 1803 another wrote,-

"Like as a language and the sound of words To thought is but a moan, a symbol, help, So is the soul's emotion thought itself."*

# Von Chamisso's " Faust," translated by Henry Phillips, Jr.

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The same was said by Paul : " That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him;" was said by Jesus, when he said, " that neither in this mountain, nor yet in Jerusalem, was the true place to worship ;" said, "God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth,"-that is, in the conscious soul, where "the Father seeketli such to wor- ship him." Paul, again, said, "the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." The emotion and spirit being that which comes from God, which men's words less perfectly express to others less inspired. From the inspired feeling arise thoughts and convictions, and with these come the fitting words, such as man has invented and uses.

Of the worthy array of Friends named none have been living for many years, nor is a son or daughter of any of them now living except three, but of grandchildren and remoter descendants there are many living in Chester County and elsewhere who will be glad to hear of them all. Of these descendants of my parents I have to say they extend across this continent from California and Oregon to Boston ; and in Europe from Paris to Constan- tinople,-in all more than twelve localities. In numbers, those living in 1864 were 129, and since then the births have exceeded considerably the deaths.

Philip and Rachel Price brought a certificate from Uwchlan Monthly Meeting, dated 4th month 21, 1791, which was presented at Concord 5th month 4. He was appointed clerk of the latter Monthly Meeting 3d month 5, 1794; and an elder 5th month 3, 1797. Rachel Price was recommended as a minister 4th month 7, 1802.

The deep concern Philip and Rachel Price felt in the Society of Friends and in the spread of gospel truth, and their perfect accord of views, made their union of senti- ment and service very close, but caused their frequent sep- aration for months at a time, in a mutual sacrifice for the good of the church. With a numerous family of children at home, for in 1802 they had ten living, all of whom lived to settle in life, it was a necessity that one should remain at home when the other was absent. These absences and sac- rifices tested their fidelity to Him to whom they owed their highest duty and whom they most faithfully served, added to their devotion a more perfect earnestness and refinement of religious culture, and caused them to write to each other many affectionate and instructive letters, that otherwise would never have been written.

Philip Price traveled in the winter of 1796-97, with Charity Cook and Susanna Hollingsworth, through Vir- ginia and Western Pennsylvania, when " Redstone" had seemed the terminus of Friends' westward settlements. The roads were very bad and the weather very severe, the ink freezing in his pen as he wrote. Charity regarded him as a son in the spiritual life, and they performed thie trying journey and severe service with much fortitude and patient endurance, with the reward of satisfaction.

During 1800 and 1801, John Hall, a minister from England, was a frequent inmate in the family of Philip and Rachel Price, and by his cheerful and social manners was a welcome guest to all. He was in good fellowship with us little fellows, and after his return from Caspar Wis- tar's, where he stayed while we went through the measles,

he saluted me, " Well, Eli, canst thou whistle yet ?" for at four he indulged in that proof of an empty mind, and his parents were not oversevere. Philip traveled with John through New Jersey and Delaware, and in Pennsylvania as far northwestward as Muncy and Catawissa. John's letters, after his return home, were most cordial and affec- tionate, and strong in the utterances of gospel fellowship and prayers for the final future.

In the 7th month, 1801, Rachel Price joined Sarah New- lin, of Darby, in religious visits to the families of Friends in Delaware and the Eastern Shore of Maryland. The sep- aration from her family was trying, and when ready to despond the words " Thy Maker shall be thy husband" came to her relief, and she was encouraged to complete her assigned work in resignation. The service was felt to be owned by the Master, and she returned with the consola- tions of peace.

In the spring of 1804, Sarah Talbot, of Chichester, of clear and thrilling voice, and Rachel Price made a religious visit to Friends in Middle and East New Jersey, and in the spring of 1805 visited those of South and West New Jersey. They held meetings almost daily, and met valued Friends. At Egg Harbor Rachel Price for the first time looked upon the ocean. Its unlimited expanse and the power of its waves as they ceaselessly rolled upon the shore moved her sensitive mind to wonder and praise of the Great Creator. In her religious services she had the compensation of the divine favor; but the separation was mutually felt to be a great trial, yet husband and wife always encouraged each the other to patient perseverance to finish the allotted service in which he or she was engaged.

In 1807, Mary Witchell, an English Friend, sensible and strong, and Rachel Price traveled to Ohio, crossing the mountains over the roughest roads, and returned through Virginia and Maryland. So rough were then the moun- tain roads that the women Friends were often obliged to walk and to ride in turn the one saddle-horse, sitting inse- curely sideways on a man's saddle. Rachel wrote, " I think it is not possible for any one to conceive how bad the roads are without seeing them." They made two miles an hour. Ohio had then numerous primitive dwellings and some meeting-houses ; and where these were not, court-houses and churches were freely opened. The mountains deeply im- pressed my mother's mind by their grandeur, and their tes- timony to the Creative power. She loved to commune with Friends in their simple homes, and sympathized in their trials, temporal and spiritual. She wrote from New Garden : "There is a valuable settlement of Friends here in this wilderness country, whom we fcel nearly united to, and I may tell thee that I fully believe that I am in my place in coming here. Though trying to be separated from you at home, yet I feel very comfortable in being with our friends here in little cabins." In 1821 the writer visited Mary at Leeds, England, found her hale and kind, and since 1850 received from her a silk purse knit after she was one hun- dred years old.

In 1809 Rachel Price and Sarah Talbot traveled exten- sively through Virginia and Maryland. But regard for al- lotted space compels me to forbear giving details. In 1810 she visited the meetings of the Western Quarter; in 1812,

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History of Chester County, Pennsylvania, with genealogical and biographical sketches, Part 182

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