History of Philadelphia, 1609-1884, Part 199

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898. cn; Westcott, Thompson, 1820-1888, joint author
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, Pa. : L. H. Everts & Co.
Number of Pages: 992

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1 Griswold's " Republican Court."

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PROMINENT WOMEN IN PHILADELPHIA HISTORY.

member of the United States Senate, her father's long and honorable career in the service of the coun- try, her connection, Maj. Jackson's, intimate associa- tions as one of the private and confidential secretaries of the President, and her own residence in France, England, and other parts of Europe, conspired to draw around her a circle of men and women of the very first class in rank, elegance, and accomplish- ment. Louis Philippe d'Orleans was intimate with Mr. Bingham's family, and offered himself to one of his daughters. The senator declined the royal alli- ance. "Should you ever be restored to your hered- itary position," he said to the duke, "you will be too great a match for her ; if not, she is too great a match for you." Mrs. Bingham was a patron of Wignell's Theatre, which was opened in 1794, and where the prin- cipal actresses were Mrs. Oldmixon, Mrs. Whit- lock, Mrs. Morris, and Mrs. Marshall. Mrs. Old- mixon was the wife of Sir John Oldmixon, known in England as the "Bath beau," and of equal stamp with Nash and Brummnel. Mrs. Whitlock was a sis- ter of Sarah Siddons, and Harwood, one of the ac- tors, was the husband of Miss Bache, a grand- daughter of Benjamin Franklin. Wignell's The- atre was eminently fash- ionable until he affronted Mrs. Bingham by refusing to permit her to furnish her own private box and keep the key, whereupon she placed it under a so- cial ban.

Mrs. Bingham, while on a visit to the Bermuda Islands for the benefit of her health, died there on the 11th of May, 1801, aged thirty-seven years. Her husband, overwhelmed with the loss of such a wife, went afterward to England, and died at Bath about the year 1804. His monu- ment, in the abbey church there, attracts the notice of the American traveler. Mrs. Bingham left three children.1

One of her dearest friends was Mrs. Robert Morris, wife of the great financier and sister of Bishop White. At Mrs. Washington's receptions she usually occupied the seat of honor at her right hand, and she was a so- ciety queen until misfortunes overwhelmed Robert Morris. The pretty young Quakeresses were seen everywhere, and the Duke De Liancourt wrote of

THE MARCHIONESS D'YRUJO (SALLY MCKEAN.)

them that ribbons pleased them as well as others, and were the great enemies of the sect.

At Mrs. Washington's first levee in Philadelphia the Misses Allen were "among the constellation of beauties." Of the Allen sisters, the eldest, who be- came Mrs. Greenleaf, is historically renowned as " one of the most splendid beauties this country ever pro- duced." Miss Sally MeKean wrote to a New York friend of this reception : "You never could have had such a drawing-room. It was brilliant beyond anything you can imagine, and though there was a great deal of extravagance, there was so much of Philadelphia taste in everything that it must have been confessed the most delightful occasion of the kind ever known in this country."

Miss Sally Mckean was remarkable for her great beauty. She was the daughter of the chief jus- tice of Pennsylvania, and married Don Carlos Mar- tinez, Marquis D'Yrujo. Her son, the Duke of So- tomayer, who was born in Philadelphia, became prime minister of Spain.

Dolly Payne was a young Quakeress, whose first husband was John Todd. Left a widow when quite young, she married in 1794, being then twenty-four years of age, James Madison, who was at that time a mem- ber of Congress from Vir- ginia. They lived at his homestead of Montpelier most of the time until he was elected President of the United States. Her aim, in which she was thoroughly successful, was to make her husband's administration a socially brilliant one, and when the war of 1812 occurred she evinced indomitable cour- age amid peculiarly trying complications. As she advanced in years she was described by one of her old Philadelphia friends as-

" a very gay lady, with much rouge on her cheeks, and always appear- ing in her turban. She was fond of bright colors and the elegancies of the toilet, yet she generally wore luexpensive clothing, preserving al- ways the simplicity of a Quaker with the elegance of a Southerner."

Dolly Madison used snuff, and carried a box about wherever she went. She once tendered it to Henry Clay, and when he accepted she first drew from her pocket a bandanna that she said was for " rough work," and next a fine lace handkerchief which she called her "polisher." She survived the President thirteen years, dying in Washington, July 12, 1849.

1 Griswold's " Republican Court."

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HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA.

Margaret, Sophia, and Harriet Chew were the daughters of Benjamin Chew, chief justice of Penn- sylvania. Margaret married John Eager Howard, of Maryland, Harriet married Charles Carroll, Jr., also of Maryland, and Sophia became Mrs. ITenry Phil- lips. Gen. Washington treated these young ladies almost as if they were his children. Harriet aceom- panied him several times when he sat to Gilbert Stuart for his portrait, and the commander was wont to say that the agreeable expression on his face was due to her interesting conversation. She and Mrs. Hamilton and Mrs. Bradford were the last surviving ladies of the Republican court. Mrs. Bradford, the wife of the attorney-general of the United States, ontlived the others. Richard Rush wrote of her when she was over eighty years of age, that her years had "not impaired the courtesy, the grace, the habitual suavity or kindness, or even that dis- ciplined carriage of the person, all made part of her nature by her early intercourse and the school in which she was reared." Susan Wallace, the sister of Horace Binney, wife of John Bradford Wallace, and mother of Horace Binney Wallace, was the niece of Mrs. Bradford. It was of Susan Wallace that Rev. Dr. Herman Hooker said, " Her vir- tues were so numerous and so marked that any just mention of them will seem to border on exaggera- tion." She died July 8, 1849.

Mrs. Knox, daughter of Thomas Flueken, the last secretary of the province of Massachusetts Bay, was another of Mrs. Washing- ton's elose friends. When she married IIenry Knox he was captain of the Boston Grenadier Guards, and when he afterward rose to the proud position of Gen. Knox, of the Revolutionary army, she was nearly as well known as he was in the eamp. They resided for a while in Philadelphia, and she was another of the county dames whom De Liancourt has so pleasantly gossiped of. Talleyrand was her guest, and Lafayette was the godfather of her son. In 1795, Gen. Knox re- tired from the office of Secretary of War, and they moved to their rural home at Thomaston, at the head of the St. George's River, in Maine. Among their visitors were Louis Philippe and his exiled brothers, the Duke de Montpensier and the Comte de Beaujo- lais.

MRS CHARLES CARROLL, JR. (HARRIET CHEW).

Martha Jefferson, the eldest daughter of Thomas Jefferson, was educated partly in Philadelphia and partly in Europe. John Randolph called her "the sweetest young ereature in Virginia." In 1783, while she was at school in Philadelphia, and residing with Mrs. Trist, her father wrote her from Annapolis a touching and tender letter, in which he instrueted her to consider Mrs. Trist as her mother, and laid out for her a routine of study. She married Thomas Mann Randolph, of Virginia. Her youngest sister became the wife of John W. Eppes, and their daughter married Nicholas P. Trist, a grandson of the very Mrs. Trist in whose family Martha Jefferson had lived. Mrs. Graydon, Mrs. Peters, and the other MeCall sisters are mentioned in the local annals for their loveliness. Miss Moore, a sister of Col. Thomas Lloyd Moore, married, in 1784, the Marquis De Marbois, who was seere- tary of the French Lega- tion. Their daughter be- came the Duchess De Plaisance, being married to a son of Le Brun, a col- league of Napoleon in the consulate.

In speaking of Mrs. Dr. James Rush, we seem to be turning the pages of a story of to-day. Many in- timate friends of this re- markable woman still sur- vive, and a sister, MIrs. Dr. Barton, is still living in her house on South Broad Street. Every one who passes by what is now the Aldine Hotel, on West Chestnut Street, knows something of the woman whose residence it once was. A miniature por- trait of Mrs. Rush, evi- dently taken when she was in her teens, hangs in the Ridgway Library, and shows a face of rare beauty ; but it is quite well known that in later years she was more noted for her personal magnetism than for her good looks. She delighted to assemble around her men and women of genius and intelleet. Grisi aud Mario were onee her guests. In Europe, Dr. Rush and his wife were shown the most flattering attention by Lord Lansdowne, Lord Bathurst, Sir Astley Cooper, and others of the nobility. All reports to the contrary, it would appear from the correspond- ence between Mrs. Rush and her husband that their domestic relations were most amicable. Most of these letters have been preserved, and, although their tastes differed, it is not doubtful that Dr. Rush had the most profound respect and tender atleetion for his aceom-

PROMINENT WOMEN IN PHILADELPHIA HISTORY.

1697

plished wife. In the will by which he founded the Ridgway Branch of the Philadelphia Library, he states that one of his objects was to express his re- spect and regard for Jacob Ridgway, and for Jacob Ridgway's daughter, Phebe Ann Rush. Her event- ful life came to an end in a Saratoga hotel Oct. 23, 1857, and the remains of herself and her husband are entombed in a vault in the Ridgway Library.

During the late civil war the women of Philadel- phia did enormous and glorious work in the Sanitary Commission, the women's branch of the Freedmen's Commission, the refreshment saloons, the soldiers' homes, and the hospitals. Mrs. John Harris, corre- sponding secretary of the Ladies' Aid Society, spent much of her time with the troops in the field. Mrs. Clara J. Moore, corresponding secretary of the Sani- tary Commission, wassuch an indefatigable laborer in the hospitals that when ill health compelled her to seek a respite, nine young ladies found their time fully occupied in fill- ing her place. Other la- dies whose services were given in the Pennsylva- nia branch of the Sani- tary Commission were the president, Mrs. Maria C. Grier, and Mrs. E. D. Gil- Iespie, Mrs. W. H. Fur- ness, Mrs. A. D. Jessup, Mrs. Joseph Parrish, and the two Misses Blanchard. The Ladies' Aid Society, and the Penn Relief Asso- ciation, which was organ- ized in 1862 by members of the Society of Friends, to contradict the current talk that because of their peace principles they would do nothing for the soldiers, were both managed by leading ladies of Phil- adelphia. In the same year the Soldiers' Aid Asso- ciation was formed mainly through the efforts of its president, Mrs. Mary A. Brady. She went again and again to the hospitals in the field, and her death on May 27, 1864, was directly due to her labors there after the great battles that Grant had just fought in Virginia. She was as truly a martyr to the Union as any soldier or officer who was killed in the ranks.

One of the women prominent in the Union Vol- unteer Refreshment Saloon of Philadelphia, an in- stitution which fed four hundred thousand men as they passed to and from the battle-fields, was Mrs. Mary W. Lee, and among her co-workers were Mrs. Eliza G. Plummer, Mrs. Mary B. Wade, Mrs. Mar- garet Boyer, Mrs. Priscilla Grover, Mrs. Mary Grover,

LUCRETIA MOTT.

Mrs. Ellen P. Barrows, and Mrs. Eliza J. Smith. The Cooper-Shop Refreshment Saloon, which also fed many thousands of troops, was managed by Mrs. William M. Cooper, Mrs. Grace Nichols, Mrs. Sarah Emory, Mrs. Elizabeth Vansdale, Miss Catherine Vansdale, Mrs. John Coward, Mrs. Susan Turner, Mrs. Sarah Mellen, Miss Catherine Alexander, Mrs. James D. Grover, and Mrs. James M. Moore. The mother of the lamented Lieut. Greble, who fell at the battle of Big Bethel, was one of the unceasing workers in the national cause, and gave both of her sons to the army. An earnest friend of the Union refugees from the South was Mrs. M. M. Hallowell, who, with a committee of ladies, visited Nashville, Knoxville, Chattanooga, and Huntsville, distributing money and provisions among them. When the great Sanitary Fair was held, there was a ladies' committee work- ing in conjunction with the gentlemen in each im- portant branch.

The name of Lucretia Mott is one widely re- spected and beloved. She was a Coffin by birth, and was born of Quaker pa- rents on the island of Nan- tucket in 1793. In her eighteenth year she mar- ried James Mott, the son of the superintendent of the school in Dutchess County, N. Y., where she was being educated. They came to live in Philadel- phia, where her parents had removed previously, and she was about twenty- five years of age when she began to preach in meeting, soon becoming a regular preacher of the Society of Friends. She was one of the original members of the Anti-Slav- ery Society, founded in 1833. To such an extreme did she and her husband carry their views that they refused to use any of the products of slave labor, and Mr. Mott, who was engaged in a remunerative cotton business, relinquished it on that account. At one time Mrs. Mott made a journey into the South as far as Virginia, preaching against slavery in each meeting that she attended. Next to this subject, that which most interested her, was the granting of suf- frage and equal rights to women. As an evidence of her advanced opinions she would write in albums, when asked for her autograph, this sentiment, "In the true marriage relation the independence of the husband and wife is equal, their dependence mutual, and their obligations reciprocal." Another move-

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HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA.

meut in which she participated was that of the Peace Society, an organization of which she was an active member until the close of her life. She was nearly eighty-seven years of age when she died, on Nov. 11, 1880, and she retained to the end her mental and physical powers. To extreme benevolence and kind- ness of heart she united remarkable intellectual gifts and a rare sweetness of disposition. She denied her- self many of the comforts that belonged to her station in life in order that she might be able to extend her charities. Her eloquence and the vigor of her writ- ings are memorable.

Anna Maria Ross was prominently identified with the Cooper-Shop Hospital, a branch of the Cooper- Shop Refreshment Saloon. Night and day she nursed the suffering soldiers. In the spring of 1863, seeing the necessity of a permanent home for discharged soldiers, she canvassed Philadelphia and the counties of Pennsylvania and New Jersey to raise funds for the establishment of the Soldiers' Home. She died on the day of its dedication, Dec. 22, 1863, while the people were praising and blessing her name. On her tomb, in Monument Cemetery, a tablet bears the figure of a woman ministering to a sick soldier. In reviewing the list of Philadelphia women who did such noble service in the hospitals at home and at the front we find the names of Mrs. Abigail Horner, Miss Cornelia Hancock, Miss Hetty A. Jones, and Mrs. Mary Morris Husband (a granddaughter of Robert Morris). Mrs. Husband was on one of Mc- Clellan's transports at Harrison's Landing, on the James River, in July, 1861, and stood the Confed- erate fire with all the coolness of a veteran. In the army hospitals the boys knew her as "Mother Hus- band," and as the troops marched through Rich- mond, after Lee's surrender, she stood upon the side- walk, and a cheer for "Mother Husband" ran along the line. President Lincoln would grant almost any request that she made, and she once obtained from him the pardon of a soldier whom she believed to have been unjustly condemned to death.

The now prosperous School of Design was founded by Mrs. Sarah Peter, daughter of Hon. Thomas Worthington, of Ohio, and wife of William Peter, British consul at Philadelphia. Particularly fond of art, and a firm friend of her own sex, she conceived the idea of forming classes for young girls, in which they might be instructed in the useful branches. These classes steadily increased, and developed into the School of Design, which was opened Dec. 2, 1850.

At Miss Mary McHenry's home, No. 1902 Chest- nut Street, there was organized, in February, 1856, the Church Home for Children, in 1866 the Lincoln Institute, and in 1871 the Educational Ilome. The leading spirit in all these undertakings was Miss Me- Ilenry, whose entire life has been devoted to the care of friendless children. The greatest of her works is perhaps the Lincoln Institute, which was established to provide a home for the orphans of soldiers. These

having grown to manhood and womanhood, the in- stitute is now training some seventy Indian girls, under an arrangement with the government of the United States. Miss McHenry is the sister of James McHenry, well known as associated with railroad interests in this country and England, and lately married John Bellangee Cox. During the Sanitary Fair she was chairman of the restaurant department, which she managed so efficiently that it cleared thirty thousand dollars.

Caroline Earle was the daughter of Thomas Earle, who was one of the first members of the Anti- Slavery Society, and the dominating instincts of her life are hatred of the "peculiar institution" of the South and an intense love for animals. The day she was twenty-one years of age she was married to Richard P. White, and two years later she was re- ceived into the Catholic Church. When the women's branch of the Freedmen's Society, an organization for the aid of the emancipated slaves, was formed, in 1863, she was elected its secretary, in which position she remained five years. She was the leading spirit in the founding of the Philadelphia Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, having previously consulted with Henry Bergh upon the subject, and received encouragement from him, and was chosen president of the women's branch. When the Woman's Centennial Committee was called together by the wish of the parent organization, Mrs. White was one of the thirteen ladies selected in commemoration of the thirteen original States, and was its treasurer for a year. Included in her philanthropic efforts are also the foundation of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and the American Anti-Vivi- section Society, of which latter she is president.

Mrs. Henry Cohen, who, by birth, was Matilda Sam- uels, a native of Liverpool, England, was a Jewish lady, and an earnest laborer in public enterprises. In 1844 she married Henry Cohen, and was an official of the Female Hebrew Benevolent Society, the Jewish Fos- ter Home and Orphan Asylum, and the Hebrew Sun- day-school Society. Her connection with the Foster llome continued for almost a quarter of a century, and for many years she was its president. In 1862 she was appointed delegate from the Portuguese Jewish Congregation Mikve Israel to the United States Sanitary Commission, and at once formed a " Hebrew Women's Aid" to the commission. As a musician and reader she was nnstinted in the employ- ment of her talents for the cause of the Union. She was a member of the Women's Centennial Executive Committee, and is still one of the vice-presidents of the New Century Club, an organization for the ad- vancement of women, without the distinction of race or creed.

It is difficult to compress within these limits the life of Anna Dickinson. Born of Quaker ancestors, who were early settlers in Pennsylvania and Mary- land, she exhibited in her girlhood days the mental

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PROMINENT WOMEN IN PHILADELPHIA HISTORY.

power and radicalism with which all Americans are acquainted. One Sunday, in January, 1860, when she was a young school-teacher, she attended a meet- ing of the Association of Progressive Friends, when the subject of discussion was "Women's Rights and Wrongs," and there she made her first speech in public. She spoke frequently afterward at these same meetings, and in controversial argument she subdned all her antagonists. She was only eighteen years old when she attacked slavery in the speech that she de- livered at Kennett Square in 1861. The reporter of the Press said of her, that she was "handsome, of an expressive countenance, and eloquent beyond her years." "Those who did not sympathize with her re- marks were silenced by her simplicity and solemnity." She secured a position in the mint, and lost it because of a bold speech made after the battle of Ball's Bluff. Thenceforth she continued her career as a lecturer. Her lecture upon Abraham Lincoln earned a thou- sand dollars, which she gave to the committee that erected in Fairmount Park the statue of the martyred President, but she was never accorded the proper recog- nition due to her generosity. At the first meeting called to enlist colored troops in Philadelphia, sheand Frederick Douglass and William D. Kelley were the speakers who succeeded in putting blue coats upon thousands of the faithful and courageous blacks. In campaign after campaign she threw her splendid en- ergies into the service of the Union Republican party, and from the rostrum captivated her audiences with the music of her voice, the charm of her diction, and the noble elevation of her ideas. It is frequently enough said that she was and is impracticable in many of her views, but that is the common complaint against those daring spirits who are so much in ad- vance of their time.

In 1876, Miss Dickinson first appeared on the stage in her own play of "Anne Boleyn." She seems to have mistaken her vocation in attempting the work of either actress or playwright. After writing " Anne Boleyn," she composed " Aurelian," and although both plays are remarkable for their scholarship and literary polish, they are not technically adapted to the requirements of the stage. Miss Dickinson has earned very large amounts of money, but her char- itable disposition forbids that she could acquire a fortune. She has given away fully fifty thousand dollars of the income that accrued from her hard work.

Mrs. John Drew, the present proprietress and man- ager of the Arch Street Theatre, is also the most im- pressive personator in this country of the old comedy parts. Born in London, Jan. 10, 1820, she was on the stage when three years old, as Lonisa Lane, and in 1827 she came to America with her mother (Mrs. Kinloch), and played at the Walnnt Street Theatre as the Duke of York to the elder Booth's Richard III. In Baltimore, New York, and elsewhere she was starred as a " thea- trical prodigy," and in the former city Edwin Forrest

presented the child with a large gold medal for her performance of Albert in " William Tell." She played also in Kingston, Jamaica, after having been wrecked on the shores of that island, where Mr. Kinloch died. She and her mother then filled engagements in all the principal theatres of the Eastern and Southern cities, and in 1836 she married Henry Hunt, who died shortly afterward. Three years later, when she came back to the Walnut Street Theatre, she was one of the three members of the company who could command as liberal a salary for those days as twenty-five dol- lars per week. In 1850 she married, in Albany, John Drew, and in 1852 they were at the Chestnut Street Theatre, from wlience in a few months they trans- ferred themselves to the Arch Street Theatre. At the close of the season of 1852, Mr. Drew and William Wheatley leased the Archi Street Theatre, with a capital that was very diminntive. But their admin- istration of the house was marked with so much tact and knowledge that their accounts at the box-office soon enabled each of them to buy a comfortable resi- dence. Mrs. David P. Bowers, then in the flush of her lovely youth, was the leading lady, and Mrs. Drew was the comedienne. Mrs. Drew and her husband were unfortunate in 1855-56 with their starring ven- tures, and to clear themselves of debt they were obliged to sell their home, after which their financial resources amounted to but fifteen dollars. In 1860, Mr. Drew having meanwhile gone abroad, Mrs. Drew became the sole lessee of the Arch Street Theatre. For several years it was a most difficult task for her, and when she finally enlarged the theatre, and en- gaged tor the company a number of the best American actors and actresses, her friends predicted that what they styled her rashness could only eventuate in fail- ure. Still she overcame all difficulties, and in 1863 the owners rebuilt the house for her, and she remains at this date (1884) its sole lessee. John Drew died in Philadelphia May 21, 1862.

Mrs. Annis Lee Wister, whose German translations are so popular, is the daughter of Rev. Dr. Furness, and sister of the portrait-painter, William Furness, of the Shakespearian commentator, Horace Howard Fur- ness, and of the architect, Frank Furness. She has translated into English about twenty-five of the Ger- man classics of fiction. She is married to Dr. Caspar Wister, and is one of the managers of the School of Art Needlework, in which enterprise are also inter- ested Mrs. J. Dundas Lippincott, Miss F. Clark, Mrs. W. H. Fraley, Mrs. C. H. Hart, Mrs. Thomas Hock- ley, Miss L. T. Merrick, Miss F. Roberts, Mrs. Thomas A. Scott, Mrs. F. R. Shelton, and Mrs. Charles Wheeler. Mrs. Wister's sister-in-law, Helen Kate Furness (Miss Rogers), the wife of Horace Iloward Furness, published a concordance of the poems and sonnets of Shakespeare. Mrs. Furness died in 1883.

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History of Philadelphia, 1609-1884, Part 199

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898. cn; Westcott, Thompson, 1820-1888, joint author Publication date: 1884 Publisher: Philadelphia, Pa. : L. H. Everts & Co. Number of Pages: 992

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898. cn; Westcott, Thompson, 1820-1888, joint author
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, Pa. : L. H. Everts & Co.
Number of Pages: 992