USA > Pennsylvania > Montgomery County > Lives of the eminent dead and biographical notices of prominent living citizens of Montgomery County, Pa. > Part 19
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In person Mr. Jones was rather under the medium height, light complexion but dark hair, and of comely, pleasant fea- tures. He died, unmarried, at the age of 46 years, in 1865, and was buried at Friends' cemetery in Schuylkill township, two miles above Valley Forge. Hon. J. Glancey Jones, of Reading, who was possibly a distant relative, and a particular friend, as also the writer, were at his funeral.
His brother, Nathan H. Jones, from whom most of the facts of this notice have been gathered, is a man of high moral char- acter and much culture, being a very fine mathematician. Caleb P. Jones, notwithstanding his activity as a reformer, left considerable estate to his brother and sister.
197
HON. JOSIAH W. EVANS.
The following lines, dedicated to his memory by A. J. Chris- man, are added:
Bending o'er thy dust, my brother, O'er thy sad and lonely tomb, I would lay a sweet wreath on it, Flowers that memory bids to bloom.
HON. JOSIAH W. EVANS.
Naked as from the earth we eame, And rose to life at first; We to the earth return again, And mingle with the dust .- Watts.
Josiah White Evans was born October 2d, 1802, in Limerick township, Montgomery county. His father, James Evans, was a farmer, and well known throughout the county, once repre- senting it in the Legislature. The Evans family is of Welsh extraction, and some of the earliest settlers of Limerick town- ship were of that name. His mother was Charlotte Brooke, whose ancestors came from England about the year 1699 or 1700, and located a grant of about eight hundred acres of land in the upper part of this county, west of the Perkiomen.
Josiah W. Evans received a good common school education before he left his father's farm. All his acquirements beyond this were through his own unaided efforts. On March 4th, 1832, he married Miss Anna Hunsberger, of the same town- ship.
He was a member of the congregation of Limerick Lutheran Church, and never severed his connection therefrom, although after coming to Norristown he regularly attended the Presby- terian church, of which his wife was a member. He first learned the trade of a blacksmith, and after completing his ap- prenticeship went to Pottsville and followed it for a short time, but becoming dissatisfied he returned to his father's farm. On the 1 1th of July, 1831, he came to Norristown and entered the Prothonotary's office as clerk to Jacob Fry, Jr., continuing in this position several years. He was appointed a Justice of the Peace by Governor Wolf on the 3d of May, 1832, and filled the office in connection with his clerkship. He entered
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HON. JOSIAH W. EVANS.
upon the duties of Prothonotary as principal, by appointment of Governor Porter, on the 7th of February, 1839, and in the following November was elected by the people to the same office, filling it three years longer, till the spring of 1843, when the same Governor appointed him Associate Justice of the courts.
During the four years he filled the office of Prothonotary his brother James was his deputy, the latter continuing to fill that position through the incumbency of Josiah's successors, Dr. Jones Davis and Mehelm McGlathery, and then was him- self elected to the office, in 1848, holding it three years.
At the conclusion of his first term of five years on the bench, Judge Evans was reappointed by Governor Shunk in 1848, and again chosen to the same office in 1851 by the people, the place becoming elective under the new Constitution. He died, how- ever, before his term expired.
During or between his judicial terms he was for a period of two or three years associated with his brother Owen (who was the active partner) in the lime business on the Schuylkill be- low Norristown, the products of their kilns being sold whole- sale in Philadelphia, and also shipped South. This business was very remunerative and successful.
He was a member of the Norristown School Board and of the Town Council for a number of years, as also clerk for the latter body.
Mr. Evans died in Norristown on the 7th of April, 1855, where he had lived continuously for twenty-four years. He left a large estate to his widow during her life, and also made a considerable bequest to a sister in straitened circumstances, the bulk of it to finally revert to his collateral heirs.
His life was an even, uneventful, yet withal a very useful one. By nature unassuming, and shunning all display and prominence, he was truly a man of sterling character, ever fill- ing with punctuality and fidelity all public and private trusts.
In person he was over the medium stature, and of quiet, grave demeanor. His remains are interred in Montgomery Cemetery, and over them is erected a handsome marble obelisk bearing his name and age.
199
JACOB ADLE, JR.
JACOB ADLE, JR.
The hand of the diligent shall bear rule; but the slothful shall be under tribute .- Proverbs XII, 24.
Jacob Adle was born in Switzerland in the year 1800. When six years of age his father and mother, Jacob and Susanna Adle, seeing nothing before them but wars and invasions from ad- vancing and retreating French and Austrian armies, concluded to emigrate with their one son to America, where quiet and industrious people might hope for peace and plenty.
Of the Swiss, after whose Republic our own is moulded, Goodrich, in his Universal History, remarks:
" The great charm of Switzerland, next to its natural scenery, is the air of well being, neatness and sense of property imprinted on the people and their dwellings. They have a kind of Robinson Crusoe industry about their houses and lands; they are perpetually building, altering, repairing or improving something about their tenements."
It was exactly this industry, frugality and care for home with which Jacob and Susanna Adle began life in Norristown in 1806, and they soon had a small dwelling of their own. A few years after settling here a daughter was born to them, who is still living with us and well known to our citizens as Mrs. Sarah Derr, relict of Franklin Derr, recently deceased. Su- sanna Adle died at an advanced age in 1852, and her husband, Jacob Adle, Sr., six years later, in 1858.
Jacob Adle, Jr., the subject of this notice, received a good education at the Norristown Academy, but only at intervals, as he was trained to industry from his earliest years, and ex- pected to earn his living. For a long time, when young, he rode as post-boy to deliver the weekly papers, and probably carried the mail also. In due time he was apprenticed to a chairmaker, which business he learned. Some time after he married Sallie, daughter of Matthias Koplin, who for many years ran a flour mill in Norristown. Their children who sur- vived infancy are: Theodore, now a master smith; William H., a machinist; Matilda, deceased; Anna, intermarried with Josiah Shaw, of Philadelphia; and Thaddeus S., watchmaker and jeweler. All except Anna now (1878) reside in Norristown.
Having, as we stated, learned his trade, Jacob Adle, Jr., be-
200
HENRY POTTS.
gan chairmaking, and continued to follow it at the corner of Main and Barbadoes streets, Norristown, till about 1842, when he opened a grocery near by, which was successfully conducted for a number of years.
Jacob Adle, Jr., was a man of considerable mental culture, good judgment, and of great propriety of deportment. For several years he filled the position of member of Town Coun- cil with credit to himself and advantage to the public.
The wife and daughter of Jacob Adle, Sr., were members of the Presbyterian church. The wife and daughters of Jacob Adle, Jr., were Episcopalians.
Being a man of sobriety, frugality and industry, he accumu- lated considerable property, which enabled him to retire finally from business. This he did about 1866, but his health con- tinued to decline, and he expired August 9th, 1866. He is buried in Montgomery Cemetery. His widow still survives him.
HENRY POTTS.
Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again .- Bryant.
Henry Potts, an extensive ironmaster at Pottstown, and as- sociated with David Potts, of Warwick, Chester county, was born August 5th, 1797, in the town which his great-grand- father, John Potts, founded and called after his own name. After obtaining a good education he completed a mercantile training in Philadelphia, where he was first employed as book- keeper or clerk, and afterwards engaged in the iron business, which had been the family calling for several generations. Sub- sequently he engaged in the manufacture of iron at the famous Glasgow Forge, near the Manatawny, north of Pottstown. In 1834, associated with John P. Rutter, he built Isabella Fur- nace, in Chester county, for smelting ore, which was worked into malleable iron at Pottsgrove Iron Works, Pottstown. He was also associated with his cousin, Hon. David Potts, Jr., in running Warwick Furnace, Chester county, which was founded
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201
REV. THOMAS GIBBS.
before the Revolution. In 1857 he retired from business, hand- ing over his extensive works to his sons, Henry, George H., and Joseph, and his son-in-law, Edward S. Davies.
Henry Potts was married October 8th, 1819, to Isabella, daughter of Daniel Hitner, Sr., of Whitemarsh township, by whom he had several children.
He was held in high esteem all his life as a business man of integrity, uprightness, and public spirit. In 1857 he was elected the first President of the Pottstown Bank. He was also for several years Secretary and Treasurer of the Pottstown Bridge Company, and a member of the gas board of the bor- ough, as also President of the Town Council. He was during his entire life a Whig or Republican, and strongly anti-slavery in his views, but being retiring in his habits never sought or attained any public position. He died at his residence, in his native town, August 31st, 1861, aged 64 years.
REV. THOMAS GIBBS.
As the life of a wieked man is not worthy of the name of life, so the death of a godly man is not worthy of the name of death .- Edwards.
Rev. Thomas Gibbs, of the Protestant Methodist Church, was born in the State of Delaware in the year 1799. Of nearly pure African blood, his father and mother, whose names were John and Deborah, had been reared in slavery. But his father, being a man of energy and sobriety, and his master favoring emancipation, he found means to buy himself, and afterwards his wife. Thomas was therefore born free, and when quite a young man came to Pennsylvania, stopping awhile at Hamor- ton, in Chester county .* He early acquired proficiency as a violinist or fiddler, and made considerable money attending parties in that capacity. When quite young he married a wife, who soon after died, leaving to his care two small children.
*In relating his habits then as hostler at a tavern and musician at frolies and sleigh- ing parties, he said to the writer: " It was a merey of God that I did not fall to drink- ing and go to perdition, as did so many others."
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202
REV. THOMAS GIBBS.
He went to Philadelphia and obtained employment as porter or store-helper. Here he got acquainted with Mrs. Sally Ann James, whose maiden name had been Berry. She, like him- self, had been widowed by the death of her husband, Furman James, some time before. It was natural that he, a young widower, and she, a young widow, should sympathize with each other. The acquaintance therefore soon ripened into at- tachment, and on the 9th of August, 1827, they were married by " James Abercrombie, D. D., assistant minister at Christ Church, St. Peter's, and St. James'." So reads the marriage certificate.
Mr. Gibbs at this time was without book education of any kind, the fiddle being then his book, Bible, and constant com- panion. His wife, being almost a full white woman, and raised in Philadelphia, was well educated for one in her rank in life, besides well trained in the amenities of respectable society. Shortly after her marriage with Mr. Gibbs she fell into the currents of one of the then prevailing revivals, and according to the phrase then common among Methodists, "got religion." From that time her whole plans of life were changed. She saw the importance of the conversion of her partner, and did not long pray and labor for that end till she had the satisfac- tion of calling him "brother" as well as husband. At once slie set about opening to his nature-darkened mind the world of letters. Being herself fond of books, she read to him in the evenings while he listened, and taught him also to spell and read, till he became a fair reader. She also instructed him in the use of the pen, so that he could write his name.
Very soon after his conversion he felt the deep obligation to lead other sinners to Christ, and so rented a cellar, fitted it up as a mission Bethel, and began to hold meetings for prayer and exhortation, which were thronged nightly and blessed to the awakening and conversion of hundreds. This was about 1835. The truth opened in his mind through the written Word, now in his hands, added to the fervor of the Spirit, as "a fire shut up in the bones," began to manifest a gift and power of exhortation, and it was soon plain to all who knew him that he was " called" to preach the gospel of peace. The
203
REV. THOMAS GIBBS.
fiddle became an eye-sore to him, and was sold or given away, he entering upon a new life. A Protestant Methodist church was organized at Fifth and Gaskill streets, and Mr. Gibbs was there appointed and ordained to minister in holy things, which he did for several years.
Coming to Norristown shortly after the colored people of the town were organized into an African Methodist Episcopal Church, the denominational connection with which colored people were most familiar. They proceeded to erect Mount Zion Church edifice, west of Stony creek, and Mr. Gibbs, join- ing the connection, preached for them several years. Divi- sions arising among them, however, a considerable number of the membership of the church resolved to organize anew under the auspices of the Methodist Protestant Church, to which Mr. and Mrs. Gibbs had originally belonged. Accordingly about 1852 or 1853 they proceeded to organize "Israel Methodist Protestant Ebenezer Church," and erected a small stone build- ing at Arch and Basin streets for a house of worship. Here Mr. Gibbs preached for a time, but finally took charge of a congregation in Philadelphia, to which he ministered till within a few years of his death, though he continued to reside in Nor- ristown.
Notwithstanding Mr. Gibbs had become a somewhat gifted preacher, he never ccased to labor with his hands. He had taken up the business of a professional whitewasher, and en- joyed the common fame of being able to white a wall and ceil- ing with lime-wash without the fall of a single drop on the carpets. This brought him the best work of the kind in town and country. Mrs. Gibbs also being a capable, trusty woman, kept the refreshment stand in the ladies' waiting-room of the railroad depot at Ninth and Green streets, Philadelphia.
Both Thomas Gibbs' children by his first wife died in infancy, and he and his second wife had two children, John L., born April 5th, 1839, and died in 1844, aged 4 years; Sarah Ann, born January Ist, 1843, and died of consumption March 8th, 1869, aged 26 years. She also, as her mother had been, was for a long time the waiting-woman and refreshment seller in the ladies' room of the Norristown railroad depot.
204
HON. JOHN FREEDLEY.
By faithful industry and economy, therefore, the family were- providing a moderate livelihood, and were enabled to buy for- themselves a small home on Penn street, near Sandy, Norris- town. But the death of their promising daughter preyed deeply upon the mind of the father, and seven months after her death he was taken with dropsy, and quietly passed away October 20th, 1869, aged about 70 years. He is buried in the ceme- tery of the First Presbyterian Church, of which his wife and daughter had become members.
In person Rev. Thomas Gibbs was above the medium size, with large, prominent eyes, which gave fluency of speech. He possessed the warm, earnest, social nature peculiar to his race, which gave him fervor in urging the motives of the gospel he preached. He was affectionate as a husband and father, and the latter married life of both Mr. and Mrs. Gibbs was a refu- tation of the frequent remark that second marriages are rarely happy. Mrs. Gibbs, now (1878) advanced in life, has survived. her husband nine years.
HON. JOHN FREEDLEY.
Surely every man walketh in a vain show; surely they are disquieted in vain: he. heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them .- Psalm XXXIX, 6.
John Freedley, a distinguished lawyer of the Norristown bar, third son of Henry and Catharine Isett Freedley, was born near Norristown in the year 1793. His father, the first noted one of the family, owned land in Whitpain and Plymouth town- ships, but came to Norristown about the commencement of the present century, and established himself in the pottery and brickmaking business at the rear of where the Montgomery House now stands. His brick and pottery works extended back to Washington street, and deep excavations, whence he got the material, remained at the corner of that street and Strawberry alley till within a few years ago. Henry Freed- ley, of German extraction, was a very industrious, enterprising business man, and accumulated means rapidly. In 1804 he'
205
HON. JOHN FREEDLEY.
erected the upper end of the present Montgomery House, and his eldest son, the father of Henry Freedley, Esq., of Norris- town, kept a store within it at an early day.
Henry Freedley, Sr., and his wife Catharine, had the follow- ing children: Henry, intermarried with Sophia Kline; Mary, with Richard Davis; Susanna, with Samuel Jacoby; Eliza- beth, with George Prince; Jacob, with Susan Jacoby, and af- terwards with Mrs. Dickinson, of Philadelphia; Catharine, with Matthew Neeley; Dr. Samuel, with Mrs. Heckly. John, the subject of this notice, left one son, Edwin T. Freedley, Esq., the author of several treatises on business. John had worked at the business of his father, but soon turned his mind to reading and intellectual pursuits. He did not, however, commence the study of law till near his twenty-fourth year. Having a robust, well knit physique, and a well developed brain, he soon mastered the science, and was admitted to the bar August 16th, 1820. Graduating in his profession at a time when the older lights, Hon. Levi Pawling, Philip S. Markley, Benjamin Evans, John Henderson, and others, were withdrawing from practice, Mr. Freedley rose rapidly, and within a dozen years was at the very head of the bar, his chief competitors being Philip Kendall, D. H. Mulvany, John B. Sterigere, and Joseph Fornance. He never attained great distinction as a criminal lawyer, though generally engaged in the most important trials, but gradually obtained a hold on most of the heavy real estate causes that came into court. This was doubtless what led him to engage in land speculations, in which he was largely em- barked for many years. From the time he was fairly in prac- tice till within a short period of his death, much valuable pro- perty near Norristown, which passed through the Sheriff's sales, came into Mr. Freedley's possession. Whenever there was a clear speculation in prospect, Mr. F. was most frequently the purchaser. This was what brought into his hands the Matthias Holstein estate. Subsequent to 1830 he also bought the property of Letitia Thomas, deceased, embracing the Rising Sun, Montgomery House, and all the front from Swede street to Strawberry street. About the same time also, in conjunc- tion with Colonel James Bush, he bought the old Swedes'
206
HON. JOHN FREEDLEY.
Ford tavern property, covering much of the land now forming the site of Bridgeport. All these he sold at large advances on cost, for his rule was the correct one, "Always be ready to buy and ever on hand to sell." Thus, when a monetary crisis came, he had the profits of his sales and not the property in hand, as had very many about Norristown in 1857 who pur- sued the opposite course of buying lots but never selling them.
About 1840 he remodeled the fine two-story mansion that had belonged to the Egypt Mill property, and which he had bought of Major Holstein, at the southwest corner of Main and Mill streets, tearing out the stone front, building it up. with brick, and raising it a story, as it stands now. He fitted it up for a residence for himself, and occupied it a year or two, ยท but true to his rule, finding a purchaser in General William Schall, of Green Lane Forge, he sold it and returned to board- ing again. It is impossible at this late day to recall his ex- tended business operations, though it is remembered that he owned white marble quarries in Massachusetts, and was in partnership with Charles Heebner in a marble-sawing mill at Conshohocken, which did a very heavy business.
He was for a long time a director and heavy stockholder in the Bank of Montgomery County, which enabled him to com- mand money for his land speculations. He was also willing to use his capital at times to further enterprises of a public nature. In connection with Davis Henderson, Jacob Freed- ley, Mordecai R. Moore, and Merchant Maulsby, he invested: in a stock of thirty thousand dollars, in "Samuel Jamison's: Spinning Mill," a limited corporation, which started about 1840. The first named person invested ten thousand dollars ;; each of the others five thousand.
Mr. Freedley always voted with the Whigs, and though nott an active politician, often made speeches at the great gather -- ings of the party. In 1846 he was taken up for Congress int the district composed of Montgomery and Delaware counties ;. and re-elected in 1848 during the famous Free Soil contest between Taylor, Cass, and Van Buren. At the conclusion of his second term he was nominated the third time, but defeated by Hon. John McNair. In Congress Mr. Freedley was a
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HON. JOHN FREEDLEY.
faithful representative and a warm advocate and defender of the policy of protecting American manufactures by a tariff. He also generally sustained Northern anti-slavery views by his votes, though during the long contest pending the passage of what were called the Compromise measures, he failed to respond at the critical moment, and the bill became a law .*
Shortly after Mr. Freedley's return from Washington his health failed him, and to have the benefit of the treatment of his brother, Dr. Samuel Freedley, who was then as now a prac- ticing physician in Philadelphia, he removed to that city and remained under his care till he died, December 8th, 1851, aged 58 years. He made a will for the disposal of his estate, and named Benjamin F. Hancock, and his nephews, Samuel F. Jacoby, Samuel Prince, and Henry Freedley, Esq., executors. His effects consisted of real estate, bank and other stocks, and amounted to over three hundred thousand dollars, which he left mainly to his nephews and nieces and son, making a legacy to each of about eight thousand dollars.
In person Hon. John Freedley was under medium height, stoutly built, with black hair and florid complexion, a man of dignity and manly deportment; and while he had the reputa- tion of a shrewd, close dealer, was charitable to the poor and just and honorable in all his business transactions.
His remains are entombed in Montgomery Cemetery, over which is erected a marble obelisk elaborately chiseled and let- tered with a record of his life and public services.
*The writer, then taking a deep interest in the anti-slavery question, remembers spending a whole day looking up Mr. Freedley's record on the passage of that famous act which was to "give peace to the country," and "end agitation in Congress and out of it." The bill was a monstrous omnibus, that provided for the admission of California as a free State; the assumption of the Texas State debt, or, what was the same thing, the payment of ten millions to that State for its wild land; and the passage of a fugitive slave law that made every Northern man a contingent slave-catcher. The last two fea- tures were very distasteful to the people of the free States, and representatives were care- ful not to place themselves on the record in favor of the bill. Accordingly, as there was a clear majority in the House against its passage on the first call of the yeas and nays, the bill was lost; but by a motion to reconsider, a number of members, Mr. Frecdley- among them, failed to respond. So the bill was called up again, in violation of the House's own rules, and on the final trial it was suffered to pass as a "compromise."" The multiplication of motions pending the main question was so great, and the contest. lasted so many days, that it was very hard to determine what Northern representative had yielded to the pretended "necessity" which our great statesmen, Clay, Webster, Calhoun, and others, had gotten up as a last "offering to peace." It was alleged by- Mr. Freedley's friends, however, that he was accidentally and unintentionally absent at the momentous time. But whether so or not, many refused to vote for him the third time on that account, and he failed of being returned again.
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