USA > Pennsylvania > The provincial councillors of Pennsylvania : who held office between 1733-1776, and those earlier councillors who were some time chief magistrates of the province and their descendants > Part 21
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HENRIETTE, bu. Xt. Ch. Apr. 6, 1751,
ANTHONY ALEXANDER, bu. Xt. Ch. Aug. 2, 1752.
ELEANOR BERKELEY, dau. of Thomas and Jane Berkeley, and grddau. of the Councillor, of whom the Orphans' Court appointed Dr. William Shippen to be guardian, d. (Columbian Magazine) at the plan- tation of Col. Evan Edwards in St. Thomas and St. Denis' Parish, So. Car., in 1788, m. Xt. Ch. Feb. 13, 1760 John Chevalier, b. May 29, 1729, bapt. 1st Presbyt. June 22, 1729, son of Peter and Elizabeth Chevalier. John and his brother Peter Chevalier were merchants in Phila.
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Palmer-Chevalier branch.
Issue (surname CHEVALIER) :
PETER, bapt. 1st Presbyt. Dec. 14, 1760, d. y.,
JOHN, b. June 29, 1762,
JANE, b. Aug., 1764, d. unm., will probat. July 9, 1796,
ELIZABETH, b. Feb. 10, 1767, m. John Schaffer, see below,
GEORGE BERKELEY, b. Oct. 1, 1769, d. s. p. adm. July 15, 1790,
THOMAS, b. Nov. 26, 1772, d. s. p., m. St. Paul's Apr. 19, 1793. Susanna Evans,
SAMUEL, b. Apr. 7, 1776, m. Susanna Morgan, see below, ANDREW, b. Aug. 29, 1778, d. y.
ELIZABETH CHEVALIER, b. Feb. 10, 1767, dau. of John and Eleanor Chevalier, d. before or during 1794, m. John Schaffer of Phila., merchant, son of David Schaffer of Phila., sugar refiner. One of John Schaffer's sisters married Hon. Frederick Augustus Muhlen- berg, Speaker of U. S. Ho. of Representatives.
Issue (surname SCHAFFER) :
JOHN DAVID FREDERICK AUGUSTUS, of whom Hon. F. A. Muhlenberg was guardian, lived near Perkiomen Bridge, Montgomery Co., m. Kitty McClure,
Issue (surname SCHAFFER) :
MARY, d. s. p., DAVID, d. unm., DOROTHY, d. unm., ELIZABETH, d. s. p., CATHARINE, d. s. p.
SAMUEL CHEVALIER, b. Apr. 7, 1776, son of John and Eleanor Chevalier, as above, had as his guardian Hon. F. A. Muhlenberg, in early life was a sailor, afterwards a tanner on Old York Road, d. Apr. 10, 1816, m. by Rev. Wm. Rogers, D. D., Baptist, Jany. 18, 1801 Susannah Morgan of Cape May, N. J. She d. Apr. 30, 1837 in the 60th year of her age.
Issue (surname CHEVALIER) :
MARY ELIZABETH, b. July 29, 1802, dec'd, m., 1st, Michael J. Kreager, and, 2nd, John Peter Hinkle, and, 3rd, Samuel McAllister of Phila., broker,
Issue by 1st husband (surname Kreager) :
Elizabeth, now of Phila., m., 1st, Robert McQuay, and,. 2nd, - Black,
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Palmer-Chevalier branch.
Issue by 1st husband only (surname McQuay) : William, of Phila., Joseph Chevalier, of Phila., m. Sarah S. Ketcherley, Issue (surname Kreager) :
Harry, Annie, five others, d. y.,
Issue by 2nd husband (surname Hinkle) :
Mary S., b. June 13, 1823, d. s. p. Oct. 23, 1847, m. Louis G. Thomas,
Anna Louisa, d. s. p., m. John Tanner,
WILLIAM WAGNER, b. Nov. 17, 1804, d. April 24, 1849, m. by Elder Winchester Sep. 16, 1841 Anna Eliza Robson, who afterwards m. William Kripps,
Issue (surname Chevalier) :
Mary Elizabeth, b. May 28, 1843, dec'd, m. Frederick Fisher of Phila.,
Issue (surname Fisher) : Anna Eliza, Mary Elizabeth, Frederick,
Joseph Kreager, b. Jany. 15, 1845, served in Union Army, now of Phila., brass-burnisher, m. Ella Rus- sell,
Issue (surname Chevalier) :
Laura Virginia, b. Nov. 3, 1866,
Beulah Amelia, b. Nov. 1, 1868,
Aurelia Brown, b. Sep. 17, 1873,
Howard Morton, b. Sep. 15, 1876,
Larue Bernard, b. Nov. 25, 1878, Joseph Sumner, b. May 5, 1881,
Susannah, b. Nov. 16, 1847, m. Samuel Sipes, of Phila., Issue (surname Sipes) : Florence,
Mary,
Samuel,
Ellsworth, George Washington,
Anna Louisa, b. Jany. 17, 1849, d. y. July 17, 1850, SUSANNA, b. Oct. 23, 1806, d. unm. Sep. 28, 1847,
SAMUEL, b. Oct. 23, 1809, d. s. p. Aug. 10, 1832.
ANDREW HAMILTON. JAMES HAMILTON. ANDREW ALLEN.
ANDREW HAMILTON, the most eminent lawyer of his time in Penn- sylvania, the champion of the liberty of the press, whom Governeur Morris has called "the day-star of the American Revolution," and the chief projector of our State House, afterwards the Hall of Indepen- dence, was born in Scotland about 1676. His parentage and his career in the Old World, he seems to have kept a secret, which it is now too late to find out. His real name is uncertain, as he was at one time called Trent. James Logan, writing to Hannah Penn, says, "This comes by one Andr Hamilton once an acquaintance of his namesake our former Governor :" and Col. F. M. Etting, in his History of In- dependence Hall, has attempted to prove a relationship to Governor Andrew Hamilton, a Scotch merchant, who came to East Jersey in 1686, and died in 1703, while Lieutenant-Governor of Pennsylvania. He appears to have married thrice, a wife being mentioned in 1688, who was probably the mother of the Governor's son John, who became President of the Council of New Jersey. It is said that the Governor married Ann, daughter of Deputy-Governor Thomas Rudyard, and widow of John West of New York, whom she had married in 1684, and of Robert Wharton ; and the Governor's wife at his death was named Agnes. He left all his property to her and his son John, and John left all his property to his wife Elizabeth, neither making men- tion of Andrew. There was another Andrew Hamilton connected with New Jersey, a "doctor in physick of ye parish of St. Anne's Westminster co. of Middlesex England," who owned half of a pro- prietary interest, and, in 1692, had surveyed for himself 4700 acres alongside of William Penn's land between the Assanpink and Millstone
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rivers. The will of this Andrew Hamilton was probated in the Pre- rogative Court at Canterbury in January of 1696-7, and mentions a " wife Ann Dusancier " and a "half brother Charles Murray," whom he ordered to pay 800 marks to "ye Lady Ann Hamilton of Kister- holme in ye Parish of Kilbright in ye Shire of Cliddsdall in Scot- land" and also £20 to "Captain James Hamilton." There were also in New Jersey Major Robert Hamilton of Middletown and William Hamilton of the same place, on whose estate letters of administration were granted in 1687 to Robert Hamilton. Andrew Hamilton the
Councillor had land in New Jersey, which his son James sold in 1745, the deed not reciting his title to it; and from his being "an acquaint- ance of his namesake our former governor," and from his intimacy with George Willocks of Perth Amboy, who had married Margaret Winder, also daughter of Dep .- Gov. Rudyard, and Willocks's bequests to Hamilton's sons and devise of a house to Hamilton's daughter, while they were still young, and from Hamilton's bearing the name of Trent, a Maurice Trent having settled early in New Jersey, and from his being "delicately brought up" and having received "an unusually finished education," as Col. Etting says, it may be inferred that he was somebody to whom the Scottish proprietors of East Jersey felt called upon to show attention.
James Hamilton, his eldest son, as early as 1741, used as a seal the Hamilton arms-gu. 3 cinquefoils erm .- with a mullet in the centre, which is the mark of a third son, and, at the same time, is to be seen on the shield of the Udstoun branch of the family. His crest was not the crest as now published of the Udstoun branch, but the his- toric tree intersected with a frame-saw with the legend "Through," as borne by the distinguished heads of the House. Douglas's Scotch Peerage fails to show any one with whom the emigrant to America can be identified : but the descendants of a Robert Hamilton, writer in Edinburgh, younger son of Hamilton of Udstoun, are omitted. Against this, is a note in Chief Justice Tilghman's diary that Mr. Chew, who had studied with Hamilton, said that Mr. Allen (Hamil- ton's son-in-law) and Mr. Francis had told him that "A. H.'s name was Trent." Robert French, who had settled at New Castle before 1687, speaks of him in his will, dated Oct. 21, 1713, as "my friend and countryman Andrew Hamilton of Chester River in Maryland gentle- man." French had married the widow of Maurice Trent of Phila. The will of James Trent of the town of Inverness, Scotland, sojourn-
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ing in Phila., dated 1696, however mentions no other relative besides his brother William, who was the founder of Trenton, N. J.
Our positive information is, that, when about of age, he came to Accomac County on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. The family tradi- tion, mentioned by Joshua Francis Fisher in his Sketch of him (Daw- son's Hist. Magazine, Aug. 1868), that he fled from his native country on account of having killed a person of note in a duel may have its origin in the celebrated duel of the Duke of Hamilton and Lord Mohun in 1712. In his address to the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1739, Hamilton speaks of " liberty, the love of which as it first drew to, so it constantly prevailed on me to reside in this Province, tho' to the manifest prejudice of my fortune ;" a remark which would hardly have been appropriate to his removal from Maryland to Philadelphia.
At Accomac he obtained employment as steward of a plantation, and for a time kept a classical school. At what date he assumed, or, if it was his real name, resumed the name of Hamilton, we do not know. In 1706, Rev. Francis Makemie, the Father of Presbyterianism in those parts (a native of Co. Donegal, Ireland, who came to America in 1684 and was in Accomac engaged in trade in 1690, and married Naomi Anderson of that County, removing to Barbadoes, and returning to Accomac about 1699 with a license to preach), bequeathed his law books to " Andrew Hamilton Esq." If Hamilton at this time had any affiliations with the Presbyterians, they did not last long. His family appear to have attended Christ Church, his wife was of Quaker par- entage, and he himself belonged to no Christian denomination.
His marriage while steward with the widow of the owner of the estate, so the story goes, brought him influential connections, and he began the practice of law. He removed to Chestertown, Kent Co., Md., in the neighbourhood of which, it is to be remarked, were a large family of Hambletons, one of whom was probably the "son-in-law Andrew Hambleton," to whom Ninian Beale, a prominent man in Maryland, left a cow by his will dated in 1717.
Mr. Fisher quotes the records of Gray's Inn, London, that " Mr. Andrew Hamilton of Maryland " was admitted a member of that learned Society on Jany. 27, 1712, and, on Feb. 10 following, was called to the Bar of the same per favor., which means without keeping the usual terms. In the winter of 1712-3, i. e. before Logan's letter of 12 mo. (February) 26, 1712-3, which mentions it, he was the law- yer for Penn in a replevin case brought by Berkeley Codd, where the Proprietary's point was, that, the quit-rent due from Codd's land being
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a rent-service, distress was incident thereto of common right. Hamil- ton here did not trust to his abilities in the forum. Logan's letter of 7ber 14, 1713, the same which calls him "once an acquaintance of his namesake our former governor " says, "Twas he we employed in the business of the replevin brought last winter upon a distress made in the Co. of Sussex for quit-rents and he baffled them, tho' he thought not fit to suffer it to proceed to a trial for want of better tackle on our side." Logan goes on to say that abroad " he will readily be assistant I believe in anything in his power but designing a short stay can do little more than by advice & information." About this time Hamil- ton's name appears in the deed books of Philadelphia associated with Plumsted, the Councillor, and with Gilbert and John Falconar, who were natives of Edinburgh. He removed to Philadelphia prior to the time named in the following indictment, reprinted in Wharton's Pre- cedents of Indictments and Pleas, 4th Edit., p. 961: The grand in- quest for our Lord the King upon their respective oaths and affirma- tions do present that Andrew Hamilton late of the city of Philadel- phia, Esq. the tenth of October, in the first year of the reign of our lord George by the grace of God King * the third, of the hon- orable Charles Gookin Esq. lieutenant-governor of the province of Pennsylvania, then and still being, the wicked, opprobrious, and re- proachful words following did speak, utter, and pronounce viz : Damn him" &ct. On Sept. 21, 1716, Hamilton gave bond in 1000l. with Plumsted and Israel Pemberton as his sureties to appear at the next court of record. This case was doubtless discontinued by order of Gov. Gookin's successor, and in 1717 Hamilton was made Attorney General of Pennsylvania. In March, 1720-1 he was called to the Council, accepting on condition that his duties should not interfere with his practice. Logan, in a letter to Gouldney, dated 3 mo. 7, 1723, says, " I mentioned in my last that Andrew Hamilton designed speedily to come over thither. He now intends to take shipping from New York in the Beaver about the latter end of this month, and I must particularly give you these hints concerning him. He has for 3 or 4 years past appeared very hearty in the Proprietor's interest here, notwithstanding it is not his natural disposition to be on the side of those who are accounted great or are in power; but of late he has somewhat recoiled and given more way to nature. He is very true when he professes friendship unless he thinks himself slighted, which he can not easily brook. He is a very able lawyer, very faithful to his client, and has generally refused to be concerned for any Plaintiff
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Hamilton.
who appeared not to have justice on his side. He has done many considerable services for our Governor [Sir William Keith], but of late they have openly been at variance, for which reason I am of opinion that he will not appear against the Govr., for he is singularly generous that way. I have been much obliged to him, both on my own account and the Proprietor's, and I heartily wish he may be treated there by the family in such a manner as may engage him, of which I am somewhat apprehensive."
In 1724, Hamilton, resigned the Attorney-Generalship. Going to England, he there appeared in Chancery for the formal proving of William Penn's will. Returning December 12, 1726, the voyage being twelve weeks from London, there was granted to him for his services to the Penn family one hundred and fifty three acres of their manor of Springettsbury lying North of the City and West of the Wissahickon Road, now Ridge Ave. This received the name of " Bush Hill," and here Hamilton built a country seat. In June, 1727, after the death of Robert Assheton, he was appointed Prothonotary of the Supreme Court and Recorder of the City. He was also in 1727 elected to the Assembly from Bucks County, having a residence in Bristol. In 1729, he was chosen Speaker ; and was re-elected annually until his retirement in 1739, with the exception of a single year, when, Gover- nor Gordon and he being " at outs," owing to an unpleasantness be- tween Miss Margaret Hamilton and the Misses Gordon, the Governor exerted his influence against the return of Hamilton to the Assembly, and had him defeated at the polls. The first session of the Assembly which Hamilton attended, was held in a private house, like all pre- ceding sessions had been except when the Friends' Meeting was used. About this time an attempt was made to appoint some other town than Philadelphia as the place of meeting, but Gov. Gordon successfully resisted it. It was afterwards suggested that the dignity of the Pro- vince required a suitable building which might be kept as a perma- nent legislative hall; and in May, 1729, on the passage of a bill for the issuing of paper money, a clause was inserted providing that 2000l. thereof be paid over to Thomas Lawrence, Andrew Hamilton, and Dr. John Kearsley for its erection. Third and Market had been men- tioned as the location, but Hamilton, preferring Chestnut between 5th and 6th, purchased the ground in company with William Allen, after- wards his son-in-law, taking title to the various lots composing the present Independence Square in their own names until the government should accept them, and repay the money advanced. Kearsley, who
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Hamilton.
had designed Christ Church, furnished a plan and elevation, as did Hamilton, to a Committee of the Whole House. Hamilton's design was adopted ; and the site which he proposed, chosen. The ground was broken in the Spring of 1732; from which time the superintend- ence of the work devolved upon him. The next year, two offices adjoining the main building were added to the plan. The room for the Assembly was so nearly finished by September of 1736 as to be used for a grand banquet given by Allen, then retiring from the Mayoralty. In the following month, the first session was held there. Work upon the building went on for several years. Completion was not attained until after Hamilton's death, the room for the Supreme Court not being ready until 1743, nor that for the Provincial Council until 1747. The conveyance to the Province was made by Hamilton's son.
Chief Justice Tilghman, in the case of Lyle vs. Richards, after speaking of the sufficiency of the early way of getting rid of an entail in Pennsylvania, viz: bringing an action against the executor of the person who had devised in tail, and having the property sold for some debt real or supposed, continues : "But there is another reason why it was so long before either fines or common recoveries were brought into practice. From what I have been able to learn of the early part of the history of Pennsylvania, it was a long time before she possessed lawyers of eminence ; there were never wanting men of strong minds, very well able to conduct the business of the courts, without much re- gard to form ; such, in particular, was Andrew Hamilton, the imme- diate (sic) predecessor of Mr. Francis, and the father of James Hamil- ton the testator. But Mr. Francis appears to have been the first of our lawyers who mastered the technical difficulties of the profession." Of course in the early days of the Quaker emigrants, among whom the best educated men were physicians or schoolmasters, justice was admin- istered by laymen according to their natural ideas of right, and, while, as they found occasion, they aped such judicial forms as the lay public in England had been familiar with, the people wished to be free from the perplexities and chicanery of law and lawyers. They ordained that property should pass by a very simple form of deed, which Judge Gibson gives in the case above referred to, and which shows them to have been ahead even of the present times. They stretched actions beyond their prescribed functions, as appears from the replevin case against the Admiralty officers in Vol. I of the Colonial Records, and
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in 1704 David Lloyd, who may be supposed to have had professional education from the statement by the Assembly one year that he was the only man in the House who was "learned in the law," and who was Andrew Hamilton's predecessor as Attorney-General, disputed the validity of an action of ejectment, because ejectment was a fictitious proceeding, and fictions were not allowable, he said, in Pennsylvania. An early law forbade any one to argue the side of another in the courts for money ; an effectual provision against the growth of a bar as long as it remained in force : and it was not until 1722 that the Assembly ordained that " there may be a competent number of persons of an honest disposition and learned in the law admitted by the justices of the said respective courts to practise as attornies there." About the time of William Penn's second visit to Pennsylvania there was a larger influx of well educated people, and in 1706 Robert Assheton, George Lowther, and Thomas Clark are spoken of as "practitioners in the law," although whether they were qualified to practise in the courts of England, we can not say. Before Hamilton's time, however, there were lawyers in the colony who had been trained abroad, and who, if negligent of the nicer forms, were so because they found loose methods already in vogue. Jacob Regnier, " of Lincoln's Inn barrister at law," was here from 1701 to 1714, " William Assheton of Gray's Inn Esq. Judge of the Admiralty in Pennsylvania 1714," has left books marked with his book-plate with that legend, and Peter Evans, called in his will " of the Inner Temple, gentleman," was made Deputy Register of Wills during the administration of his cousin Lieut .- Gov. Evans, and practised until his death in 1745, being Hamilton's opponent in many cases. In fact, it was rather from the character of the judges than the ignorance of the lawyers that we can derive a reason why common re- coveries were not made use of earlier. From 1717 to 1731, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, which body had pretty much all the important business to attend to, was David Lloyd, the hater of fictiones juris, just the man to have refused to allow a proceeding which is ad- mittedly a fraud and dumb show. His successor was Jeremiah Lang- horne, qualified for the position merely, as far as I can learn, by his long service in the legislative body ; and his successor was James Logan, somewhat of an amateur lawyer, because a universal scholar.
Perhaps Hamilton's fame was due to effective speech-making, per- haps he obtained his monopoly of the law business because he cham- pioned the cause of the poor and the weak and thereby of the many, and, doubtless, we are to take Chief Justice Tilghman's statement to
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this extent, that he was little versed in the intricacies of special pleading, and in the details of that artificial system of remedial justice then be- coming obsolete across the water. But there is nothing to lead us to suppose that he was a mere stump speaker, demagogue, or ignorant reformer who read no authoritative treatises, and did not try to find precedents for his points.
The crowning glory of Hamilton's professional career was the de- fence of John Peter Zenger in 1735, which Hamilton nobly undertook without fee or reward. Zenger was a printer in New York City, and in his newspaper had presumed to criticize the government of that Province, saying, " We see men's deeds destroyed, judges arbitrarily displaced, new courts erected without consent of the legislature, by which, it seems to be, trials by jury are taken away when a governor pleases ; men of known estates denied their votes contrary to the re- ceived practice, the best exposition of any law. Who is there in that Province that can call anything his own, or enjoy any liberty longer than those in the administration will condescend to let him do it ? "
The Attorney-General of New York lodged an information charging him with libel. Zenger's lawyers, objecting to the legality of the Judges' commissions were stricken from the list of attorneys. Fearing that the advocate, who had thereupon been appointed by the court, might be overawed by the administration judiciary, at the head of which would be Chief Justice de Lancey, a member of the Governor's Council, Hamilton voluntarily went to New York, and engaged in the case. It is reported in the British State Trials. Hamilton ad- mitted the printing and publishing of the article referred to, and then asserted the doctrine, novel at that time, that the truth of the facts in the alleged libel could be set up as a defence, and that in this proceed- ing the jury were judges of both the law and the facts. We learn from a London letter to the Pennsylvania Gazette that "a Goliath in Learning and Politics " had said of this argument, " If it is not Law, it is Better than Law, it ought to be Law, and Will Always be Law wherever justice prevails ;" and that "the greatest men at the Bar have openly declared, that the subject of Libels was never so well treated in Westminster-Hall as at New York." The offer of evidence to prove the truth of Zenger's statements was rejected ; but Hamilton, going back to the origin of trial by jury, when a number of men were drawn from the neighborhood, that they might decide a question from their own knowledge of the circumstances, and be both witnesses and judges, then appealed to the twelve citizens of New York before him
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to say from the evidence which they had met with in their daily lives, for they were familiar with matters of such public moment, that the contents of the defendant's article were not false. An eloquent pero- ration for liberty, calling up examples from history of those who had suffered in its cause, and preventing an unfavorable charge to the jury from Chief Justice de Lancey, brought a verdict of "Not Guilty." The people of New York and the other colonies hailed the result with delight : it insured free discussion of the conduct of public men. The Common Council of the town passed a vote of thanks to the Phila- delphia lawyer, and presented him with the freedom of the city ; and his reputation rose to the highest eminence even in England, the ac- count of the trial being reprinted there four times in three months.
It was mostly by Hamilton's influence that the High Court of Chancery established by Lieut .- Gov. Keith in 1720, ceased operations in 1735. His enemy Peter Evans said, in a letter preserved in Bp. Perry's Hist. Collections relating to the Church in Pennsylvania, that it was because Hamilton and Plumsted were being sued in it for an attempt to cheat a widow and her orphans. Hamilton was many years a Trustee of the General Loan Office, the Province's agency for putting out the paper money, taking mortgages of real estate for its return. In 1737, he was appointed Judge of the Vice Admiralty Court, the only position which he held at his death.
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