Genealogy- Newsletter- May 17, 2025

20 May Genealogy- Newsletter- May 17, 2025

GENEALOGY- HEARTBREAK FOR A FUTURE PRESIDENT

We visited the Cornwall Furnace National Monument in central Pennsylvania. There was a personal interest as my wife and my son-in-law’s (they’re tenth cousins) many times Great Uncle Peter Grubb (c.1702—1754), founded the Grubb Family Iron Dynasty in 1737, developed Cornwall Iron Mines and established Cornwall Iron Furnace, together there were one of the largest ironworks in Colonial Pennsylvania. The Cornwall Iron Mines are the largest U.S. iron mines ever discovered east of Lake Superior.

Another early industrialist, Robert Coleman (pictured below), later known as Pennsylvania’s first millionaire, acquired a 1/6 interest in the Cornwall Furnace from the Grubb family in 1786 and added a 2/3 share in 1798, for a total of 5/6 ownership. Most importantly, the Cornwall Furnace purchase included an equal share of the Cornwall Ore Bank, one of the richest iron deposits in the United States.

In addition to Cornwall Furnace, we also visited Wheatfield, the home of President James Buchanan, our only bachelor president (pictured below as a younger man), who was elected in 1860.

Here we learned the story of Robert Coleman’s daughter Anne Caroline (pictured), who, in 1818, was being courted by Buchanan. Anne Caroline was a “catch” with her social standing and wealth. Buchanan did not have a status or background but was beginning to gain a reputation in law and politics, having served as both prosecuting attorney and state assemblyman. The two became engaged in the summer of 1819. Coleman was apparently unhappy with Buchanan’s checkered history at Dickinson College, where he was disciplined by faculty twice and dismissed on one occasion.

During October and November 1819, Buchanan was busy with the Columbia Bridge Company Supreme Court case in Philadelphia, many clients impacted by a collapsing economy, and with the Missouri problem regarding slavery at the legislature, and apparently neglected Anne Caroline.

Town gossip concluded that Buchanan “was tremendously ambitious to make money; that he was more affable and friendly to many young ladies than he ought to be as one betrothed; and finally, that he had been something less than an ardent suitor of Ann Coleman in recent weeks.” They came to the untrue conclusion that Buchanan was marrying Anne Caroline for her money. In November, Anne Caroline heard the gossip and, as one of her friends wrote, began to believe “that Mr. Buchanan did not treat her with that affection that she expected from the man she would marry, and in consequence of his coolness she wrote him a note telling him that she thought it was not regard for her that was his object, but her riches.”

Buchanan replied, but did not explain his recent behavior. Then, when he returned to Lancaster from Philadelphia, he first visited a colleague’s home and spent the afternoon with the man’s wife and her unmarried sister. In anger, Ann Carolina sent a letter, breaking the engagement. She wrote, “I do not wish, nor, since you are a gentleman, do I expect, to meet you again.”

As Buchanan dealt with the worst of the financial crisis on November 29, 1819, Ann Caroline traveled to Philadelphia on December 4 to visit her sister Margaret, who had married United States Congressman Joseph Hemphill in September 1806. Just after midnight on December 9, 1819, Ann Caroline was dead.

Judge Thomas Kittera wrote, “At noon yesterday, I met this young lady on the street, in the vigor of health, and but a few hours after, her friends were mourning her death. She had been engaged to be married, and some unpleasant misunderstanding broke off the match. This circumstance was preying on her mind. In the afternoon, she was laboring under a fit of hysterics; in the evening, she was so little indisposed that her sister visited the theatre.

After night, she was attacked with strong hysterical convulsions, which induced the family to send for physicians, who thought this would soon go off, as it did; but her pulse gradually weakened until midnight, when she died. Dr. Chapman, who spoke with Dr. Physick, says it is the first instance he ever knew of hysteria producing death.” At the time, some believed this to be a suicide, but there was no proof, and others said it was an overdose of laudanum. It was never established if the drug was taken by instruction, by accident, or by intent.

Coleman would not let Buchanan walk as a mourner at her funeral. Buchanan was so devastated by her death that he vowed never to marry as “his affections were buried in the grave.” He eventually became the only bachelor President in the history of the United States. Buchanan preserved Ann Coleman’s letters, keeping them with him throughout his life; at his request, they were burned upon his death.

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GENEALOGY- WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE, FIRST GAIN AND THEN LOSS

In April, we covered the progress of Women’s Suffrage with Hayden Kershner’s efforts. Suffrage

New Jersey became the first and only state to legally enfranchise women in 1790, when state legislatures reformed the New Jersey State Constitution’s election law to include the words “he or she.” It proclaimed what the 1776 New Jersey Constitution 1776 had only implied: that propertied women could vote. This statute was neither accidental nor insignificant, and it changed the voting landscape in the state.

Letting women vote was just one part of a growing national and international movement among some women to increase women’s rights, a movement inspired by Revolutionary-era ideology in both America and Europe. While New Jersey blazed the trail in the new nation, it also raised a tide in other states, like Massachusetts, where Abigail Adams endorsed women voting in New Jersey.

For women voters, a small omission in the 1797 voting law represented a big change.

The new law retained the property qualification, but it excluded the term “clear estate,” which meant clear ownership of property. Its absence may explain the apparently dramatic rise in women voting after 1797.

As Abigail Adams (pictured) put it, wives often had property “I call my own,” even if their legal ownership was unclear. Widows often had limits placed on their property by a husband’s will. Arguably, neither type of property was truly “clear estate.”

This 1797 law expanded the election reforms of the 1790 statute to include all 13 counties. Allowing possession of property without “clear estate” may have been a subtle but dramatic win for women voters.

Neither the 1790 nor the 1797 statutes included directions for confirming a voter’s possession of 50 pounds other than the voter’s word. In addition, the nation had started shifting currency from British pounds to American dollars, making it difficult to determine taxpayers’ property ownership accurately. The lack of regulations added confusion to some elections.

In 1800, a New Jersey legislator’s letter published in a newspaper argued, “townships of the state shall not refuse the vote of any widowed or unmarried woman of full age, nor any person of colour…provided each is worth fifty pounds…Our Constitution gives this right to maids and widows, black or white.”

In November 1807, the New Jersey State Legislature stripped the vote from women, people of color, and recent immigrants. They redefined the property qualification to include all white male taxpayers. The preamble of the new act on election regulations justified the change by citing “doubts” that “have been raised, and great diversities in practices obtained throughout the state regarding the admission of aliens, persons of color, or negroes, to vote in elections” as well as “the mode of ascertaining” voter qualifications

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GENEALOGY- THE CARTERS AND SLAVERY

While visiting George Carter’s (bottom right) home, Oatlands (above), we learned that his great-grandfather, Robert Carter I (c. 1664 – 1732), (bottom left) was an American planter, merchant, and colonial administrator who served as the acting governor of Virginia from 1726 to 1727.

An agent for the Northern Neck Proprietary, Carter emerged as the wealthiest settler in the British colony of Virginia. He received the sobriquet “King” from his contemporaries, connoting his autocratic approach and political influence. He was the House of Burgesses speaker and the Virginia Governor’s Council president.

My ancestor, Daniel Adams, squatted on Robert’s son, Col. Landon Carter’s land (1710 – 1778), (bottom center) an American planter and burgess for Richmond County, Virginia.

Although one of the most popular patriotic writers and pamphleteers of pre-Revolutionary and Revolutionary-era Virginia, he may today be perhaps best known for his journal, which described colonial life leading up to the American War of Independence, The Diary of Colonel Landon Carter.

Robert’s grandson and Landon’s nephew, Robert Carter III (1728 – 1804), (right) was an American planter and politician from the Northern Neck of Virginia. He sat on the Virginia Governor’s Council for roughly two decades during the colonial period. After the American Revolutionary War, the Thirteen Colonies gained independence from the British Empire as the United States. Carter, influenced by his belief in baptism, began the largest manumission (freeing of slaves) in the history of the United States before the American Civil War.

After giving up on the Virginia politicians ever considering abolition, Carter began a personal program of gradual manumission of slaves on many of his plantations. He announced his plan on August 1, 1791, and started a new legal process by recording a Deed of Gift in Northumberland County on September 5, 1791. Since the manumission law required a five-shilling fee, and Carter had plantations and slaves in several Virginia counties, he corresponded with the Westmoreland County clerk (where he resided).

He followed up by filing manumission papers at the Westmoreland County court sessions the following February, May, July, and August. His actions were resisted by his son-in-law, John Peck, and various overseers and white tenants of his estates. Carter designed the gradual program to reduce the opposition of slave-owning white neighbors, but he failed to gain their support. He refused tenants’ requests to relocate slave breeding women to circumvent the Deed of Gift. That winter, Carter was shunned, although he sought help from fellow slavery opponents, including George Mason (who declined to help and cited his age and infirmity).

By the filing of February 27, 1793, Carter was ahead of his own planned schedule. Moreover, he refused to relocate freed blacks and began offering them wages to work for him. He also provided some grants and tenancies, sometimes dispossessing obstreperous white tenants. Carter started to investigate relocating to the District of Columbia. He leased the Nomony plantation and its servants to his son J.T. on April 26, 1793 (expressly conditional to the Deed of Gift).

Then, before the next Westmoreland court session, perhaps victimized by mob action such as tar-and-feathers, Carter and his daughters fled by ship with Negro George and Negro Betty to Baltimore (on May 8, 1793). He never returned, despite numerous entreaties from family and friends.

Before leaving Nomony Hall, Carter locked his books and papers in the library and gave the only key not to his son J.T., but to a wandering Baptist preacher named Benjamin Dawson. Dawson proved a diligent abolitionist, securing legal papers from Carter in Baltimore and filing them in Westmoreland and other counties to free slaves. Carter made provision for his relatives, allocating them land, but not the slaves who were the subject of the Deed of Gift.

On July 26, 1797, upon learning from Dawson that attorney John Wickham doubted the legal validity of the power of attorney that allowed Dawson to file further manumission papers, Carter executed an agreement selling Dawson his remaining slaves for the nominal sum of a dollar. Dawson duly filed this with the Westmoreland clerk, despite suffering a beating by Carter’s son-in-law, Spencer Ball. Carter spent the last decade of his life issuing manumission papers under his recorded program, writing letters in support of freed slaves whose papers had been stolen, and contemplating religious and political issues.

Citizen Robert Carter (as he preferred to be called) died in his sleep, unexpectedly, on March 10, 1804. His son and executor, George, brought the body back to Nomony and buried his father in the garden. The same day that George announced his father’s death, he bought slaves for Nomony, to replace those his father had freed over his objection. His siblings also repurchased similar numbers of slaves that their father had given freedom.

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GENEALOGY- HE’S ON THE MONEY, LITERALLY

We ran into a campground host who mentioned that he descended from Hillegas, as had another client of mine.

Michael Hillegas (1729 – 1804) was the first treasurer of the United States. He was the son of George Michael Hillegass (1696 – 1749), an immigrant from Germany and a well-to-do merchant involved in iron and sugar. Michael thus had the freedom and resources to participate in local politics. Hillegas was a member of the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly from 1765 to 1775 and served as treasurer of the Committee of Safety under Benjamin Franklin in 1774.

On July 29, 1775, the Continental Congress appointed Hillegas and fellow patriot George Clymer to share the office of Treasurer of the United Colonies. Because Hillegas edited the Declaration of Independence, when it was signed, Clymer’s signature appeared on the document.

After Clymer resigned on August 6, 1776, Hillegas assumed sole ownership of the office, which he held throughout the remainder of the American Revolution, using much of his fortune to support the cause. His son, Samuel Hillegas, was also given the authority to sign a new currency, known as “Continentals.” Hillegas also served briefly as quartermaster to the army and served on occasional commissions. On September 9, 1776, the Continental Congress officially changed the country’s name to the United States of America, but Hillegas’s title did not officially change until March 1778. On September 11, 1789, Congress created the Treasury Department, and Alexander Hamilton took the oath of office as the first Secretary of the Treasury. Hillegas tendered his resignation on that same date, and Samuel Meredith was appointed Treasurer.

Hillegas and Franklin were also early members of the American Philosophical Society. He died in Philadelphia and is buried near Franklin in Christ Church Burial Ground. Late in the 19th century, his descendants petitioned to have his portrait appear on the ten-dollar gold certificate in the series issued in 1907 and 1922.

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GENEALOGY- MORE ON THE ADVENTURES OF J. ADDISON SMITH

In the last edition, I told you we would next cover his enterprises in Bakersfield and London, England.

In 1891, J. Addison and Mary Smith moved to Bakersfield, CA, where he worked for his son-in-law, Thomas H. Dudley, as the London manager of Anglo-California Estates Agency. Their firm represented California fruits in England. Addison was known as an expert on fruit evaporation and drying and was referred to as giving speeches on the subject.

There is also a reference to Addison’s involvement in the Minneola town site fraud, which helped give California land schemes a bad name abroad.

The Mojave River Valley in California, winding through the central desert, was an especially popular location for starting ranches and farms.

The most unusual and ambitious attempt to colonize the valley was made by the Southern California Improvement Company, organized in the early 1890s. The concern planned to drive a wooden barrier, or submerged dam, into the usually dry riverbed near Daggett and dredge out a ditch to a proposed farming colony, named Minneola, three or four miles to the east. Besides building up a town, the company hoped to provide hydroelectric power to the mines and mills of Calico.

Work got off to an energetic start in 1895. A correspondent for the San Bernardino Daily Sun reported in December: With our bright sunshine and balmy weather, we can combine anticipation of the settlement of this desert, which is as fertile as can be found anywhere, provided it can be irrigated, the accomplishment of which is near at hand.

Employing 80 men and 34 teams of horses, the company was pushing work with great vigor. A fine hotel was scheduled for construction, large crops of good fruit and alfalfa were assured, and all felt that a bright future for the desert had dawned . . . . Backed by railroad officials and extravagantly promoted, Minneola was envisioned as a major center of agriculture and industry in Southern California.

Yet Minneola would never develop beyond a modest colony. It had to be conceded in March 1896 that “not much settlement” had taken place. Forty acres of barley planted by the company were “coming up nicely,” a 50-foot well was producing “reasonably cold” soft water, and work on the dam, once suspended, was about to resume. Meanwhile, petitions soon led to establishing a post office (April) and, with 22 children in residence, a school district. The construction of a depot, blacksmith shop, and even a plant-fiber factory was planned.

At its peak, Minneola contained the hotel, a real estate office, the school, the post office, and several houses. However, the mid-1890s were a poor time to start a farming colony. A prolonged depression and drought dry up the prospects for investment and cultivation. The post office closed in May 1897. Though the company completed the long ditch, the dam and flume were half finished, the riverbed yielded only one-quarter of the expected water, and the company went bankrupt in 1898. Stimulated by a few small revivals, the school district survived until 1924.

The Mojave River Valley was a notable site for ranching and farming, particularly with the ambitious colonization efforts by the Southern California Improvement Company in the 1890s. They aimed to create a farming colony named Minneola, driven by hopes of agricultural prosperity and hydroelectric power for nearby mines.

Despite initial enthusiasm and some development, Minneola struggled due to economic depression and drought, leading to its decline. By 1898, the company went bankrupt, and although the school district lasted until 1924, Minneola never became the thriving community it envisioned.

Addison registered to vote in Bakersfield on September 17, 1894. As of 1895, he also had a residence at 43 Tower Chambers, Moorgate Street, London, England. On September 19, 1896, Governor Budd of California appointed Addison the Commissioner of Deeds in London.

From the Peter Turner Collections assistant at an English Museum; “We recently received a donation of a wonderful, illuminated address of welcome to Frank Reddaway Esquire J.P. The leather-bound address is dated 29 December 1890 and the donor, Mr. J. Addison Smith, was a past employee of George Angus and Co. Ltd. who took over Reddaways in 1954. Frank Reddaway and Co., which from 1879 operated out of Victoria Mill, Cheltenham Street, Pendleton, was a leading manufacturer of canvas hose and cotton and camel hair belting.

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GENEALOGY- THE BRITISH ARE COMING!

The story passed down is that my wife’s 4 X Great-Grandfather, Richard Franklin, a Revolutionary War soldier, was in Baltimore, Maryland. While there, a shipload of the King’s Troops approached the shore but were too far off to be seen with the naked eye. With the aid of a field glass, the bright buttons on their red coats could be seen. Let’s see if this story could be accurate.

While the Redcoats were certainly in Baltimore Harbor during the War of 1812, when Fort McHenry was bombarded, I had not heard of their presence during the Revolutionary War.

However, I discovered that in July 1777, the British loaded their army aboard hundreds of ships and sailed from New York into the Atlantic Ocean. For several weeks, no one was sure where they were going until the British landed at Head of Elk, Maryland (today Elkton).

To get there, the fleet had to sail to the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, past Norfolk, Virginia, then back up through the bay, into the Elk River before finally landing. If they stayed on the bay’s eastern shore to avoid detection, they likely would not have been visible in Baltimore Harbor.

The fleet, led by Admiral Richard Howe in the HMS Eagle, skipped the traditional landing areas, moving up muddy-bottomed rivers to find a remote site as far up the waters as the ships would go.

In the very early pre-dawn hours of August 25, 1777, the British Army began to disembark at Head of Elk. To surprise the Americans, Howe had avoided the well-defended Delaware Bay. He had also avoided all of the established ports in Chesapeake, which would have made the landing much easier.

Head of Elk was a tiny hamlet without a large port. The water in the area was shallow and muddy. The British ships of the line could not simply pull up to a port and disembark their soldiers. The weary men, who had been stuck aboard ship for six weeks, had to climb down onto smaller boats to row ashore. Much of the army unloaded at Turkey Point, a small ferry on the Elk River. Moving more than fifteen thousand soldiers ashore and their equipment was a slow and tedious process. The Howe brothers were fortunate that the Americans did not confront them at the landing site. Fighting a battle while disembarking could easily have become a nightmare for the British. The ships were also vulnerable, with no room to maneuver.

However, the British successfully disembarked, marched north, and prevailed at the Battle of Brandywine.

In conclusion, because the British wished to avoid being spotted, I doubt that they got close to Baltimore Harbor, and this was likely someone’s recollection from the War of 1812

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GENEALOGY- PRESERVE YOUR FAMILY HISTORY, TODAY

Grandpa was in the yard, wondering if any of his grandkids’ descendants would ever know of him and his life.

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