No kidding! We are related to …… both …… Abraham Lincoln and …… Daniel Boone

SO LONG AS YOU SEE THIS MESSAGE IMMEDIATELY BELOW THE SUBJECT HEADING, THIS PARTICULAR BLOG ENTRY IS UNFINISHED. Therefore, you know that at some time in the future, I will edit it, adding to the total summary, which is quite a project. I am putting it on the Internet ahead of time as a convenience for my sister, Joan, who is 1,700 miles away but who knows the most about this. She will tell me when I have made an error or left something out, and so on. Once you no longer see this preface, you will know the project is finished, at least insofar as Joan and I THINK IT IS!!!

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My family on my Mother’s side is related to President Abraham Lincoln and frontiersman Daniel Boone.

President Abraham Lincoln’s step-great-great uncle (also an “Abraham Lincoln”) was my great-great-great-great grandfather! President Lincoln’s great-great-grandfather was our family’s great-great-great-great-great-grandfather (Mordecai Lincoln). The latter represents our blood line to the 16th President.

During a visit to the Berks County (Pennsylvania) Genealogical Society in March, 2011, I spoke with Ann Balderrama, Vice President. I asked her what relation am I to President Lincoln. She wrote the names of several ancestors on a piece of paper, and concluded: President Lincoln was your third cousin, three times removed.

Abraham Lincoln (the one who was our great-great-great-great-grandfather) was married to our great-great-great-great-grandmother, Anne Boone Lincoln, Daniel Boone’s first cousin! Through Anne Boone Lincoln, we have the direct blood line to Daniel Boone. By the way Ann Balderrama figured my relationship to President Lincoln, I charted the same involving Daniel Boone. If I am correct, Daniel Boone was my first cousin, six times removed.

For my sisters’ and my children, Anne Boone was their great-great-great-great-great-grandmother. Anne Boone still was a first cousin of Daniel Boone, and her husband still was the step-great-great-uncle of President Lincoln. President Lincoln was their third cousin, four times removed. Daniel Boone was their first cousin, seven times removed.

For our children’s children, Anne Boone was their six-great-grandmother, and she still was a first cousin of the trailblazer. And her husband still was the step-great-great-uncle of Abe, who was their third cousin, five times removed. And Daniel Boone was their first cousin, eight times removed.

For my sisters’ and my great-grandchildren, Anne Boone was their seven-great-grandmother, and still Daniel’s first cousin. And her husband still was the step-great-great uncle of Abe. Also, President Lincoln was their third cousin, six times removed. Daniel Boone was their first cousin, nine times removed.

It should be mentioned here that President Lincoln and our four-great-grandfather were, in fact, blood relatives through Mordecai Lincoln (the elder Abraham’s father), who was the President’s great-great-grandfather. And our family is related to President Lincoln through Mordecai Lincoln, our five-great-grandfather!

Daniel Boone was 75 years old when President Lincoln was born (in 1809). They were not related by blood but rather by three marriages (including, of course, that of Abraham Lincoln, the elder, through the blood line of Mordecai Lincoln, and Anne Boone, my sisters’ and my great-great-great-great-grandmother).

In the following, you will meet Samuel Lincoln and George Boone III, both of whom figuratively sit at the pinnacle of their respective family trees. Both brought England to America. For my sisters and me, George Boone III was our six-great-grandfather! Samuel Lincoln was our seven-great-grandfather!

These Lincoln and Boone relationships are not “new” to us. My sister, Joan (her name is pronounced JOH-ANN), has worked on this for almost 40 years as part of her genealogy work for both of our parents’ family trees. We are getting down to where we think we have all relationships involving Abe and Daniel Boone confirmed and accurate.

This all starts in the 16th century.

The Lincolns and the Boones were in the forefront of the early history of the New World. One Lincoln disinherited his children. One was murdered by an Indian. Many early settlers were in provincial religions which shunned anyone who married outside the faith. Of course, you know that one Lincoln became perhaps the most famous President of the United States. There have been frequent intermarriages between the Lincolns and the Boones. The combined family trees suggest miles of spaghetti, intertwined. One very prominent couple (at least to my sisters and me) eloped because my great-great-grandmother’s parents opposed their love. The most famous of the Boones, Daniel, led a fascinating life, described in detail in the 700-page family tree book I acquired in January, 2011, in Birdsboro, PA (“The Boone Family”).

The following account devotes more descriptive lines to Daniel Boone than to President Lincoln on the assumption that you know more about Abe, and know you easily can access additional information about him.

In the 16th century, the known “greatest” Lincoln grandfather was Robert Lincoln, of Hingham County, Norfolk, England. His will, dated 1540, was probated September 3, 1543. He married a woman by the name of Johan Cowper (last name uncertain). This is where we start with Lincoln and Boone.

The Robert Lincolns named their first son Robert. He was identified as living in Hingham and Thetford, England. His will (the son’s) was dated January 14, 1556, and probated 15 days later. This information comes from “The Ancestry of Abraham Lincoln” by James Henry Lea and Robert Hutchinson (1909).

Robert Lincoln (the son) married Margaret Alberye.

Their eldest son was Richard Lincoln, of Hingham, Swanton Morley and Great Witchingham, England. Richard married Elizabeth Remching, who died soon after their marriage in about 1574, leaving one son, Edward Lincoln, born in about 1575. The timing is unclear as Edward was the second son, the first having died before becoming heir to Richard.

Edward and his wife (name undisclosed) left a son, Samuel Lincoln, whose recorded personal history is much more extensive than his father’s or those who preceded them.

Samuel was baptised August 24, 1622, in Hingham, Norfolk (England), date of birth unknown. He died in Hingham, Massachusetts, May 26, 1690. Samuel was great-great-great-great-grandfather of the 16th President of the United States. Because Samuel Lincoln’s ancestry is known for several generations, he is considered father of the most prominent branch of Lincolns in America, of whom there are thousands.

Samuel Lincoln was progenitor of many notable United States political figures, not just Abe. Included were Maine Governor Enoch Lincoln, Massachusetts state representatives Levi, Sr., and Levi Lincoln, Jr., who both later served as Governor and Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts.

In England, Samuel grew up in meager circumstances due to a family squabble as revealed in his grandfather’s will. His grandfather, Richard, who was married three more times after the death of the mother of Edward Lincoln (see above), disinherited his earlier children, including Samuel.

Samuel became an apprentice weaver under Francis Lawes of Norwich, England, not far from Hingham. Sam’s father (Edward) also was cut out of HIS father’s (Richard’s) will. He had abandoned his home at Swanton Morley near Hingham after being cut out of the will, and relocated to small acreage at Hingham. So Samuel Lincoln as a boy until his early teen years lived in Hingham, England.

These early years in Lincoln history were reported in the 1924-published book “ABRAHAM LINCOLN & HIS ANCESTORS”, by Ida M. Tarbell (once titled “In the Footsteps of the Lincolns”). She was born in 1857 in Erie, Pennsylvania, and died in 1944.

When you were apprenticed as an indentured servant as Samuel Lincoln was, you left your family and became a member of your master’s family. You had more to do than to learn to weave. Mr. Lawes was under contract to teach Samuel the trade and to give him his keep, and a small, probably a very small, weekly or monthly wage. In turn, Samuel was obliged to obey Mr. Lawes, and that meant not only that he must learn to weave, but he must wait on the Lawes family. In not so nice a description, he was a slave of those times.

Thus, in 1637, Sam left with the Lawes family for the New World on a ship named “John & Dorothy”. Although it appears he was just 15 at the time, he apparently misrepresented his age to be allowed to make the voyage. Sam’s brother Thomas already had been living in (New) Hingham, Massachusetts (near the Atlantic Ocean southeast of Boston), for two years. He was known as “Thomas Lincoln the Weaver” to distinguish him from several other unrelated Thomas Lincolns. (He left a great deal of his property to Samuel upon his death.)

It also should be noted that Sam’s father, Edward, remained in Hingham, England, and died about three years (February 11, 1640) after Sam left for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Edward was buried in a graveyard of St. Andrews Church, Hingham, England. This was the last European phase of the Lincoln ancestry.

When he was in his late 20′s, no longer under the control of Mr. Lawes, Samuel Lincoln married Martha Lyford of Ireland (around 1649). They had 11 children, three of whom died in infancy; three other children lived into their 80′s. The eldest son also was named Samuel, born August 25, 1650.

The fourth son was the ancestor of President Abraham Lincoln. He was Mordecai Lincoln. Mordecai became a blacksmith. He was the great-great-great grandfather of President Abraham Lincoln. (Additional below.)

Genealogists have noted the common and repeated use of certain Biblical names in the Lincoln family, especially Abraham, Samuel, Isaac, Jacob and Mordecai. This was a common practice among early Puritan settlers in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Before proceeding with the first Mordecai Lincoln’s story, we should point out that the Samuel Lincoln House in Hingham, Massachusetts, has a historical marker outside, which reads: “1630 – 1930 SAMUEL LINCOLN HOUSE Samuel Lincoln, ancestor of President Abraham Lincoln, and one of the eight early settlers of Hingham bearing that name, purchased this land in 1649. Seven generations of Lincoln descendants lived here.”

In 1937, the 300th anniversary of Samuel Lincoln’s arrival in Massachusetts was commemorated with the dedication of a tablet at the Old Ship Church in Hingham, Massachusetts.

Great-great-great-grandfather Mordecai Lincoln was born in Hingham, Massachusetts, June 14, 1657. He lived there until 1700 when he moved to Scituate, Massachusetts, south of Hingham. He was married twice, first to Sarah Jones of Scituate, who probably died not long afterward. Mordecai subequently married a second time. Mary Gannett lived to age 79 (died April 19, 1745). On a family tree distributed by the Boone Family, her name is given as Mary Chapin.

Her husband, Mordecai, died suddenly “of an apploplexy” (sic) November 8, 1727, in his 71st year.

Mordecai had six children, the eldest of whom he named Mordecai, born April 24, 1686, at Hingham. The younger Mordecai died “before” October 18, 1736, (I found a source declaring that Mordecai died May 12, 1736) at age 50. It was this Mordecai who carried the continuing blood line to President Lincoln and also to the Gabriels of Ohio. He was the great-great-grandfather of President Lincoln; he also had a son with his second wife (his ninth child, Abraham, see below) who married into The Boone Family. But that has to be held for later. Around 1714, Mordecai married Hannah Salter, of Freehold, New Jersey. Before that time, he had moved to Monmouth County, New Jersey, with his brother Abraham (a different Abraham, of course), where he acquired 500 to 600 acres of land.

Mordecai later moved to Coventry (which is near present-day Pottstown), just a few miles from the Douglassville, Pennsylvania, home (“Boonecroft”) from where Thomas Gabriel and Anna (Nancy) Jones (granddaughter of Anne Boone) eloped in 1817. But again, that’s for later, too. Here’s a tease: my grandfather was Ezra Gabriel of Edgerton, Ohio. Thomas Gabriel was HIS grandfather.

Mordecai’s and Hannah’s first child was John, born May 3, 1711. (The Boone Family story lists his date of birth as 1716.) He was great-grandfather of President Lincoln. When John was about 57, he moved to Virginia and settled in the Shenandoah Valley in Augusta County (if you’re writing all of this down, it now is part of Rockingham County!), a few miles north of the present town of Harrisonburg, Virginia, where he probably died sometime after 1773.

John Lincoln, one of nine children, was himself father of nine children. He was married to Rebecca (Flowers) Morris. John and Rebecca’s first son, Abraham, grandfather of President Lincoln, was born July 16, 1739, in Pennsylvania; he died tragically in 1785 in Kentucky. He was shot to death in an Indian ambush. Before he died at about age 46 (some records suggest he was 48), he was married twice, first to Mary Shipley of Lunenburg County, Virginia, and then to Bathsheba (Herring) Lincoln, of Bridgewater, now Rockingham County, Virginia.

“Captain” Abraham Lincoln (the President’s grandfather and another namesake) apparently had three children with Mary Shipley and two with Bathsheba Herring, including Thomas Lincoln, father of the 16th President. Thomas was Abraham’s third son (his first son was another Mordecai, age 59, born in 1771, died in 1830).

Thomas Lincoln, father of President Lincoln, was born January 20, 1780. He lived to age 71 (died January 17, 1851). He married twice, including Nancy Hanks, Abe’s Mother (she was born February 5, 1784). Nancy Hanks Lincoln died in Gentryville, Spencer County, Indiana, October 5, 1818.

The writer of this blog realizes your head is already spinning but hang in there. As noted above, the great-great-grandfather of President Lincoln, Mordecai (1686-1736), son of Mordecai (1657-1727), moved from Monmouth County, New Jersey (see above), to Coventry, Chester County, Pennsylvania, now in the vicinity of Pottstown, Pennsylvania. The significance of this is that this move not only served to initiate the connection with the Boones but also brought the Lincolns to Pennsylvania not far from this writer’s home (in Philadelphia).

For example, as noted near the start of this blog, we mentioned that while President Lincoln was not related by blood to Daniel Boone, he was “related” through three marriages of Lincolns and Boones. One of these marriages was Sarah Lincoln’s to William Boone. Sarah Lincoln, one of Mordecai’s and his first wife Hannah Salter Lincoln’s daughters, was born about April, 1727, and died at age 83 on April 21, 1810. She married William Boone April 26, 1748.

William Boone and Sarah Lincoln Boone in 1767 moved to Fairfax Meeting, Virginia. For a time they lived in Frederick County, Maryland, where William and his son Mordecai both died. The widow (Sarah Lincoln Boone) and the other six children then returned to Exeter Meeting (Oley Township, near Boonecroft).

The second marriage also connects to Mordecai Lincoln and his wife Hannah Salter Lincoln (see above; in some documents, her first name is spelled without the second “h”). You already know they had a daughter named Sarah. They also had a daughter Anne (or Ann), born March 8, 1725, probably in Chester County, Pennsylvania, and she died December 22, about 1812, on her farm near Harrisonburg, Virginia. She was the second wife of William Tallman, who was born March 25, 1720, in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, and he died February 13, 1791, on his farm near Harrisonburg.

William Tallman was an innkeeper and farmer, and he moved to Berks County, Pennsylvania, where he bought some of the Lincoln land. He owned property in Reading, Pennsylvania.

He married Anne Lincoln October 20, 1740. They had a son, Benjamin Tallman, born January 9, 1745, in Berks County (he died June 4, 1820, near Canal Winchester, Ohio).

Benjamin Tallman married Dinah Boone November 9, 1764, in Berks County. Benjamin was grandson of Mordecai Lincoln, our family’s five-great-grandfather. Dinah Boone was born May 10, 1749, in Berks County (and died July 25, 1824, near Canal Winchester, Ohio) Dinah was George Boone III’s granddaughter. So these two had grandfathers Lincoln and Boone, who carried the blood lines through to today.

Benjamin Boone, Dinah’s father (and son of George III) was an interesting chap in his own right. He was a Quaker, of course, and his first wife, Ann Farmer, also a Quaker. His second wife, Susannah (surname unknown), apparently wasn’t. It appears Benjamin Boone married this time out of the Quaker fold, possibly about 1736. In the minutes of the Gwynedd Meeting February 27, 1736, it was written that “Benjamin Boone has not been spoken to since last Meeting”. The Boone family book assumes that the disfavor seems to have been dropped, as there was no further mention of it in any records.

The year before he married Susannah, Benjamin Boone, with Mordecai Lincoln and four other men, was appointed by the court of Philadelphia to lay out one of the first roads in Exeter Township. Upon the establishment of Oley Township in 1741, fifty families were not included. This was protested by Benjamin Boone and also by James, John and Squire Boone. Eventually, the dispute was resolved and Benjamin obtained 300 acres in the area, probably in Exeter Township, near the other Boones. Benjamin also was one of the state representatives in Harrisburg from Berks County.

So Dinah Boone and Benjamin Tallman were the second marriage connecting the Lincolns to the Boones, even though President Lincoln was not actually a blood relative to the Boones. The third marriage tying him to the Boones was the one involving our family’s four-great-grandparents, described at length elsewhere in thishere tome.

Back to Coventry and Mordecai Lincoln’s earlier days in Pennsylvania (the Coventry name remains prominent in the Pottstown area today) …… Mordecai Lincoln entered into a partnership with Samuel Nutt in the business of mining and forging iron, a business he had learned from his father (and you know the father also was a Mordecai Lincoln!). In 1725, he sold his interest in the business. In 1727, with Benjamin Boone and others, he was appointed viewer of the Tulpehocken Road from the Schuylkill River to Oley (Oley is an earlier name for the “Boonecroft” area, centered at Douglassville, Pennsylvania! This is about six miles west of Coventry/Pottstown).

Eventually, Mordecai moved to Amity (at that time it was Philadelphia County, now it is Berks County, Pennsylvania, which was just east of Oley), where he died (as noted above, in May, 1736).

He married for a second time to Mary Robeson in July, 1729. That makes her President Lincoln’s step-great-great-grandmother! Mary Robeson was born in about 1705 and died “before” March 25, 1783, in Amity.

Mary Robeson Lincoln, with Mordecai, had three children, namely, another Mordecai (1730-1812), Thomas (1732-1775) and aha! as mentioned above . . . Abraham Lincoln (1736-1806), our four-great-grandfather. Mary Robeson was pregnant with Abraham when (her husband) Mordecai died (1736). Her stepson John Lincoln (President Lincoln’s great-grandfather) was 21 years old at the time, and her four stepdaughters were only ages nine to twelve. Her other two sons with Mordecai were four and six when Mordecai died.

To try to clarify this further, Mordecai Lincoln and his first wife, Hannah Salter, were parents of John Lincoln, great-grandfather of President Abraham Lincoln. Mordecai Lincoln’s second wife Mary Robeson, widowed during pregnancy, was mother of Abraham Lincoln, President Lincoln’s step-great-great uncle, husband of Anne Boone, my sisters’ and my great-great-great-great-grandmother. .

Mary Robeson Lincoln later married Roger Rogers (in about 1742), who lived to December, 1758. Mary Robeson Lincoln Rogers died in Amity, Pennsylvania, before March 25, 1783, at age (about) 78. The Lincoln family still had many Pennsylvania residents after some of the descendents had moved to Virginia and Kentucky and elsewhere.

The Berks County Historical Society has this writeup about President Lincoln’s grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great grandfather. There were three generations of Lincolns, ancestors of the President, who lived in Berks County: Mordecai, the great-great-grandfather; John, the great-grandfather; and Abraham, the grandfather:

“MORDECAI THE GREAT-GREAT-GRANDFATHER OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN

“Mordecai was the earliest direct Lincoln ancestor of the President to settle in Pennsylvania. With him came his brother, Abraham, the first of the Lincoln clan to bear that name (Abraham Lincoln). They were the sons of Mordecai Lincoln of Scituate, Massachusetts, and the grandsons of Samuel Lincoln of Hingham, the first Lincoln progenitor of the President to settle in America.

“Both Mordecai and his brother Abraham lived in New Jersey about seven years before migrating to Pennsylvania. While residing in New Jersey, Mordecai married Hannah Saltar, to which union there were born one son, John, and five daughters. One of the daughters died in infancy and lies buried in Monmouth County, New Jersey.

“Mordecai and Hannah Lincoln and their family settled at ‘Scoolkill’ (a quaint spelling of today’s Schuylkill River and perhaps even more famous, the much-feared Schuylkill Expressway that slices all through Philadelphia from Valley Forge). Scoolkill later was called Coventry Township, in Chester County. Here Mordecai in partnership with Samuel Nutt and William Branson operated a forge on French Creek; just how long Mordecai remained here it is difficult to determine. There is some indication that he intended to return to New Jersey as he sold his (the Mordecai Lincoln Home interest in the forge) for five hundred pounds on December 14, 1726, and five months later he bought of Richard Saltar, a tract of land in Monmouth County, New Jersey. Apparently it was about the time of the New Jersey land purchase in 1727, that his wife, Hannah, passed away and left him with five children, the oldest but eleven, and the youngest, an infant born shortly before the mother’s death.

“About two years after Hannah’s death, Mordecai married in the summer of 1729, Mary Robeson, daughter of Andrew Robeson of Amity, Philadelphia County. He had located in Amity Township as early as May 15, 1728, at which time he was appointed a commissioner for the defense of the community against the Indians. The same year as his second marriage, he first leased and later purchased the land on which he built a brick dwelling in 1733. He did not live long enough to enjoy the new house as three years later he passed away, at forty-nine years of age, and left his second wife, not only with five children by his first marriage, but with three more children by his later marriage, one of them born after the father’s death (the reader of this blog should know who that was!!!). Although all were under twenty-one, the older children were approaching maturity.

“Berks County was not formed until 1752, out of Philadelphia, Lancaster and Chester counties, sixteen years after Mordecai’s death. In reality he never lived in the county which was later to embrace the land where his old house stands. Furthermore, most of the descendants of Mordecai Lincoln bearing the Lincoln name are the offspring of Mordecai Jr., Thomas, and Abraham, children by his second wife, and it is with this group that the Amity or Exeter home, as it is now called, is more definitely associated. Mordecai Lincoln, great-great-grandfather of the President, lived in Pennsylvania at Coventry eight years and at Amity eight years, a total of sixteen years in Pennsylvania.

“JOHN LINCOLN-GREAT-GRANDFATHER OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN

“The only son of Mordecai Lincoln by his first wife was named John and he was born in New Jersey on May 3, 1716. He was four years old when his parents moved to Pennsylvania and settled in the Coventry home. When the family with the stepmother moved to Amity, John was twelve years old. He had reached the age of twenty when his father died.

“The next seven years of John’s life are almost a blank as there appears to be no record referring to him during this period. There is a tradition extant that he returned to New Jersey where he had inherited some land from his father in Middlesex County. During this period, however, wherever he may have been, he learned the weaver’s trade, and in his land transactions later on he is designated as weaver.

“From the time Berks County was established in 1752, the name of John Lincoln often appears in the public records, especially in the deed books where his many land purchases are recorded. He sold all his Pennsylvania lands in 1765 and moved the family to the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. The Pennsylvania residence of John Lincoln included eight years at Coventry, eight years at Amity, seven years at some undetermined location, and nineteen years at Caernarvon.

“The first home site of John Lincoln we are able to identify is established by a land warrant assigned to John Lincoln on October 9, 1746. It is for a tract of fifty acres located in Caernarvon Township, Lancaster County, and the assignment indicates that John Lincoln was then living in the township. Two years later he purchased a tract of 150 acres adjacent to the above land and bordering on the Schuylkill River for about one third of a mile. It fell within Robeson Township of Lancaster County.

“The first record on John Lincoln thus far discovered is the date of his marriage which occurred on July 5, 1743. His wife was Rebecca Flowers Morris, the widow of James Morris, by whom she had one son. Her parents were Enoch and Rebecca Flowers who lived in Caernarvon Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Little is known about the Flowers family, except for the fact that Enoch was a Justice of the Peace in Caernarvon Township, where he must have resided. The fact that he and his wife are direct ancestors of President Lincoln would make any information about them important. John Lincoln named his first three sons Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Two other sons, John and Thomas, and four daughters, Hannah, Lydia, Sarah, and Rebecca, made up the family.

“ABRAHAM LINCOLN-GRANDFATHER OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN

“One of the most important historical projects which might be undertaken by the Historical Society of Berks County is the locating and marking of the site of the home where the President’s grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, was born. It was this grandfather for whom the more illustrious Abraham Lincoln was named. It was the story of this grandfather’s massacre by the Indians that the President remembered more vividly than any other story told him in boyhood days by his father. To put it in the President’s own words: ‘The story of his death by the Indians, and of Uncle Mordecai, then fourteen years old, killing one of the Indians, is the legend more strongly than all others imprinted on my mind and memory. I am the son of grandfather’s youngest son, Thomas.’

“The massacre took place in the month of May 1786, at Hughes Station in Kentucky about twenty miles east of Louisville. The pioneer was but forty-two years of age at the time of his death and he left a widow and five small children in the wilderness.

“The parents of the Pennsylvania Abraham were married on July 5, 1743, and he was born the following year. It is known that on Oct. 9, 1746, when Abraham was two years old, his father bought the fifty-acre tract in Caernarvon Township, in Lancaster County. and settled his family there. However, the exact place of Abraham’s parents’ residence at the time of his birth, has not been definitely established. Possibly John Lincoln may have gained possession of this fifty-acre tract at the time of his marriage. If this be so then the President’s grandfather lived the twenty-one years he resided in Pennsylvania in one location. The fifty-acre tract is located about one-half mile east of the present town of Birdsboro.”

The above paragraphs originally appeared in the April 1949 issue of the Historical Review of Berks County.

This summary will return to the marriage of Abraham Lincoln (the step-great-great uncle of the President) and Anne Boone, but first we will include the Boone branches of the tree that preceded this.

The history of the Boone family has its foundation in the brief genealogical data brought from England, preserved by John Boone, son of George Boone III. John gave the information to his nephew James Boone, who was applauded years afterward for recording the data both accurately and beautifully (“James Boone Genealogy”).

Upon their arrivals in the New World, the Boones quickly became part and parcel of Colonial America. As the story goes, never faltering, never failing, the Boones pressed onward with the western frontiers of civilization which then swept in successive waves across the continent. Of course, Daniel was the family’s most famous trailblazer.

It is known that the first George Boone was born in England. His second son, George, was born in 1666 in Stoak, England, a village near the City of Exeter in Devonshire, England. He was a blacksmith. He died at 60.

His son, George Boone III, is the progenitor in the fashion of Samuel Lincoln. As mentioned above, he was my sisters’ and my six-great-grandfather. He’s the most prominent Boone to move to the New World although three of his children made the journey across the ocean four years before their father. Part of George Boone III’s story is vintage Internet, as follows:

“George Boone III generally has been identified as a weaver, but he apparently had a blacksmith shop in Bradninch. Since his father was a blacksmith in Stoke Canon, George III must have been familiar with the trade and perhaps he operated a smithy in conjunction with his weaving business. George III probably became a weaver due to the growing importance of cloth manufacture in Devonshire during his childhood. He must have served his apprenticeship as a weaver in Bradninch because that town had a law that only those who apprenticed there could be employed in the community. The cloth made in Bradninch was a kind of serge called duroy.

“Early in 1717, before he left for America, George Boone III made a written admission to the Quakers that he was guilty of drunkenness and adultery : ‘Dear Friends, being duly sensible of my transgressions and sins against God, I do therefore after a long time make my humble confession … From this my wickedness – which was the keeping of wild company and drinking by which I sometimes became guilty of drunkenness – I fell into another gross evil, by which the honour due unto marriage was lost, for the marriage bed was defiled. Oh, what shall I say, Lord, wash me and cleanse me, I beseech thee.’ ”

That summer, George III and Mary must have patched things up and, with their six remaining children, traveled the 70 miles to Bristol on foot and bought passage to Pennsylvania. The six full fares and two half-fares cost them thirty-five pounds for a voyage that would leave at the “next good wind and weather.” Their ship sailed on August 17, 1717.

After their arrival in Pennsylvania on September 19, 1717 OS (i.e., Old Style), George III and Mary went to Abingdon (later spelling was changed to Abington), where their married son George lived; they apparently did not join the Quakers in Abingdon. After about a month at Abingdon, the family moved to North Wales Township in Philadelphia County where George Boone III applied for membership at Gwynedd Monthly Meeting:

“10-31-1717, George Boone Sr. produced a certificate of his good life and conversation from the Monthly at Callumpton in Great Britain which was read and well received.”

By 1720, the Boones had moved again; George III was described as a resident of Gwynedd when he received a warrant for 400 acres of land in Oley Township on December 20, 1718. The amount of vacant land surrounding the tract suggests that he was among the earliest settlers in the area. Later George III apparently acquired the vacant land surrounding his original tract and his sons obtained land near to or adjoining him in Oley Township.

The Boone farm in Oley Township in Philadelphia County was included in Exeter Township when it was set-off from Oley in 1741; the land was located in the part of Philadelphia County which became Lancaster County when Lancaster and Berks Counties were created in 1752. Being from near Exeter, England, perhaps the Boones influenced the selection of the name Exeter for the new township in which their land was located. The family attended Gwynedd Meeting until August 25, 1737 OS, when a new church was organized as Oley Monthly Meeting on May 27, 1742 OS, and later re-named Exeter Monthly Meeting.

In May, 1728, trouble arose in the Boone neighborhood between the white settlers and a band of Shawnee Indians from Illinois. A Shawnee brave was wounded in a dispute over some meat and panic swept through the district on a wave of rumors about Indian retaliation. George Boone, who was a justice of the peace, had to intervene when some whites threatened to kill two Indian girls.

He sent an urgent call for help to the Governor in Philadelphia: “Our Condition at Present looks with a bad Vizard .. . our Inhabitants are Generally fled (and) there remains about 20 men with me to guard my mill … we are resolved to defend ourselves to ye last Extremity. Wherefore I desire ye Governor & Counsel to Take our Cause into Consideration; And speedily send some Messengers to ye Indians, And some arms and ammunition to us, with some strength also, otherwise we shall undoubtedly perish and our province laid desolate and destroyed. ” REFERENCE HERE TO THE RESULTS OF THE CONTACT WITH THE GOVERNOR. X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X

The homestead of George Boone III, on Monocacy Creek, is now an historical site. It is “Boonecroft”. Having chosen what is now, and no doubt was then, a most beautiful piece of fertile, rolling land, George III built a log house upon it in 1720. Thirteen years later, having prospered, he erected a larger house of stone nearby, which is still standing south of where the log cabin once stood.

Women of this era were always industrious and generally clothed their families by their own handicraft. Bread, milk and pie usually composed the frugal morning meal with good pork or bacon and a wheat flour pudding or dumplings with butter or molasses served for dinner. The evening meal was comprised of milk, butter and honey with mush or hominy.

Chocolate was a rarity but sweetening was done with maple sugar. Venison and wild turkey were served in season. Only the wealthiest of farmers had a wagon to go to market.

Having built the new house, George III refused for some reason to live in it himself, but turned it over to his children and continued to reside in the log house until his death. It is quite possible that some of his married children were then living at home with young families, and that George III and Mary preferred the quiet of the smaller home for themselves. When George III died, it is said that his remains were carried into the stone house and from there to his burial in the Friends burying ground at Exeter Meeting House. An old family Bible records the fact that ” when Grandfather died he left 8 children, 52 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren living, in all 70, being as many persons as the house of Jacob which came into Egypt.” The latter is copied in the book “The Boone Family”. (NOTE: After the Susanna Cox story below, there is a story on a fire at Exeter Meeting House Sunday, March 20, 2011.)

In accordance with the custom of the Friends Society, no stones mark the graves of George Boone III and his wife, Mary, but a far greater memorial is found in the thousands of descendants who unite in honoring their memory. The cemetery just appears as an open field perhaps 150 feet from the Meeting House.

The George Boone III homestead (“Boonecroft”) is a short distance south of the Oley Line/Limekiln Post Office on a road between highways 73 and 562. The Squire Boone homestead is about two miles directly south on Owatin Creek, a tributary of Monocacy Creek. Monocacy Creek enters the Schuylkill River about a mile south of Squire Boone’s homestead, east of Birdsboro. Exeter Friends Meeting House is between the homes of George and Squire and slightly to the east on a parallel local road, on land purchased from George Boone IV. The address is 191 Meetinghouse Road, Exeter Township.

Some of the above will be repeated below, inasmuch as the several paragraphs above about George Boone III were lifted from an Internet story.

It is generally agreed that George Boone had a friend, William Penn, who persuaded him to emigrate to the New World. The fact that both were Quakers had much to do with the decision to sail.

George Boone III and wife Mary (Maugridge) had been members of the Society of Friends (Quakers) in Callumpton, Devonshire, from which they took a letter of recommendation to the Society of Friends in America. As noted above, on August 17, 1717, the Boones with six of their children went to Bristol, England, to leave for the new land. They arrived in Philadelphia September 29 (Old Style calendar) or October 10 (New Style). This date is in conflict with other accounts of their travel.

The Boone children already in Pennsylvania (George IV, Squire and Sarah) already were living comfortably, so to speak, in Abington (once known as Abingdon), 14 miles north of Philadelphia, and encouraged their parents to stay in Abington for a short time. (Today, Abington is a suburb of Philadelphia.) George IV had married in Abington in 1713. After a few months, George III and most of the family moved to North Wales, not far from Abington. After two years there, they made the move that had greater bearing on future Boone-related generations: in 1720, they moved to Oley Township in Philadelphia County (now Berks County), the area that eventually became Douglassville and environs, including Exeter Township, attached thereto (named Exeter because of their affection for their English homes in Exeter, England).

In that first year, George Boone III got an early taste of Quaker provincialism. He was called on the carpet, so to speak, for allowing the courthship between his daughter Mary and her boyfriend John Webb. George III ate crow according to the minutes of the meeting: “George Boone has openly acknowledged in the meeting his forwardness in giving his consent to John Webb to keep company with his daughter in order to marry, contrary to ye established order amongst us.” Later, John Webb joined the Meeting and everybody was back-slapping.

He bought 400 acres of land in the Birdsboro/Oley area in 1720. The site of the original log house is marked by a boulder placed there by the Historical Society of Berks County. The boulder is marked with this inscription: “House built in 1733 by GEORGE BOONE, grandfather of DANIEL BOONE . . . . . Site of Geo. (sic) Boone’s log house, built about 1720. Historical Society of Berks County.”

Thirteen years later, he built the larger house of stone nearby, which, as noted above, is still standing today. It is about three miles from the Daniel Boone Homestead, which also is a state historical site (although last month, January, 2011, you could not visit the grounds except on your own, not recommended, due to a five-inch snowstorm).

For some reason, George III refused to live in the new house himself, turning it over to his children. He lived in the log house till his death in 1744 (age 78). It has been reported, as noted above, that his remains were carried into the stone (his childrens’) house and from there to his burial in the Friends’ burying-ground at Exeter Meeting House. An old family Bible records the fact that “when Grandfather died, he left 8 children, 52 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren, 70 in all, being as many persons as the home of Jacob, which came into Egypt.”

In accordance with the custom of the Friends Society, no stones mark the graves of George Boone III and his wife Mary, but a far greater memorial is found in the thousands of descendants who unite in honoring their memory.

While my sister and I also are interested in James Boone, the first son of George III that we need to talk about here is Squire Boone, one of the three children who preceded George III in coming to the New World, and yes, Squire was his given name. He was born November 25, 1696 (Old Style) or December 6 (New Style) in Devonshire, England. He died in Rowan County, North Carolina, January 2, 1765.

The “Old Style” time was used in many early records, especially those of the Society of Friends, dating to prior to 1752. That was the so-called Julian Time. After that time, by adding 11 days to a date given in Old Style provides the date corresponding to our current calendar.

Squire Boone was married to Sarah Morgan September 23, 1720. He was 23. He was the “father of the intrepid Kentucky pioneer, Daniel Boone,” according to a newspaper clipping sent to the author of “The Boone Family”. The “compiler”, as he called himself, said he could not tell where the newspaper clipping came from. It describes how Squire and Sarah settled in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in 1730. More specifically, they moved to a home overlooking the Upper Neshaminy (river), apparently the Schuylkill River of today, in New Britain Township, Bucks County, but also known as Oley Township. At least three of Daniel Boone’s brothers and sisters were born here.

Daniel was born here October 22, 1734 (Old Style) or November 2 (New Style). He was the sixth of eleven children. The GPS address of the Daniel Boone Homestead is 400 Daniel Boone Road, Birdsboro, PA 19508 phone number 610-582-4900. For the record and for visitors to the Daniel Boone Homestead of today, the George Boone home of that era was about three miles from the Daniel Boone Homestead. The George Boone Homestead “Boonecroft” is now just a chimney and a fireplace, marked by a large stone marker on Oley Line Road, now located on what’s called “Hidden Valley Farm”, about one-half mile west of Limekiln Road. This is about seven miles north of U. S. 422 East. Across the street is a smaller monument identifying the Boone Log Cabin, where George III lived till his death. The large Boonecroft home built in 1733 still stands.

The present stone Daniel Boone Homestead, it is generally accepted, was built by a later owner, but it encloses the spring and the original hearth (which was “turned around” by creating an opening on the opposite side). The floor boards of “random” width (meaning uneven width, as they came from the primeval forest) are the very same on which Daniel Boone sat, cleaning his first rifle.

The rest of the Daniel Boone Homestead, including the barn, blacksmith shop, and log cabin, has been interestingly furnished with the household utensils, furniture, looms, blacksmithing tools-all of the type used when Daniel Boone was young. Indian scouts and woodsmen traveled light, so they did not gather collector’s items for posterity. But if Daniel Boone were to revisit his birthplace today, he would revisit the spring, the open hearth, and the broad floor boards.

Of indoor schooling, “booklarning,” Daniel had very little. Whether he ever attended a school is still disputed. And scores of letters and documents and reports he wrote show that he never mastered spelling. An inscription he carved on a tree in Tennessee “D. Boon cilled A. Bar on tree in the year 1760,” shows the experimental nature of his spelling. Another (also in Tennessee), “D. Boon killa bar on this tree 1773,” shows little improvement in thirteen years. But the interesting point about these inscriptions is the woodcraft knowledge displayed by Boone. He usually carved his inscriptions on beech trees, which grow so slowly that the expansion of the bark does not distort the lettering for many years. The 1760 inscription was still clear enough to be photographed a hundred years later.

At the Daniel Boone Homestead, a large stone monument says: GEORGE BOONE LOG HOUSE ERECTED 1729 BY GEORGE 3RD AND MARY MILTON (MAUGRIDE) {sic} BOONE. RAZED BY THE ELEMENTS (EXCEPT FIREPLACE AND CHIMNEY) IN 1924. GEORGE BOONE 3RD BORN NEAR EXETER DEVONSHIRE ENGLAND IN 1666. SQUIRE BOONE, HIS SON, WAS BORN IN BRADNINCH DEVONSHIRE ENGLAND NOV 25TH 1696. SETTLED ON A FARM 3 MILES SOUTH OF HERE WHERE HIS SON DANIEL BOONE — THE KENTUCKY PIONEER — WAS BORN NOV 2, 1734. STONE HOUSE ON THIS TRACT WAS BUILT BY GEORGE BOONE AND HIS WIFE MARY, 1733.

A historian writing for the Berks County Historical Society, although not a perfect speller (“effect” instead of “affect”), penned a stuffy account of the Boone family lifestyle amidst the prime existence…. a religious life:

“At first glance the place and circumstance of Daniel’s birth does not seem of any positive, formative influence but like many other casual events of history this one must be viewed in its proper light. The danger with these correlations lies in the fact that when once suspected the historian is apt to give them undue weight. The influences of Oley-if they did effect (sic) Daniel’s character-were positive and during the first half of the eighteenth century the dominating one was religious.

“Here religion was vital. It was the be-all and the end-all of life. Nothing supplanted it. Pietism dominated, but a Pietism distrustful of legalism, discontented with rationality, and disgusted with dogmatic theology. Rooted as they were in a positive mysticism there were only two possible ways for these people of Oley to go – there was asceticism as later manifested by a small movement to Ephrata, and then there was hedonism which never was followed at all.

“The Oley way of life was simple: it was based on the Greek notion of moderation and upon the Teutonic instinct of frugality. The age-old antagonism between legalism and libertinism was here dissolved and in the white-hot crucible of a new land the elements of these differing sects were fused into a mass already alloyed with continental mysticism. Instead of a Hebraistic strictness of conscience, instead of Hellenistic spontaneity of consciousness, these people possessed the conception of conscience and of consciousness wholly dependent upon God. It was here that Daniel Boone was born on November 2, 1734, according to the new style of reckoning.”

Yes, ’twas a mite stuffy.

There is another article about incidents in Daniel’s life related to Oley Township:

“Squire Boone at one time became part owner of a shad fishery on the nearby Schuylkill River. There is a tale that Daniel went to the river with his mother one warm spring day to help clean some fish to bring home. The boy was left asleep near the fish with his hat over his face, while his mother went to a neighbor’s house to offer a share of the catch. The neighbor accepted and sent her daughters after the fish. When they saw a pail containing fish entrails near the sleeping boy, they dashed the contents in the boy’s face, whereupon he gave them both a sound beating. Their mother then ran to Mrs. Boone in complaint. Mrs. Boone was ordinarily a calm, gentle woman, but she could be spirited when occasion warranted. She retorted: ‘If thee has not brought up thy daughters to better behavior it is high time they were taught better manners. And if Daniel has given them a lesson, I hope, for my part, that it will in the end do them no harm, and I have only to add, that I bid thee good day.’

“It is said that Daniel was fond of practical jokes, and that once, with his friend Henry Miller, he was guilty of taking some neighbors’ wagons apart and tying the wheels and other parts up in the trees.

“In his father’s blacksmith shop Daniel became skilled in metal work. When he was twenty-one years old he enlisted as a blacksmith and wagoner in Braddock’s ill-fated expedition and was lucky to escape from the Indians on one of Braddock’s horses at the time of the disastrous defeat. His blacksmith’s skill served him well later in life in repairing his rifle and those of his pioneer friends and, when a prisoner, those of the Indians.

“Daniel was sixteen years old when his father sold his Oley Valley property and migrated to North Carolina. Squire Boone was in bad odor with the Exeter Meeting, by which he had been rebuked and ‘disowned’ because some of his children had ‘married out of meeting.’ The Boones could never endure regimentation. His migration was also probably motivated by his having exhausted the soil of his land. The pioneers knew little of rotation of crops and fertilization of the soil. When the land was worked out, they moved. The family lived near Winchester, Va., for over a year, near their friend John Lincoln, Abraham’s grandfather (NOTE: John, in fact, was President Lincoln’s great-grandfather), before eventually migrating to Yadkin Valley, North Carolina.

“Daniel is said to have been five feet ten inches in height, sturdily built, and of remarkable strength. He had fair skin, sandy hair and eyebrows, blue eyes, a large mouth, thin lips and a Roman nose. The Indians of Kentucky called him ‘wide mouth.’

“It was not until he was forty-seven years old that he returned to his birthplace. His Uncle James wrote in his Bible ’1781 Oct. 20. Then Daniel came to see us for the first time.’ Two years before, the old cabin had been torn down and, on the stone foundation was built the rest of the stone house which now stands.

“Again in 1788 Daniel returned to Pennsylvania, with his wife, a daughter and two sons. James Boone then recorded in his Bible: ’1788, Feb. 12, Then Daniel (with Rebecca his wife, and their son Nathan) came to see us.’ It is reported that he placed his hand on the big timber over the fire-place and said to his son Nathan, ‘Just so tall was your dad when we left here.’ The timber is still there and is just five feet ten inches from the level of the original floor, as shown by the old stone foundation of the cabin. Never again did Daniel Boone return to Oley Valley.

“Daniel Boone’s love of the wilderness continued to the end of his life. He never settled down for any length of time, but was ever away on a hunting expedition or exploring unsettled country. His skill in the woods and with the Indians was so outstanding that he became the most famous pioneer of his time, and he has remained to this day, our national ideal of a ‘pioneer.’ ”

For purposes of this still-in-the-editing stage summary, the writer needs to point out that he is aware of the confusions over the several houses due to the variances in descriptions.

Squire Boone, son of George III, father of Daniel, lived in the children’s house ????? (as a farmer, a weaver and a blacksmith) with his family until April 11, 1750 (20 years) when they moved to North Carolina. Apparently nothing about Daniel is known for about the next five years (in his last teenaged years). In 1755, the British General Edward Braddock (with George Washington on his staff) tried to drive the French and Indians from Fort Duquesne in Pennsylvania. In the army under Braddock was a company of North Carolina frontiersmen, including 21-year-old Daniel Boone, who was a wagoner and blacksmith.

Books have been written about Daniel Boone. There are many Internet links describing his life. So we will leave the frontiersman, the one generally regarded as the trailblazer for the eventual state of Kentucky, and proceed below with what became my sisters and my part, and our families, of the Gabriel family (of Ohio). Kentucky was not one of the original 13 states. It attained statehood soon after the birth of the nation (June 1, 1792).

Next, we will conclude with further information about Daniel’s father and also his uncle. Squire and Sarah Boone, his parents, lived in their only North Carolina home and died there (Squire, see above, died in 1765 at age 68 and Sarah in 1777 at age 77).

For purposes of the Gabriel family, we are interested in Squire’s brother, James, who was 12 years younger than Squire, having been born July 18, 1709, in Devonshire, England, and who died September 1, 1785, at age 74. James was Daniel Boone’s uncle. James’ children, including Anne Boone Lincoln (our Gabriel connection, our great-great-great-great grandmother), were cousins of Daniel.

The book “The Boone Family” re-prints the James Boone will, an extensive document, as for example, the eighth provision:

“8thly, I give and bequeath unto my four Daughters, Anne Lincoln, Mary Lee, Martha Hughes and Rachel Wilcockson, each the Sum of five Shillings they having received part of their Portions of me in Land already, as by Several Deeds delivered to their husbands may appear, and I do hereby acquit and forever Discharge them and their Husbands of all Money Goods and Creatures that they already had of me, and Stand Charged with in my Book of Accounts.” (Punctuation and capitalization were verbatim.)

As noted above, Anne Boone, cousin of Daniel Boone, was married to Abraham Lincoln, step-great-great-uncle of President Lincoln. Anne Boone was born April 14, 1737, and died April 4, 1807, at age 70. She was buried in the Friends’ Burying Ground in Exeter Township, not far from what is today called the Daniel Boone Homestead inasmuch as he (Daniel) lived there with his brothers and sisters. It was the home built by their father, Squire. ?????? (Not certain of this.)

Abraham Lincoln (our great-great-great-great-grandfather) and Anne Boone were married July 10, 1760. He actually was the half-brother of John, great-grandfather of President Lincoln. The blood lines of Mordecai Lincoln (1686-1736) flowed in each of their bodies, and in my sisters and me. Abraham, our four-great-grandfather and John’s half brother, was 23 years, 8 months and 11 days old and she was 23 years, 2 months and 26 days, “he being 5 months, 15 days and 22 hours older than she”. (They knew the proper grammar between “she” and “her” in those days!) The detail, down to the hours, was found in an old family Bible. Upon her death, it was reported that our four-great-grandmother lived 69 years, 11 months, 21 days, 14 hours and 10 minutes!

The Lincolns were Congregationalists and the Boones Quakers. Consequently, Anne Boone’s marriage to Abraham Lincoln was “out of Meeting” and was considered a disorderly act (many marriages of the era were “out of meeting” and considered disorderly). For her disorder our great-great-great-great-grandmother was disciplined by the Exeter Monthly Meeting, and she acknowledged her error to the Meeting August 27, 1761.

Abraham and Anne had 10 children, six sons and four daughters, including Phoebe Lincoln, born January 22, 1773.

Phoebe was our great-great-great-grandmother. She lived to age 77 (died June 12, 1852).

When she was about 19, she married David Jones (born May 26, 1766), age about 26.

We probably would need to borrow that IBM computer “Watson” to ferret all the relationships, past and future, including our grandmother and grandfather, who married a sister and brother, prompting my Mother to identify them as “double cousins”.

And in those days, they surely liked to name the children after the parents and others in the family. You have seen that with Mordecai et al but there is more to come.

Phoebe’s husband, David Jones (see above), was a son of Caleb Jones (1744-1809) and his wife Hannah Samuels (Jones). And Caleb Jones was a son of David Jones (1709-1784) and his wife Elizabeth Davies (1714-1782). (You think this is easy ???)

Phoebe and David had six children, including our great-great-grandmother Anna (Nancy) Jones (born February 27, 1796, and who died June 30, 1876). When she was 21, she eloped with Thomas Gabriel, our grandfather’s grandfather (January 26, 1817). Well, it’s about time we get around to a Gabriel!!! It also should be noted that Anna (Nancy) Jones was 13 years old, in 1809, when the infamous Susanna Cox story unfolded, as described in this blog in great detail below. Anna (Nancy) lived about three-fourths of a mile from Susanna Cox.

But back to David Jones. In 1778 in England, when he was 12 years old, he stowed away on a merchant ship. Yes, he was 12. He ran away from home because he could not get along with his stepmother.

For the record, this was included in a somewhat convoluted writeup that appeared in the Bryan, Ohio, Times newspaper. Included in the report on David Jones was the statement that one of his descendants moved to Paola, Kansas, and became a millionaire. This was said to be Henry Clay Jones. Today, he would have to become a billionaire to make it into a centuries-long family tree scenario!

The writeup appeared in the Bryan Times either in 1976 or 1982, depending on which account you favor. We do know it was our Aunt Norma (Starck) who gave the writeup to my sister Joan on or about Monday, March 21, 1982.

One of the anecdotes had to do with a teaspoon and a teapot. Lois Kerr Perkins (wife of Robert W. Perkins) of Pulaski had written the following: “This past summer, we were privileged to visit some cousins in Apple Creek, Ohio: Mrs. Mabel Tucker and Mrs. Ella Manson.” The account continued to explain that Mrs. Manson had, with her, a pewter teaspoon and a china teapot that belonged to the mother of President Lincoln. Information from Mrs. Manson and Mrs. Tucker, together with a genealogy compiled by the late Dorothy Baker Perkins, wife of Lynden Perkins, supplied names and dates necessary to verify the relationship of the Gabriel family to President Lincoln and Daniel Boone (and also to the Perkins family).

But again, back to David Jones, the 12-year-old English stowaway. And wife Phoebe Lincoln Jones. And their daughter, our great-great-grandmother Anna (Nancy) Jones. Thomas Gabriel already was mentioned above, but now we’re getting to the touchdowns in the fourth quarter.

Thomas Gabriel was from Ohio. His parents, Thomas and Elizabeth Gabriel (which also was our Mother’s maiden name!), had migrated to Moreland (Wayne County), Ohio, to homestead a farm. Moreland is located south of Cleveland about mid-way between Akron and Mansfield.

Thomas Gabriel was visiting relatives in Reading, Pennsylvania, about 14 miles from Oley Township, when he met Anne (Nancy) Jones. He was described as a tall, dark-haired, handsome young man.

Thomas and Anna (Nancy) fell in love, much to the chagrin of her parents. They (David and Phoebe Lincoln Jones) refused to give the young lovers permission to get married.

The couple decided to elope. And they did so from Anna’s maternal grandparents’ home, named “Boonecroft”. (The maternal grandparents no longer were living at the time.) If you have not fallen asleep and have taken copious notes, you now realize that Boonecroft was the home of Abraham Lincoln and Anne Boone Lincoln, grandparents of Anna (Nancy) Jones! This Abraham Lincoln was related to the 16th President through his father, Mordecai Lincoln; his wife, Anne Boone, was related to the Kentucky frontiersman; Daniel Boone was her first cousin. By the way, in its earlier days, “Boonecroft” was spelled without the “e” because many Boones in the earlier days spelled their last name without the “e”.

“Boonecroft” is identifiable today. It’s on Oley Line Road in Douglassville, Pennsylvania. My sister and I visited there in 1993, and I returned last month, but the snow was still too deep for further exploration. The home is a historical site. The window at the back of the home near where Thomas placed the ladder for her exit had been marked with a plaque, but on my return visit March 22, 2011, it was not there. Near the side/rear door is a plaque today identifying Boonecroft as a historical site.

Anna and Tom left after dark to begin their journey by buckboard wagon back to Tom’s Ohio home. When they arrived at his parents’ home near Moreland (it had been a 415-mile trip), they hid the buckboard in a cowshed at the back of the house.

Not long thereafter, her parents forgave them, and they returned to Berks County, Pennsylvania, to live where nine of their fourteen children (!!) were born.

The nine children born in Pennsylvania were as follows: James Flavius Gabriel (1817-1854), a carpenter; David Jones Gabriel (1818-1895), a gunsmith; Jacob Gabriel (1820-1855), a cooper (traditionally, a cooper is someone who makes wooden staved vessels of a conical form, of greater length than breadth, bound together with hoops and possessing flat ends or heads. Examples of a cooper’s work include but are not limited to casks, barrels, buckets, tubs, butter churns, hogsheads, firkins, tierces, rundlets, puncheons, pipes, tuns, butts, pins and breakers); Phebe Gabriel (1822-??); Margaret Gabriel (1824-1865); John Quincy Gabriel (1825-1892); the seventh child, our great-grandfather, Caleb Jones Gabriel (1827- ), a farmer; Anne Gabriel (1828- ) and Elizabeth (or Elisabeth) Gabriel (1830- ).

Their other five children born in Ohio were Martha Lincoln Gabriel (1832- ); Joseph Gabriel (1833- ); Mary Ann Gabriel (1835- ), Jane Good Gabriel (1836- ) and Amanda Gabriel (1838- ). Thomas Gabriel and Anna (Nancy) Jones Gabriel had children at the rate of approximately one every 18 months.

They moved to the Gabriel (Ohio) homestead in 1832 after the death of Tom’s father to farm the land and help his mother manage the farm. Tom and Anna lived the remainder of their lives on the farm near Moreland, Ohio, which has been the home of a Gabriel clan since it was a homestead.

As you can see, with 14 children born to Tom and Anna Gabriel, that suggests many, many more descendants of Abe and Daniel. And we can name some of them from the family of Caleb Jones Gabriel, seventh son of Thomas and Anna. The eldest was Elsie Gabriel (born in or near 1858); Thomas Gabriel (born in or near 1860); Ezra (we know he was born in 1862 !);
Sarah A. Gabriel (born in or near 1865); Eliza J. Gabriel (born in or near 1868); Leander Gabriel (born in or near 1870); Emma M. Gabriel (born in or near 1872); Orpha M. Gabriel (born in or near 1874), and Royal O. Gabriel (born in or near 1879). The correct year for each of them is known as a result of the 1880 United States Federal Census, from which these names were obtained. So here we had another large Gabriel family, with many descendants of Abe and the frontiersman.

Our grandmother Gabriel was the sister of the great grandson of the man who also was active in northwest Ohio at the time. His name was Judge John Perkins. In the spring of 1833, he became the first settler of the town of Pulaski, Ohio, which later became the birthplace of our Grandmother Gabriel. Pulaski is about 15 miles somewhat northeast of Edgerton, Ohio, where our Grandmother and Grandfather Gabriel lived for many years. It is three miles northeast of Bryan, 15 miles east of Edgerton. It should be understood that the Ohio Gabriel homestead of Thomas Gabriel, our great-great-great-great-grandfather, was 170 miles from Pulaski.

Judge Perkins came to the (Pulaski) area to survey what now are Defiance and Williams Counties for the State of Ohio. He received a section of land in the Pulaski area as payment. Born May 18, 1776, Judge Perkins was in his middle 50′s when he arrived there with two of his sons, Isaac and Garrett, and five other men. How he selected the town itself is remarkable.

The story was that away back before calendars were invented, when time was measured by the moon and directions were determined by the moss on the trees, there were but two main-traveled thoroughfares through Williams County, and they crossed each other at what was to become Pulaski, Ohio. One of the trails was from Fort Wayne, Indiana, to Detroit, and the other led from Columbus past Fort Defiance through Pulaski into Michigan. It was said that Judge Perkins was so impressed with the possibilities of Pulaski because of the intersection of the two trails that he concluded he would lay out the townsite there and it would become the metropolis of the northwest.

Alas, Pulaski today remains a small town.

Judge Perkins remained in the Pulaski area until his death at age 72 September 13, 1848. The Judge was married three times and he fathered 14 children. He married his first wife, Nancy Dawson, February 20, 1800. The first of their seven children was Isaac, born in 1801. Isaac’s first wife was Mary Tuttle and their first child was Frank Josiah Perkins, born in 1829. We are keying on Frank Josiah Perkins.

While Frank was serving in the Army in Pennsylvania, he married Celina Bamer. (Celina’s mother, Elizabeth Cannon, was the great-grandmother of “Uncle Joe Cannon”, long-time Speaker of the U. S. House of Representatives. The Cannon House Office Building is named for Uncle Joe.)

Frank and Celina had a daughter, Laura, born in 1858, who lived only two years. But their next two children are highly significant in this entire summary. They moved back to Ohio (Williams Center, six miles southwest of Pulaski) and a son, Thomas Newton Perkins, was born April 7, 1860. In 1863, they moved to Pulaski where, on August 4, their third child was born: Mary Annabelle (Millie) Perkins, our Grandmother. Frank Josiah Perkins moved his family several times before moving back to Williams Center where he died June 1, 1875.

Now to the other side: the Ezra Gabriel story. Our grandfather. Grandpa.

When Thomas and Anna Gabriel moved from Oley Township in Pennsylvania to Moreland, Ohio, their son Caleb Jones Gabriel was five years old. He did not marry until age 26. He married Frances Charlton. They had five children before her death. Then on February 14, 1867, he married Ruth Isabella Van Gilder, the widow of Gideon Stine. Their first child, Lida Jane Gabriel, was born January 19, 1868, in Moreland. So she was daughter of Caleb Jones Gabriel and his second wife, Ruth.

Lida Jane Gabriel was the half-sister of our Grandfather, Ezra Gabriel. On April 8, 1885, she married Thomas Newton Perkins, our Grandmother’s brother. This is where the “double cousins” comes in (see above reference). Our grandparents, Ezra Munson Gabriel and Mary Annabelle (Millie) Perkins, were half-brother and sister, respectively, of Lida Jane Gabriel (Perkins) and Thomas Newton Perkins.

As noted above, providing some of the information relating to the Gabriels and Perkins was Lois Kerr Perkins, wife of Robert W. Perkins (his birth date October 21, 1908). They lived on part of the section of land granted to Judge John Perkins in Pulaski. In the mid-1970′s, probably 1976, at the end of her writeup, which was published in the Bryan Times, she reported: “There are 153 living direct descendants of Thomas Newton and Lida Jane Gabriel Perkins.” That must have been quite a job, compiling the list. We were told that a new genealogy book on the Perkins family was produced in January, 1988. There does not appear to be any evidence of it on the Internet.

Our grandfather, Ezra Munson Gabriel, was born during the Civil War. The date was January 24, 1862. His future bride, our grandmother, as noted above, also was born during the Civil War, on August 4, 1863. So Grandpa was a year-and-a-half older than Grandma. Grandpa lived 93 years, Grandma 96. He died April 6, 1955; she, December 22, 1959.

Grandpa married Grandma, Mary Annabelle Perkins, April 7, 1885, in Williams Center, Ohio. He was 23, she 21.

They lived in Williams Center their first year after marriage. Their first child was born there —- Guy Caleb Gabriel. Uncle Guy.

My sister Joan (remember it is pronounced JOH-ANN…. “LOL”) provided a writeup for this blog saying that Grandpa then got a job at a flour mill 10 miles down the road in Edgerton, Ohio. Grandpa and Grandma moved to Edgerton and bought a two-story plain frame house, two rooms down and two up, no porch.

A year after moving there, Grandpa changed jobs. He went to work at the Edgerton Basket Factory, which conveniently was just a block from the Gabriel house.

He walked to work (of course, it was a whole block away!) every day at 6:00 a.m., returned for DINNER at noon, then went back to work until 6:00 p.m., when he came home for SUPPER. My sister says he did that six days each week. Ugh!

The rest of their nine children (eight of them) were born here, and Ez and Millie lived in that house until they died. Over the years, the house grew with the family. Eventually, they had six rooms down and still the two rooms up. But they also had a spacious front, screened-in porch, with the traditional swing at one end that everybody loved.

Their two older sons went to serve in World War I. Uncle Guy and Uncle Frank. The youngest boy, Milton, was too young to go to war. Sadly, though the two older sons came home without a scratch, the younger boy was taken from them November 11, 1918, ironically the date of the Armistice. Tragically, at age 17, Uncle Milton died from what then was called tuberculosis of the brain, which probably today would be classified as spinal meningitis.

During one of my sister’s visits there, Grandma told her about Uncle Milton. She said, “He would be 35 years old now; I wonder what he’d be like!” Joan told me: “I felt so sad for her and Grandpa.”

Five of their six daughters married, and gave them ten grandchildren. (Uncle Guy and Uncle Frank married, too. Uncle Frank had one son, Frank, Jr.) Our Aunt Verna, the one girl who did not marry, wanted to go to art school, which she did for one year, at the Cleveland Art Institute. But that was all Grandpa could afford. So Aunt Verna became a stenographer.

Another daughter, Aunt Frances, was sent by Grandpa to a business school in Fort Wayne, but in a few days she got homesick, and came home to work at the Edgerton Post Office.

The oldest daughter, Aunt Hazel, became a Court Reporter in Bryan (12 miles east of Edgerton) after her Business Education. Daughter Number Three was Aunt Norma. She was a Secretary to the Editor of the South Bend, Indiana, newspaper, The Mirror Press.

Our mother, Elizabeth May Gabriel, daughter Number Two, gave up wanting to be a teacher. She said she noticed women teachers never get married, and she wanted to get married. So she worked at the linotype, putting the Edgerton Earth newspaper together each week. Mother worked there for five years. She was paid one dollar a day!

After five years at the newspaper, she got an offer to go to Montana to keep house along with the sister of one of the friends of Uncle Guy and Uncle Frank in Livingston. Our Mother visited Yellowstone Park frequently (among other places) for two years every weekend during her time off.

By this time, our Mother was “Betty” to everybody. Her brothers, both telegraphers, introduced her to a telegrapher friend, Orville Austin Pierron, who became her husband, our Daddy. They were married in Livingston, Montana, just before he left for the war in Europe, where he served in the Signal Corps, thanks to his experience as a telegrapher. (There is a short story about his later work at the Western Union in St. Louis on this blog. You can find the writeup in the story about my pal Dizzy Dean.)

Joan writes that Grandpa Ez was quite the father. He had suggested to Guy and Frank that they invite Betty to come out to Montana for a visit. He noticed Betty was “dying on the vine” in Edgerton. So, in fact, he was instrumental in her move out west.

And in this summary, we can’t forget Aunt Dorothy, the youngest in the family. Aunt Dorothy “stenographed” it out just like her older sisters, in Cleveland. Joan writes that Grandpa saw that his daughters received business educations.

In Betty’s case, says Joan, she was going to school to become a teacher until she thought better of it.

Joan wrote: “Grandpa was always a pleasant person as I remember him. He loved his family and his grandchildren; that was evident. He attended Sunday School and Church every Sunday, and took his children with him. Grandma almost always had to stay home because there always was a baby to take care of! Until the last one was five or six years old. Then, she went to Church, too.

“Grandpa also played in the Edgerton band. He played the Bass Horn. I remember seeing him in the Band during the Homecoming times I experienced. Grandpa could yodel, too. I remember asking him to yodel, when I heard that he could. He did it for me, once. But it was hard on his voice box and he wouldn’t do it in his later years.

“As I said, Grandpa was quite a guy!

“Grandma was quite a gal, too, a very sweet person who always kissed us goodnight when we were visiting and going to bed, and always would say ‘SWEET DREAMS’ !!”

Speaking about Grandpa and Grandma, Joan concluded: “They were such loving and lovely people!!! If I hadn’t had them, I don’t know what I would have become! I felt so loved by them. They thought I was really the cat’s meow!”

I remember both of them well, too, and with great fondness. I can remember always wanting to see my Grandpa smile. He didn’t curse. Well, not really. Except one day, when they were in their 90′s, and I was visiting from St. Louis with my Mother and sister Mary, he said a bad word, maybe two. I was in the kitchen when Grandma came in from the back yard, saying: “I’ve been wantin’ to do that for years!!”

Grandpa almost always sat in his chair up front, in the living room. But he heard Grandma. So he came toward the kitchen, asking her in an unusual, demanding voice: “What did you do!!!!!” You could tell he thought by the way she acted she had done something she shouldn’t have.

She replied that she had just finished cutting down the tree in the middle of the back yard.

“What!!!!!!” demanded Grandpa. “What did you do???” He obviously just wanted to hear her say it again.

“Well,” she said, “I cut down that tree. I never did like it there.”

“You damn fool!!” he bellowed. Never saw him angry before.

And here came more cursing by Grandpa. “Well, consarn it, you’re too old to do something like that!”

“Consarn” appears to be a mild expletive along the lines of “dagnabbit”. Grandma assured him she was fine. She turned to me and said: “I didn’t wanna tell him!” And I got the idea that she had heard “consarn” before, too.

It was, in fact, a beautiful moment.

And before we report here a sad “moment” in the history of the early Lincoln and Boone days, which happened hardly more than a stone’s throw from Boonecroft, I want to mention more about our family and the grandchildren and great-grandchildren, all of whom are related to President Lincoln and Daniel Boone.

Our Dad was born August 5, 1891, and died June 9, 1949, at the age of 57. We were living in St. Louis at the time. Our Mother was born December 29, 1891, so she was just four months younger than our Dad. She died January 6, 1982, at the age of 90. For the last 25 years of her life, she lived in Edgerton in a house she arranged to have built (along with Aunt Norma, who lived there with her). It was right next to our grandparents’ house, still sturdily standing and occupied in those years by Aunt Verna.

Joan and I had a sister, Mary, who was taken from this life much too soon. Mary was born January 7, 1928. She died at age 59 (June 25, 1987) near Dayton, Ohio, after a long illness. She and her husband Fred Morehead had three daughters.

My sister Joan is the Mother of Randall James Murphy (born April 5, 1943), Jan Elizabeth Murphy (born December 13, 1948) and Jacques Pierron Murphy (born March 2, 1959). For her children, President Lincoln is their third cousin, four times removed. They are first cousins of Daniel Boone, seven times removed.

Randy is the Father of Colin Randall Murphy (born October 8, 1968) and Patrick James Murphy (born December 9, 1969). Randy’s sons are President Lincoln’s third cousins, five times removed. They are first cousins of Daniel Boone, eight times removed.

Colin is the Father of Riley Aiden Murphy (born January 26, 2007). Riley is the President’s third cousin, six times removed, and Daniel Boone’s first cousin, nine times removed.

Patrick is the Father of Katherine Manuella Murphy (born January 16, 2001) and Nicole ????? (born ?????). They also are President Lincoln’s third cousins, six times removed. They are first cousins of Daniel Boone, nine times removed.

Jacques is the Father of Austin Richard Murphy (born June 8, 1987) and Sean Charles Murphy (born June 15, 1990). They are President Lincoln’s third cousins, five times removed. And they are Daniel Boone’s first cousins, seven times removed.

Our sister Mary (born January 7, 1928; died June 25, 1987) was the Mother of three daughters, namely, Ann Elledge Morehead Wilson (born August 10, 1948), Nancy Jean Morehead Archdeacon (born August 2, 1951) and Jayne Ellen Morehead Long (born July 20, 1956). They are President Lincoln’s third cousins, four times removed. They are first cousins of Daniel Boone, seven times removed.

Ann Wilson is the Mother of Todd Alan Wilson (born January 12, 1971) and Teri Ann Wilson Smith (born July 5, 1975). They are President Lincoln’s third cousins, five times removed. They are Daniel Boone’s first cousin, eight times removed.

Ann is the Grandmother of Todd Alan Wilson II (born June 17, 1996) and Grace Kelly Wilson (born August 1, 2001), children of Todd Alan Wilson; also, Caleb James Smith (born December 7, 1999), Maryann Elizabeth (“M. E.”) Smith (born April 14, 2001) and Colin Thomas Smith (born January 12, 2005).

Nancy Morehead Archdeacon is the Mother of Erin Archdeacon (born July ??, 1974) and Megan Gabriel Archdeacon (born September 7, 1979). They are President Lincoln’s third cousins, five times removed. They are Daniel Boone’s first cousins, eight times removed.

Nancy is the Grandmother of Joshua Wiles ??? (born ???) and Avery Wiles ??? (born ???), children of Erin Archdeacon. They are President Lincoln’s third cousins, six times removed. And, they are Daniel Boone’s first cousins, nine times removed.

Jayne Ellen Morehead Long is the Mother of Jaimee Gabriel Long (born January 5, 1987). Jaimee is President Lincoln’s third cousin, five times removed. And she is Daniel Boone’s first cousin, eight times removed.

Also, Jayne is Grandmother of Spencer Thomas Webb (born April 17, 2009). Spencer is President Lincoln’s third cousin, six times removed. And he is Daniel Boone’s first cousin, nine times removed.

Your writer of this blog (John Pierron) is Father of four sons, as follows: Thomas Blake (born November 19, 1954); William Orville (born June 27, 1957; died July 27, 1997); Joseph John (born January 14, 1960) and David James (born January 19, 1966). They are the President’s third cousins, four times removed. And they are Daniel Boone’s first cousins, seven times removed.

Joseph John Pierron is the Father of Amy Lynn Pierron (born November 24, 1981), Eileen Danielle Pierron (born April 26, 1984), Joseph Albert Blake Pierron (born September 2, 1986) and Jacob Michael Pierron (born December 23, 2009). They are half-brothers and half-sisters of Katrinka (Kattie) Faye Evans (born March 29, 1991) and Patrick Corbin Evans (born March 21, 1995). The first-named Joseph Pierron children are President Lincoln’s third cousins, five times removed. And Daniel Boone is their first cousin, eight times removed.

David James Pierron is the Father of James Philip (born October 2, 1985), Franklin David (born March 30, 1998) and Nicholas Andrew (born October 10, 2001). They are President Lincoln’s third cousins, six times removed, and Daniel Boone’s first cousins, nine times removed.

James Philip Pierron is the Father of Kevin James Pierron (see “Kevin Is Missing” on this blog . . . johnpierron.com), who was born June 3, 2004. He is President Lincoln’s third cousin, six times removed. And he is Daniel Boone’s first cousin, nine times removed.

Amy Lynn Pierron is Mother of Chloe Ann Pierron (born January 22, 2003). Chloe is President Lincoln’s third cousin, seven times removed. She is Daniel Boone’s first cousin, ten times removed.

Eileen Pierron is Mother of Cameron William Jacob Barnes (born December 4, 2008). Cameron is a third cousin of President Lincoln, seven times removed, and first cousin of Daniel Boone, ten times removed.

Joseph Albert Blake Pierron, one of my grandsons, is the Father of our newest great-granddaughter, Raelyn Lee Pierron, born 36 minutes before midnight August 36, 2011. She is the third cousin of President Lincoln, seven times removed. She is the first cousin of Daniel Boone, ten times removed.

My sisters and I always enjoyed visiting our grandparents in Edgerton. The dinners were total family affairs, something mostly absent in today’s society. Every dinner started with my Grandpa’s prayer:

“WE THANK THEE, OH LORD, THAT WE ARE AGAIN PERMITTED TO SURROUND THIS BOARD, SPREAD WITH THE NOURISHMENTS OF LIFE. BLESS THIS FOOD TO OUR USE, FORGIVE ALL OUR SINS, GUIDE AND DIRECT US EACH DAY AND THROUGH LIFE AND EVENTUALLY SAVE US FOR CHRIST’S SAKE, AMEN.”

In the course of obtaining information on Gabriel family descendants, my niece, Ann Wilson, told me that at holiday dinners, she places Grandpa’s Prayer under a plate and the person sitting there reads the prayer before dinner. Ann says the family members enjoy being the one to read the prayer. “It seems a special way,” said Ann, “to celebrate our heritage, and it’s a meaningful tradition to his descendants as well.”
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What follows (below) is a writeup in 1900 of an infamous event nearly a century prior that reads like a televised “48 Hours” or “Dateline” or “20/20″. The reader should be forewarned; the story is not rated PG-13, even with the severe ratings of movies and TV shows nowadays. It originates in the neighborhood of Oley Township only three-quarters of a mile from a house with which you are now quite familiar …… called . . . . . Boonecroft.

Punctuations and capitalizations or lower case usages are not changed from the original, written 111 years ago. The justification for adding the story here is summarized in its second paragraph.

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“Situated at the distance of a few hundred yards from the Oley turnpike road, in Oley Township, Berks County, upon the border line of Exeter, there stands a large old stone mansion, which, at the beginning of the (19th) century, was the property of the Snyder family, long seated in that neighborhood. Its appearance indicates thrift and comfort, and the region is picturesque and attractive.

“This ancient dwelling possesses a melancholy association with a tragedy which transpired upwards of ninety years ago (from 1900) and has deeply impressed itself in local history and tradition. Though often rehearsed, the narrative of the crime of Susanna Cox and its expiation is of enduring interest, both as a vivid memento of the times of its occurrence, and a pathetic instance of the stern administration of public justice which was the characteristic of a bygone period. The whole tone of the picture is somber, but its contemplation is humanizing.

“There resided here, in the year 1809, the family of Mr. Jacob Geehr, who was married to Esther Snyder, both representatives of old and highly respectable county stock. With the Snyders and Geehrs there had lived for eleven years, in the capacity of a domestic, a girl named Susanna Cox, who, at the time of the lamentable event which fixed public attention upon her, was in the twenty-fourth year of her age. She was born in the lower part of the county, of very humble parentage, and was early put out to service. Entirely without education or the advantages of timely moral training, she possessed nothing to recommend her in her menial relation except a vigorous bodily frame, repossessing countenance and a cheerful and willing disposition. She behaved herself with at least outward propriety, kept closely at home, and, though not considered very bright or apt for work, attached to herself the family of Mr. Geehr by her tender and affectionate care of their three young children, all of whom were born during the period of her employment.

“But, as events developed, the luckless girl, perhaps from the very simplicity of her disposition too easy a prey to the wiles of the designer, was led aside from the path of virtue, and confronted with the consequences of her error. Whilst it was observed that she had complained of some obscure indisposition, no one in the family appears to have been positively aware of her condition, or, marvelous as it would seem, knew the fact that, early upon the morning of the fourteenth day of February, 1809, she had, alone, in her own apartment, become a mother.

“At about daybreak on the morning of the third day there after, the seventeenth of February, Mr. Geehr had occasion to go to an outbuilding a few yards from the house, to search for some old iron needed for certain repairs which were in progress on his farm. This structure, still standing, and bearing as the date of its erection the mark of 1767, is a small one story stone house, originally occupied as a dwelling. The basement was used as a wash house, the Monocacy creek flowing beside it. In a corner of the rear room upon the main floor was a closet, and underneath it a deep receptacle in the wall, usually filled with promiscuous rubbish. Drawing out its contents, Mr. Geehr came upon a parcel wrapped in a piece of an old coat, which, upon inspection, proved to be the dead body of a newly born, fully developed male infant, frozen stiff. The gruesome discovery, being communicated by him to the family, caused much consternation. Although the girl Susanna had been about the house as usual during the preceding days, suspicion was at once directed to her, and, upon being closely questioned upon the matter by the female members of the family, she admitted that the child was hers, and that she had placed it where it had been found, but said it had been born dead.

“Deeming it proper that the affair should be judicially inquired into, Mr. Geehr, without particular inspection of the child’s body, replaced it in the wall, and sent his tenant farmer to Reading to summon the Coroner. Acting in the place of that official, who was sick, Peter Nagle, Esq., for a long period a Justice of the Peace of the town, came, late in the afternoon of the same day, accompanied by a young medical practitioner, Dr. John B. Otto. A jury from the neighborhood being impaneled, a surgical examination of the child’s body was made by the physician, as the result of which it was ascertained that the lower jaw had been broken, the tongue torn loose and thrust back, and strangulation evidently produced by a wad of tow or flax which had been forced into the throat

“The girl being questioned anew by the Justice in private, adhered to her original story as given to the family. But, appearances leaving no doubt that the infant had been violently done away with, the finding of the inquest was that it had been murdered, and that the self-confessed mother was the perpetrator of the crime. Upon being informed of this result, and told that she would have to accompany the Justice upon his return to the town, the girl cried a little at first, but presently seemed quite willing to go, ate a comfortable supper prepared for her, and, after being warmly clothed for the journey, was conveyed to Reading and committed to prison for trial.

“That trial was not long deferred. An indictment against Susanna Cox for willful murder was found by the grand jury at the April Term of the Oyer and Terminer following, and upon Friday, April 7th, the next to the last day of the session, she was arraigned before the Court, then presided over by the Honorable John Spayd, and pleaded not guilty. The prosecution on the part of the State was conducted by the Deputy Attorney-General, Samuel D. Franks, Esq., and the prisoner was defended by three of the leading practitioners of the local bar, Marks John Biddle, Charles Evans and Frederick Smith, Esqs.

“According to the notes of trial taken by Mr. Biddle, the facts developed were as have already been stated. Substantially no testimony was adduced on the part of the defense, Dr. John C. Baum, the family physician of Mr. Geehr, being called and stating that he had prescribed for the accused the preceding autumn for some unusual aliment, without discovering its cause, and that she had also reiterated to him the day after her commitment to prison her previous assertion that the child had been born dead, giving as her reason for the concealment of its birth that she feared she would lose her place if the fact were discovered.

“The prisoner’s cause was ably and forcibly presented to the Court and jury by her learned counsel, who urged in her favor the lack of positive proof of the commission by her of the offence charged, the existence of a reasonable doubt of her guilt, and the hazard of a conviction upon mere circumstantial evidence. The confession of the accused that the child was hers having been given in evidence by the State, that confession, it was contended, must be received in its entirety, coupled as it was with her assertion that it had been born dead. Her previous character, moreover, had been shown to be good, and no person naturally virtuous, it was argued, sinks at once to crime which shocks humanity.

“What stronger plea in the law could, under the circumstances, have been made in behalf of the hapless girl? What greater indication of the public concern for her life than these voluntary efforts by such an array of distinguished counsel? But, divesting the ease of all considerations of sentiment, it would be doing violence to impartial judgment to assert that the verdict of guilty of willful and premeditated murder, which was rendered by the jury after about four hours deliberation, was not fairly warranted under the law and the facts.

“Upon the following morning, in the speedy course of justice, the prisoner was again brought to the bar of the Court and sentenced to pay the penalty of death which the law affixed to her crime. In choking accents the deeply affected Judge pronounced the solemn words which consigned the unhappy girl to her awful doom. A multitude of people, as great as could crowd within the walls of the old provincial court house where the trial had taken place, listened to those words with no less profound emotion. The condemned, herself, bowed her head and wept convulsively, still, however, maintaining her innocence.

“The popular sympathy for the unfortunate girl was now enlisted in an effort to secure at the least a commutation of the sentence at the hands of the Executive. The Governor of the State, Simon Snyder, was petitioned to spare the life which the law had declared to be forfeited to its demands. Whilst the prisoner’s guilt could no longer be judicially questioned, it was urged that justice could be satisfied without the shedding of her blood.

“The hanging of a woman was then, as it continues to be, repugnant to the people of Pennsylvania. Yet there had been numerous instances of it in the history of both the Colonial and State governments, and before the law there could be no just discrimination in the punishment of deliberate murder founded upon distinction of sex in the perpetrator. Two women had previously been executed in Berks County for the crime of murdering their illegitimate offspring. Elizabeth Graul, convicted at the November Term of Oyer and Terminer of 1758, and Catharine Krebs, convicted at the November Term of 1767, were hanged at Reading the former on March 10, 1759, and the latter on December 19, 1767. No facts regarding these remote cases have been transmitted.

“At that period the sanguinary code of 1718 was still in force, under which no less than twelve distinct offences were punishable by death. By the same statute the mere concealment of the death of her illegitimate child by the mother was made presumptive evidence to convict her of murder, unless she could make proof by at least one witness that the child was born dead. This harsh feature of the ancient law, together with the penalty of capital punishment for all offences other than murder of the first degree, was finally removed by the Act of 1794, which also required, with respect to illegitimates, independent affirmative proof of the fact of the killing by the mother as essential to a conviction, and punished the concealment of the death by imprisonment at hard labor, which remains the law at this day.

“Between the organization of the State government under the Constitution of 1790, and the year 1809, five women, three of them colored, convicted in other counties, also paid the death penalty, the offences being, in nearly every instance, the murder of illegitimates. A young woman named Sarah Keating was tried in the Oyer and Terminer of Berks County before Supreme Court Justices Shippen and Brackenridge, in October, 1804, for concealing the death of her illegitimate child, and acquitted; the grand jury having previously ignored a count in the indictment charging her with its murder. Since 1809 there has occurred but a single instance of the execution of a woman in Pennsylvania that of Catharine Miller, who was hanged in the county of Lycoming, together with her paramour, in February, 1881, for the murder of her aged husband.

“Humanity was a marked trait in the character of Governor Snyder. That he regarded capital punishment with disfavor is evidenced by his remarks upon the subject in his annual message to the Legislature in December, 1809, suggesting the expediency of its abolition as a matter proper for their consideration. The signing of death warrants he referred to in the same connection as the most painful duty devolving upon the Executive. But the policy of the law with respect to the due protection of human life was firmly settled, and there was at that day, moreover, less disposition to interfere with the solemn verdict of a jury than there is at this. Nor had modern theories as to individual responsibility for crime materially affected ancient ideas of public justice.

“The particular crime of which Susanna Cox had been convicted was no uncommon offence, and it was especially ill fated for her cause before the Governor that, in the beginning of May, 1809, while the petition in her behalf was still in his hands, a girl named Mary Meloy was arrested upon the like charge at Lancaster, then the seat of the State government. The circumstances were of unusual atrocity, and whilst the defendant was subsequently acquitted, she was at the time of her apprehension believed to be guilty.

“It is not surprising, therefore, that the Governor’s decision was adverse to the pending application. A brief official record remaining in the Executive department at Harrisburg states, under date of May 9, 1809, that, “The Governor this day took into consideration the case of Susanna Cox, now under sentence of death for murder in the first degree, confined in the jail of the County of Berks, of which crime she was convicted at the last Court of Oyer and Terminer and General Jail Delivery held in the said county – and thereupon a warrant under the Great Seal of the State, and signed by the Governor, was issued to the Sheriff of the County of Berks, George Marx, Esq., commanding him to execute the sentence of the said Court upon her, the said Susanna Cox, on Saturday, the tenth day of June next, between the hours of ten and two of the clock of the said day, at the usual place of execution.

“The said warrant was immediately transmitted to the said Sheriff of the said County of Berks, with instructions to communicate the same to the prisoner forthwith.

“This action sealed the fate of the unhappy girl; from it there could be no appeal. When the purport of the warrant was made known to her, and she realized that all hope for her h ad gone, she broke down completely, freely confessed her guilt, and began her preparations for the ordeal of the fatal day, then but one month distant.

“Following the English custom, the execution of criminals in public was then, as it had been from the beginning, the practice in this State. It was not until the passage of the Act of April 10, 1834, that executions were required to be conducted within the prison enclosures, the number of officials to be in attendance thereat limited, and the presence of minors excluded. At almost every county seat there was anciently a “Gallows Hill”. This, at Reading, was the tract upon the county grounds at the foot of Mount Penn, now included within the territory acquired by the city and occupied as a public park. A portion of it, comprising between fifty and sixty acres, was purchased by the county from the Penns in the year 1800, at the instance of the Commissioners, for the especial purpose, the reason assigned for acquiring the additional ground being that the concourse of spectators at public executions was usually so great that the property of private individuals was necessarily trespassed upon.

“Here, during the Colonial period, numerous malefactors were sent to their final account, and here also, subsequent to Independence there were hanged, in October, 1792, a negro, Samuel Pope, otherwise Samuel Peeves, for rape; in January, 1798, Benjamin Bailey, for the murder of a peddler on the Broad Mountain, within the then limits of Berks County; in June, 1809, the girl Susanna Cox, and in January, 1813, John Schildt, the parricide and demoniac. Public executions were deemed great popular object lessons in law and morals, and were commonly attended with religious exercises, including, in some instances, addresses to the multitude by the reverend clergy.

“But experience proved the benefits of such occasions to be a more than doubtful sequence. Murders continued to be as freely committed as before, and the scenes attending hangings were frequently degrading and disgraceful. The presence of the military was always required to prevent outbreak or possible rescue. Had the execution of criminals continued much longer to be thus conducted, it is extremely probable that capital punishment in this State would long since have been abolished. A change in public sentiment in this regard, as evidenced by repeated remonstrance’s to the Legislature, brought about the passage of the Act of 1834.

“The fact that the girl Susanna Cox must so shortly die for the offence which she had now freely confessed, rendered her an object not only of renewed public sympathy, but of great public curiosity as well. Large numbers of people were admitted to the jail where she was, and talked with entire freedom to her upon her unfortunate situation. This jail was the old two-story stone building, still standing, at the corner of Fifth and Washington streets, erected in 1770, a quaint surviving specimen of the rude prisons of Colonial times. The Sheriff with his family resided within it, occupying a considerable portion of its available space. Its limited accommodations were frequently over-taxed; no adequate provision existed for the complete separation of the sexes, and communication with the prisoners from the outside was no very difficult matter. In the beginning of the century, as it is said, a license to sell liquors in the public part of the building had actually been granted to the son of a former Sheriff.

“Insolvent debtors, many of them of a highly respectable class, were brought into close contact with the lowest and most dissolute characters. At that period jails were regarded as houses of detention merely, rather than as reformatory institutions, prison discipline was necessarily lax, and the utmost vigilance of even a well-disposed Sheriff could not prevent many of the evils which gave to them the character of nurseries of vice rather than schools of virtue.

“During her incarceration the youthful prisoner was treated with the utmost leniency, assisted in the Sheriff’s family and was a guest at his table. Her behavior was childlike, gentle and decorous. In the last month of her life she had many tender ministrants to both her temporal and spiritual needs. The Rev. Philip Reinhold Pauli, the venerable pastor of the Reformed Church of Reading, who visited her frequently as her spiritual adviser and comforter, found her extremely penitent, and submissive in an extraordinary degree to her impending fate. Upon the day before her execution he administered to her in the presence of the Sheriff’s family the Holy Communion, and prayed long and earnestly with her for her soul’s salvation. At the same time there was completed for her by friendly female hands the white dress, trimmed with wide black ribbons, in which she was to walk forth to her doom, and which was to be her garment in death as well.

“The tenth of June was clear but oppressively warm. The town was crowded, and the public excitement, though subdued, intense. The two weekly newspapers of that date, the German Adler and the English Advertiser, give but meager accounts of its memorable incidents. The contents of country newspapers of the period were made up largely of advertisements. In their news departments the principal subjects of attention were foreign affairs, particularly wars and rumors of wars among the European powers. Local happenings in a town of between three and four thousand inhabitants were presumed to be known to all, and the journalistic allusions to them were brief and paragraphic, merely.

“On the eighteenth of May previous, Sheriff Marx had issued the proclamation customary on such occasions, notifying the justices of the peace, the coroner, constables and all other civil officers within the county of Berks, ‘that they and every of them be in the Borough of Reading on Saturday, the tenth day of June next, at nine o’clock in the morning of the said day, then and there to assist the Sheriff of the county aforesaid in keeping the peace and good order at the execution of a certain Susanna Cox, now confined in the common jail of said county, who is to be executed on said day at the usual place of execution concluding with the well-worn formula of: ‘God Save the Commonwealth!’

“The public in general needed no formal invitation. Says the Advertiser issued on the morning of the tenth: “This day the execution of Susanna Cox takes place. Eleven o’clock is appointed to start from the gaol for the Commons. Report says that from ten to fifteen thousand people are expected; some coming from fifty miles distance.” Again, in its issue of the seventeenth, it was stated that, “Never did Reading behold so numerous a collection of people. The taverns were all crowded the preceding evening, and all night wagons loaded with people from the country were passing through the streets, some coming upwards of seventy miles to see this truly unfortunate girl terminating her worldly existence. The number of spectators on the ground upon the hill exceeded twenty thousand.” “The arrivals,” said the Adler, “were by wagons, on horseback and on foot, and continued in constantly increasing proportions throughout the night and down to the moment of the execution. The weather was extremely hot, and owing to the crowd many of the people were in danger of suffocation.”

” ‘At a little after eleven o’clock,’ states the Advertiser, in quaintly describing the final scene, ‘the mournful procession moved from the gaol (jail). The unfortunate girl, with a wonderful serenity, intermixed with a smile on her countenance, walked straight up to the awful place of execution on the Commons, at the foot of the hill, supported and comforted by two reverend ministers, kneeled down as soon as she arrived, and committed her last fervent prayer to an Almighty God and Redeemer, to whom she had during her confinement (after the death warrant being read to her) most earnestly supplicated for mercy and forgiveness of sins and transgression with whom she had made her peace, and from whom she was assured she had received the comfort of His mercy and grace. She shortly after ascended the scaffold, willingly surrendering a body of sins for the satisfaction of the offended laws of the country, when she was launched into eternity without a struggle! The greatest decency was upheld during the whole awful scene, and tears of sympathy were seen flowing spontaneously from the almost numberless crowd of spectators.’

” ‘It was indeed,’ concludes the account, ‘a day of sorrow.’ It might in truth have been added that it was the saddest day that Reading had ever seen. Viewed through the mists of more than ninety years, the bosom heaves and the eye moistens as imagination pictures the incidents of that summer’s morning of expiation as they have been described by many eye-witnesses, all now long since passed away.

“A troop of infantry under Captain Lutz headed the procession, marching to the funeral notes of fife and drum, the church bells the meanwhile tolling, next followed the officials, the wagon containing the coffin, and immediately behind it the central figure in the afflicting drama, toward whom all eyes were strained, leaning upon the arm of her aged spiritual attendant, the Reverend Mr. Pauli. As the ruddy, black-eyed, black-haired young woman walked resolutely up Penn Street, followed by the closely pressing throng, many heartfelt farewells and benedictions were addressed to her by the deeply affected spectators. The multitude now saw in her not the self-confessed criminal, wearing upon her breast the scarlet letter of her own infamy, but the transformed penitent, about to ascend to the arms of her Maker and Redeemer. Whence the smile that illumined her features? Was it because she already felt the burden lifted, and had she indeed a veiled assurance of the peace that was to come?

“Once, only, there was a halt for a few moments while a cup of water was procured from a pump along the highway to slake her burning thirst. Arrived at length at the place of execution, the procession entered the hollow square in which the military had been arranged about the scaffold. Pressing solidly up to the ranks, and at a great distance beyond, was a compact mass of humanity, men, women, youths, and even little children clinging closely to the garments of their elders.

“An earnest prayer was offered by the Reverend Mr. Pauli, after which there was sung an old German hymn of the Seventeenth Century, which had been committed to memory by the girl while in prison – a composition of penitence and resignation, the initial verse of which was:

I, wretched creature, sinner poor,
Stand here before thy sight
Oh God! show mercy in this hour,
Judge not with vengeful might.
Take pity Lord, thou pitying God,
Upon my desperate plight

“The simple but painfully impressive service closed, the white-robed supplicant, with bowed head, calm and composed throughout, undismayed, apparently, in the presence of the King of Terrors. The wagon containing the coffin stood directly underneath the rude instrument of death, two tall, upright pieces, with a crossbeam from which the fatal rope depended. The girl, when bidden, resolutely ascended the vehicle and stood upon the coffin, which had been placed across as a sort of platform. The unknown hireling in mask who performed the office of executioner now covered the head of the condemned and adjusted the noose about her neck. At a signal the wagon was driven from below, and there hung the girl in her death agonies before the gaze of the awestricken multitude in her hand a white handkerchief tightly clutched A simultaneous cry of horror at the awful spectacle arose throughout the overwrought throng. It was dreadful to see; it is distressing to relate!

“Some have asserted that the hangman completed his function with an act of brutality by jerking the ankles of the victim to hasten her death. Others said – and this appears the more probable – that he merely stooped to adjust her low shoes which were likely to fall off her feet in the struggle. Be this as it may, he was marked for vengeance, and subsequently, while proceeding from the scene of his invidious duty, was set upon at the corner of Penn and Sixth (then Prince) streets, by one of the town fighters of the day, Andrew McCoy by name, and beaten unmercifully, his silver hire money rolling from his pockets into the highway. Recovering himself as best he could, he made a hasty retreat across the river, away from the town and its excited populace forever.

“After being suspended for seventeen minutes, the now inanimate form was lowered, and having been submitted to a bleeding at the hands of the physicians present, to assure the fact of death, was placed in the coffin and delivered to the relatives. Susanna had a sister Barbara, married to one Peter Katzenmoyer, who lived in the suburb of Hampden. To his house the body was conveyed, and upon the night of the following day buried in an open field upon his land, a heap of stones being piled above the turf to conceal the location.

“For successive days and nights the lonely grave was watched to prevent the remains from finding their way to a dissecting table a disposition which the poor girl had, while in prison, especially requested her relatives to guard against. The spot is indicated as upon the sloping ground, several hundred yards to the westward of the present Hampden reservoir, and near where Thirteenth and Marion streets, when opened, will join.

“A small pamphlet, printed in English and German, entitled: “The Last Words and Dying Confession of Susanna Cox,” issued by the newspapers of Reading, was offered for sale to the public immediately after the execution. The Confession was prepared for the condemned girl, and signed with her mark in the presence of Peter Nagle and Sheriff Marx on the eighth of June, 1809, two days previously. Copies of it are now very rare, but its contents are meager and devoid of special interest. After reciting a few facts regarding her life and crime, it proceeds to express her gratitude to the Sheriff, to the gaoler, Daniel Kerper, the clergy and to all who had rendered her kind offices while in prison, and closes with sentiments of penitence, and an admonition to all, especially the young, to take warning by her example. A “Traveler Lied,” or Sorrow Song, in the German, by some now unknown author, containing thirty-two verses of the doggerel description, reciting the whole mournful story, was published simultaneously with the Confession, and proved so popular that copies of it continued to be reprinted and sold to within a very recent period. It has been memorized and sung by hundreds who have wept over the fate of the subject of the verses, is still preserved in many households, and is to be found in some instances pressed between the leaves of the family Bible.

“Within a little more than a month after the execution of the unfortunate girl whom it had fallen to his sad duty to condemn, Judge Spayd, deeply moved by the event, resigned his office and returned to the practice of the law. The melancholy tragedy made a profound and lasting impression upon all who knew or heard of it, and its traditions, interwoven with some fictitious details, have been transmitted through the successive generations to the present The criminal annals of the State present few narratives of more pathetic interest That the obscure girl was greater in her death, so far as fame is concerned, than if her life, though of the longest, had been devoted to the practice of virtue, is a true, though perhaps grotesque commentary upon her history.

“The docket of the court of Oyer and Terminer of Berks County for the April Term of 1809, contains, in the case of “Respublica versus Susanna Cox,” but the usual brief and formal entries of the charge, the arraignment, the plea, the names of the jury, the verdict and the sentence. Such records are not in their tenor suggestive of appeals to the sympathies or the imagination. But appended to the terse official memoranda in this case is found the following note, in parentheses, in the hand-writing of Mr. Franks, the counsel for the prosecution:

” ‘On the 10th June A.D. 1809, the prisoner was executed, previous to which she confessed the murder and died penitent, Peace to her soul!’

“After the lapse of ninety years (this was written in 1900), let us echo the sentiment of the kindly lawyer of a bygone time, and reverently respond:

“To her soul be peace!”

This article originates from a paper read before the Historical Society of Berks County, Pa.
March 13, 1900
By Louis Richards, Esq.

Historical Society of Berks County
940 Centre Avenue
Reading, Pennsylvania 19601
Phone 610 375-4375 Fax 610 375-4376

Susanna Cox was the last woman to be hanged in Pennsylvania. The Reading Eagle, 200 years afterward, gave the following postscript to Susanna Cox:

Susanna was a domestic servant for a farming family in Limekiln, a village at the border of Oley and Exeter townships.

As the story goes, Susanna was seduced by a neighbor and became pregnant. She concealed the pregnancy from the family she served.

On a cold February day, Susanna gave birth to a baby boy. A few days later, a farmer discovered the child’s body in a small stone cabin on the property.

Susanna claimed the child was stillborn, but a doctor determined the baby had been murdered. Susanna was found guilty after a brief jury trial, and Gov. Simon Snyder signed her death warrant – a death by public hanging.

Once she realized there was no chance for clemency, Susanna confessed her guilt. Those who visited her commented on her gentle demeanor, according to Louis Richards, an attorney who wrote about the Cox case in 1900 (see above writeup).

The young woman pleaded for mercy to God in a note written two days before her execution. The note was read to the crowd moments before Susanna was executed.

The sentence was carried out with Susanna standing on a coffin pulled by a wagon. A noose was placed around her neck. Then a hooded hangman gave the signal and the wagon was pulled away.

Richards described the scene: “A simultaneous cry of horror at the awful spectacle arose throughout the overwrought throng. It was dreadful to see; it was distressing to relate.”

The story of Susanna Cox is perhaps one of the grimmest tales in Berks County’s history.

For years, her story has been re-enacted at the Kutztown, PA Folk Festival. And in 1994, a production company tried to make a movie about her life.

Local actor Conrad Karlson played a supporting role in the independent film, which was shot locally but never made the theaters because of a lack of money.

“It’s a shame,” said Karlson, who lives in Spring Township. “It was a powerful film.”

It’s hard to imagine that City Park (Reading), now an oasis of green in this concrete and asphalt city, once held gallows. There’s no marker noting its history, but a small corner was known as Gallows Hill.

Take a walk sometime around City Park. Try to image the scene: gallows, a crowd pressed tight, and a young woman bravely facing her fate.

THE ABOVE STORY…..ABOUT THE INFAMOUS SUSANNAH COX…… IS A SAGA FROM THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF THE LINCOLNS AND BOONES. IT HAPPENED LESS THAN ONE MILE FROM THE HOME OF THE GABRIEL-JONES ELOPEMENT, WHICH CAME EIGHT YEARS LATER. IT IS VIRTUALLY CERTAIN NOT ONLY THAT OUR TWO-GREAT GRANDMOTHER, AGE 13, KNEW ABOUT THE MURDER CASE BUT MOST LIKELY SHE WAS IN THE CROWD OF 50,000 THAT DAY IN READING’S CITY PARK.

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Reference was made above to the Exeter Friends Meetinghouse, at 191 Meetinghouse Road, Exeter Township. The 18th century church was damaged extensively by fire Sunday, March 20, 2011. The fire destroyed part of the roof and ceiling. Two days later, the roof was patched over as a temporary repair to allow continued Quaker meetings there.

The Exeter building sits on a prominent rise of ground in the Oley Valley. It is constructed of grayish fieldstone and is trimmed with white-painted woodwork. Mortar plastering was used between the stones. The building is described as of simple design, exemplary of the habits of the sect who built it, people whose religious beliefs forbade anything worldly or ornate.

The fire broke out at 11:05 a.m. during the regular Sunday service. The cause was described as a stove used to heat the church. When firemen arrived, they were met with “heavy fire coming through the roof of the building,” said Exeter Township Fire Department Chief Robert Jordan.

Firefighters were able to control the fire within a half hour, but within that time, considerable damage was caused to the ceiling and roof. Church services were concluding when the fire started. Everyone made it out safely; no injuries.

Chief Jordan said preliminary findings showed the fire was accidental, centering around a cast-iron pot belly stove used to heat the church. The Exeter Township Fire Department was assisted by Amity Fire & Rescue; Monarch; Friendship Hook & Ladder; Earl Township Volunteer; Oley; Liberty of New Berlinville; and Keystone Fire.

Two photographs in the Pottstown Mercury newspaper the next day showed church members saving church pews and seated on two of the undamaged pews.

The monthly meetings are the basic Quaker “congregation” in which membership is vested and which decisions on who may own property are made, marriages are approved and other Quaker business is transacted.

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How Many Relatives Do You Have ??

1 YOU
2 parents
4 grandparents
8 great grandparents
16 gg grandparents
32 ggg grandparents
64 gggg grandparents
128 ggggg grandparents
256 gggggg grandparents
512 ggggggg grandparents
1,024 gggggggg grandparents
2,048 ggggggggg grandparents
4,096 gggggggggg grandparents
8,192 ggggggggggg grandparents
16,184 gggggggggggg grandparents
32,768 ggggggggggggg grandparents
65,536 gggggggggggggg grandparents
131,07 ggggggggggggggg grandparents
262,144 gggggggggggggggg grandparents
524,288 ggggggggggggggggg grandparents
1,048,576 gggggggggggggggggg grandparents
2,097,152 ggggggggggggggggggg grandparents

the above represents 22 generations
perhaps seven centuries

In the research of the Lincoln and Boone families, it was discovered that people in Berks County, Pennsylvania, even those related to genealogy, were unfamiliar with Boonecroft. These same people rather decried the fact that it was their conclusion that “the world is litte acquainted with the fact” that it was in Eastern Pennsylvania that early branches of the Lincolns and the Boones lived and died and that they were so intimately associated in the area.

Many families have reunions, many every year. One year, the entire township of Amity decided to hold a celebration over a three-day period in September. Amity was the oldest settlement in Berks County. The reunion came 250 years after the first settlement by the Swedes.

The first settlements in Berks County were made in Amity by the Swedes along the eastern bank of the Schuykill River in what today is Douglassville. It was in 1701 that Andrew Rudman, a clerk, on behalf of himself and fellow Swedes, applied to William Penn (yes, THAT William Penn) for the privilege of taking up to 10,000 acres in this area nearest the Manatawny Creek. (Years before that, many Swedes already were located there.)

For example, in 1683, Swedes from an area southeast of the Douglassville of today, wrote to their friends abroad: “We live in great Amity with the Indians, who have not done us any harm for many years.” It was from this well-circulated circumstance that the land farther north subsequently was named Amity.

About six miles southeast of Reading, you will find, today, the picturesque building constructed in 1725 by Mordecai Lincoln, Jr., our five-great-grandfather, the two-great-grandfather of President Lincoln. Several of his ancestors were born in this home. Less than two miles away is the home of Daniel Boone, now shown to the public as the Daniel Boone Homestead.

Not far away lived the Hanks family from whom President Lincoln’s mother was descended.

After living in this area for many years, these various families said goodbye to their relatives hereabouts and started in a body through the wilderness for unknown regions. They spent time in other states for many years, but their collective destinies finally led them to Kentucky, where Thomas Lincoln married Nancy Hanks. In February, 1807, their first daughter, Sarah, was born in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. Sarah was a common name in the Lincoln generations of families. When she was 18 months old, Thomas moved the family 12 miles away to Hodgens’ Mill, or Hodgenville, as it is now called.

By the fall of 1808, he moved the family from a rented home in Hodgenville to a small farm 2 1/2 miles south of Hodgenville, complete with small cabin. That’s where the future President was born February 12, 1809, even though a half-dozen other locations in Kentucky claim Abe was born in their town.

Childbirth for the pioneer man as well as the pioneer woman was an anxious event. In her book of nearly 100 years ago, Ida M. Tarbell, wrote: “There were few doctors. The woman must depend on what the French call ‘the wise woman’. In this country, she is called ‘the midwife’. Usually, the wise woman was not called until the last moment. Thus, here was Thomas Lincoln one morning hurrying down the road, and meeting one of his neighbors, Abraham Enlow.”

Enlow told Thomas to return to his wife; he (Abraham Enlow) would summon the wise woman. And subsequently, Abe was born.

Years later, Abraham Enlow told people the President was named after him because of his neighborliness in the Lincolns’ hour of need. Not so. President Lincoln was named after his grandfather. There is no question about that. It is too bizarre for noting here, as this blog already admittedly has reached “tome” standing, but we will just mention that Abraham Enlow, in the 1860′s, became object of undeserved scandal as part of a political campaign, apparently. He was charged with being Abe’s real father, maybe stemming from the fact that he summoned the midwife!

Back in eastern Pennsylvania, we are told that there are many records in the Berks County Courthouse telling of the achievements of the pioneer Lincolns and Boones. In addition, the Exeter Meetinghouse, where several generations of the early members of these families worshipped and where they are buried is a silent reminder of the fame achieved in other parts of the nation by those who came after them, the many who migrated to the then-sparsely-settled west. The records at the Exeter Meetinghouse are full of information pertaining to the pioneers. As a house of worship, it once was practically abandoned. Now, a sign outside the building (extensively damaged in the March, 2011, fire), states as follows:

EXETER FRIENDS MEETING

“Established 1725 as Oley, name changed to Exeter, 1747. Present stone meeting house built 1759 near site of two previous log structures. Buried here are members of the Boone, Ellis, Hughes, Lee and Lincoln families. Meetings discontinued 1899; building reopened for worship in 1949.”

In 1699, William Penn granted 6,000 acres of land in Pennsylvania to the London Company, controlled by Tobias Collet, Daniel Quair and Henry Goldney.

The settlers who first made their homes in Exeter arrived in 1718. In 1741 the township was organized. It was named after a district in England from where the first settlers came. Collet, Quair and Goldney took up a tract of 1,000 acres on the east side of the Schuylkill River. Another 1,000 acres was granted to Andrew Robeson, which later came into the possession of Mordecai Lincoln, Jr., the great-great-grandfather of President Lincoln. The Lincoln Home is still there, sometimes called the “best-kept secret” in Berks County. The home is on the south side of Lincoln Road, 1.2 miles from U-S 422 at Birdsboro. The Lincoln Homestead is less than two miles southwest of the Daniel Boone Homestead. Ironically, the Lincoln homestead is in private hands today, never a tourist site, and the Daniel Boone Homestead is a public location, even though, as noted above, it doesn’t like snowstorms. Mordecai died when Daniel was about two years old.

Exeter Township, like Amity Township, was considered a part of Pine Forge Region. Both the Lincolns and the Boones managed and worked in the iron industry.

Daniel’s parents were hard-working Quakers. Their homestead consisted of a small farm, a blacksmith shop and a weaving establishment on what was known as the Thomas Rutter country estate….land that is now the Pine Forge Academy campus. This is along the Manatawny River, east of the Lincoln-Boone homes, east of Boonecroft, the only self-sufficient community between Philadelphia’s Germantown and Reading. Later, his father, Squire Boone, bought land close by, where Daniel lived from the age of 10 until his parents moved southward. If he were asked where he and his family lived, Daniel would say: “In Pine Forge Region.”

Little known is the fact that the Boone family’s first homestead was in Pine Forge village when George Boone and his family moved from Philadelphia to assist Thomas Rutter is his iron forge industry. It was later that Daniel’s uncle and grandfather moved from Pine Forge and built homesteads in Amity Township. Ironically, even after they moved, their new homestead was considered part of the Pine Forge region.

Daniel Boone attended the Sabbath School in Pine Forge (what usually is referred to today as Sunday School) as a child. The Sabbath School was the site of the first Sabbath school in North America, established as a religious and social fellowship for children and teenagers of the Pine Forge area.

Legend has it that Daniel fell in love with a black girl, a servant whose parents worked in the Pine Manor House. More about this below, but first a bit of background on the changing religion of Daniel Boone. The Pine Manor House was a “meetinghouse” for the Sabbatarian fellowship. These were believers in the “near-advent” and included the so-called Rutterites who accepted “Rutterism”, the fellowship of Sabbathkeepers.

Thomas Rutter had held Sabbath schools with the Seventh Day Baptist churches that he had organized in the Philadelphia area. The Pine Forge Academy of today is described on its website as follows: Pine Forge Academy is a co-educational Seventh-day Adventist school that serves grades 9 through 12. The campus is located in Berks County, Pennsylvania, on 575- acres of rolling hills and dales, intercepted by the winding, picturesque Manatawny Creek. Pine Forge Academy is caretaker of historically significant land, which goes back to Colonial America in the early 1700’s, when William Penn deeded it as a gift to abolitionist Thomas Rutter.

A writeup from a library offering in Pottstown in January, 2011, reported the legend of Daniel Boone and his love for the “colored maiden” Esdmonia.

As you know, the Boones were strict Quakers. At the same time, they could live with his coziness with the Sabbath school’s young people, but his infatuation over this servant maiden was a different story. The family decided that for the good of all concerned, moving away from the region was in their best interest. The decision likely was made in part because Daniel became the subject of racial slurs as a youth such as “Daniel Boone met a coon….and in these parts….will not be seen….soon.”

Little has been made of the fact, even by those who live there today, that this region is one of America’s most historic. Some of the area’s residents have been impressed with legendary tales of historic sites in New England and elsewhere. They’ve journeyed to those places where pioneers left their footprints —– scenes, sites, sounds and sights of places of interest in our early history. They did not realize that what they were looking for lay at home right at their front door.

Writers of the past century in this area of eastern Pennsylvania say that the Pine Forge region really is the gateway to historic America. They point out that Daniel Boone’s wanderings in the wilderness outstripped those of the venerated Moses by more than 20 years. Boone died at age 86, but as Moses was in search of the promised land, Daniel never found what he had been searching for all of his life. He had nurtured a day-to-day belief that “there must be greener grass just beyond the next hill”. Fortunately, for Daniel, many times….there was.

In the historic writings about him, there has been the broad assumption that Daniel was born into a wilderness in which life hung by a constant thread, a dark and dangerous forest where savages scalped white men whenever they met. Although this existed in the western part of Pennsylvania, the Pine Forge area was becoming relatively safe and comfortable. Just as it is now, Oley was a land of beautiful hills and valleys.

The clearings were filled with churches. Perhaps no area of outstate Pennsylvania had a great number, nor were their people more peace-loving. To the south and east, the Swedes had built the first church, Morlatton, at Douglassville, the location of the marriage of Abraham Lincoln, great-great-uncle of President Lincoln, and Anne Boone who lived at Boonecroft.

As early as 1705, the Quaker missionary Thomas Chalkley was going by horse and without gun to preach to the Indians at Conestoga. It was a region where people made greater use of the Bible than the rifle.

The Reverend John Caspar Stoever had ridden through the area on horseback, setting up a church at every crossroads.

By 1737, the Oley Monthly Meeting was established in a second log cabin on the original meeting house tract. Soon, across the road, came the cemetery. As evidence that the area was fast becoming populated, take a look at that cemetery today. All of the original ground space within the enclosing walls was filled by 1818. Then, half that area within the walls was covered with additional earth and a second layer of graves was started on top of the first. There are at least 200 graves within this second tier of earth.

It has been explained over the years since Colonial days that the most understandable reason for Exeter’s (see references above) decline was its repeated disowning of its members for marriage “outside the Quaker community”. The Boones were frequent repeaters, the last being Squire Boone, Daniel’s father, for refusing in 1750 to publicly condemn one of his sons for marrying out of meeting.