A Plea for the Study of Genealogy. An Address Delivered Before the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, April 26, 1897.

PUBLICATIONS OF THE GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA. VOL. I. JULY, 1897. No. 3. A PLEA FOR THE STUDY OF GENEALOGY. AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA, APRIL 26th, 1897. By FREDERICK D. STONE, Luz D. I CONGRATULATE you, Mr. President and members of the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, upon the prosperity of your Society, as shown in your last Annual Report. Your finances are in excellent condition, the work you have done and that which you propose to do are well chosen, and your affairs are in the hands of an Executive Committee whose zeal and efficiency are attested by what has been accomplished. From my position as Librarian of the Historical Society, in whose keeping the results of your labors are deposited, I am probably better able to judge of the value of the work in which you are engaged than many of your own members; and I gladly avail myself of this opportunity to testify to the usefulness of that work and to the great satisfaction it affords, not only to the members of our Society, but to visitors to our city, who are ignorant of the source from which the advantages they enjoy are derived. n,•R (107) 108 A Plea for the Study of Genealogy. For the Genealogical Society, like the Historical Society, places the treasures it has gathered from a hundred sources freely before the public, contenting itself with the Christian maxim that it is more blessed to give than to receive. That public spirit of this character should not receive a more substantial recognition in a generous support, and that its burdens should rest on less than two hundred members, is much to be regretted. As the usefulness of your labors becomes more widely known, I earnestly hope that your membership may be increased, and, with it, your income, until you shall be able to gather from every quarter of the State copies of whatever material exists shedding light upon the families and descendants of those who have settled the various parts of our Commonwealth. Nor is it desirable that your labors should be confined to this side of the Atlantic. In England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, in Sweden, Germany and Holland, material exists relating to the families who emigrated to Pennsylvania. Through the generosity of the President of the Historical Society, several volumes of such material have been copied in Sweden, and transcripts deposited upon our shelves. The Historical Society secured, through the late J. G. de Hoop Sheffer, of Amsterdam, copies of many valuable papers relating to the German families who emigrated to Pennsylvania, and additional material will be found in the Papers of the Lords of Plantations and Trade, transcripts of which are now being made for the Historical Society. If similar work were done in the various quarters of Great Britain, in which numbers of our ancestors had their homes, the result could not fail to be instructive. The printed records we receive from England, as a rule, stop at too early a period to afford satisfactory results to American investigators, and transcripts of parish registers of a more modern period are needed to supply the missing links. But before you enter into this wide field, the work of which can be conducted only at considerable expense, or before you extend your labors beyond the neighborhood of our city, I would suggest the copying of the records of all churches A Plea for the Study of Genealogy. 109 established here prior to the year 1800, bringing the copy down so as to cover the first quarter of the present century. Your work in city records should then be supplemented with an alphabetical list of the deaths and marriages published in the Philadelphia newspapers to 1850. It may seem to you that this last undertaking is a formidable one, but I do not think you would find it so ; the custom of publishing deaths and marriages in the papers was not general until after 1815. Besides, the work would be mechanical, and could be performed by a person whom you could employ at from $300 to $400 a year. You will see, when this is done, that the chief sources of information of a genealogical character relating to Philadelphia will be made available. The Meeting Records, the Indices of Wills and Administrations, and Church Records owned by the Historical Society ; the lists of marriages in Philadelphia congregations, and the list of marriage licenses issued prior to 1790, printed by the State; Mr. Hildeburn's list of obituaries in the Philadelphia papers from 1728 to 1791, and your own valuable and extensive Church Records and abstracts of Wills from 1682, together with the index of deaths and marriages from the papers that I have suggested, will pretty well cover the field from 1682 to 1850. You must pardon these suggestions and accept them as a manifestation of the interest I take in your work. They are made because I believe the money spent in carrying them out would furnish more useful information than could be obtained by a like expenditure in any other direction. It would indeed exhaust the entire field of public records down to 1850, with the exception of those of the Orphans' Court ; and while it is very desirable that they should be examined, it is a character of work that would require experience and judgment that could be commanded only at considerable expense, and it is probable that the money could be spent more advantageously at present. But I must turn to another subject, as I feel that I am trespassing on the field allotted to your Executive Committee. I hope, however, some such scheme as I have sug- 110 A Plea for the Study of Genealogy. gested may be carried out, as I believe that it will redound to the credit of both the Historical and Genealogical Societies. Some are slow to recognize the close relation existing between genealogy and history. Such has never been the case with the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, if we are to judge from the way its affairs have been conducted. In 1825, when it was founded, only five out of the two thousand and more of American genealogies that now exist (I quote the number given in the lately published work of your member, Mr. Thomas Allen Glenn) had been published. It is evident from this that at that time no very general taste existed for genealogical investigations ; but the founders of the Society were not insensible to the interest that attaches to ancestral studies. Its first standing committee was "On the national origin, early difficulties and domestic habits of the first settlers." Another was to prepare biographies of the early settlers; and a third, biographical notices of persons of distinction among us in ancient or modern times. Not a bad beginning for a biographical society, or even for a genealogical society. It was, however, reserved for that great benefactor of the Society, the late John Jordan, Jr., to put into active force the thoughts that suggested the appointment of these committees. He it was who began the Society's collection of works relating to family and local histories, and all the expenses attending it were borne by him until the acquirement of the Jesse George legacy. In 1868, he commissioned a young man named Gilbert Cope, young in years but a veteran in genealogical work (for his name at that time appeared on the title-page of a family history), to make a copy of the births, marriages and deaths recorded in the books of the Friends' Meetings of Chester County ; and shortly afterwards he constituted William J. Buck a modern Herald, to make a visitation to the counties of Bucks and Montgomery, to take up his abode with the clerks of the Meetings of those counties, and obtain extracts from the records in their possession, similar A Plea for the Study of Genealogy. 111 in character to those secured by Mr. Cope in Chester County. Nearly all the other Friends' Meeting Records in our possession were obtained through Mr. Jordan's zeal. At one time I know his advances amounted to nearly two thousand dollars, only a portion of which was ever repaid. It was his intention to take up a subscription among the members of the Society to meet this expenditure, but his shrinking disposition prevented him from asking any but a few intimate friends to contribute; and with the exception of one generous subscription from the late J. Gillingham Fell, used to pay in part for transcribing the Bucks County records, together with two smaller subscriptions, I do not think any were secured. A portion of the debt was repaid by the Society out of its annual income at different times, but the sum total was greatly reduced by Mr. Jordan's generosity, and had it not been for him the copies would not have been made. But I am wandering from my subject, and am talking more about what the Historical Society has done for genealogy than of its relationship to history. I feel, however, it is but right that, with your taste for genealogical research, you should know to whom you are indebted for what you found on our shelves when your Society was organized, and who it was that took the first steps to form a collection of genealogical works of reference in this city—a work you have taken upon your shoulders to continue. This statement seems to me the more opportune when I find I am now the only one sufficiently acquainted with the management of the Society for the last 'twenty-five years to make it; and it is but just that some acknowledgment should be made before your Society of the services of one who did so much to advance your favorite study, and whose modesty was such that he would not permit his left hand to know what his right hand did. In establishing your Society you did well, I think, in connecting it with the Historical Society, thus securing to those interested in genealogy a tinion of what the one 112 A Plea for the Study of Genealogy. society had already acquired with what you have since accomplished. "What we want," said Mr. Cope, in the introduction he prepared for the volume containing the Chester County Meeting Records, "is centralization, or the collection of scattered records at one point, convenient of access to all, and have them so classified and indexed that a person might find a name or a date as readily as a word in a dic tionary." Through your connection with the Historical Society you have done more towards carrying out this object than you would have been able to do by a separate organization, as it has relieved you of considerable expense and has enabled you to devote your entire income to the copying and arranging of records. Besides this, you have united two societies, the confines of whose labors will always occupy debatable ground ; for genealogy is, without doubt, an active handmaid of history, unravelling, as it has done, many a tangled skein of individuality, and separating persons of similar names whose records in history have been so confused as to require the knowledge of an expert to accord to each his proper place. The late Benson J. Lossing, while writing of Pennsylvania history, not being versed in the family history of our State, confused the Reverend Richard Peters, Secretary of the Penns, who subsequently took orders, and who is known to us as the Rev. Richard Peters, with his nephew, the Judge of the same name—failing to see that in so doing he was making the life of one individual extend over the period of one hundred and twenty-four years. The history of no country is complete that does not include a history of its people, of the religious organizations that commanded their allegiance, and of the waves of emigration that from time to time entered its borders. What study is there which sets all this so clearly before the historian as genealogy? He may collect elsewhere the material for some of his statements; but when he comes to the history of the people, it is the genealogist who points out to him the classes or races who settled the different sections of the country, and does so with an exactness that conveys an A Plea for the Study of Genealogy. 113 almost personal knowledge of the people who took part in the emigrations. Such a section of the country, he can say, was settled by such a class; there they purchased land, there their descendants remained ; on the records of the churches they established you will find the names of those who, influenced by their religious views, shaped the political destinies of the country. This, it may be said, is history, and not genealogy, and that to understand it, it is not necessary to know that John's father was Dick's son, or to give the exact relation of Dick to John,or the number of children with whom each was blessed. True; but who else than the conscientious genealogist, who will record nothing without authority, can marshal these facts before us ; and if there are students building better than they know, why should not the usefulness of their labors be recognized ? Until the publication of Mr. Keith's Provincial Councillors of Pennsylvania, who among us were aware, or, if aware of it, appreciated the fact from an historical point of view, how completely the Proprietary Government of Pennsylvania had become a family affair before it ceased to exist? How many of us knew that William Allen, who was made Chief Justice in 1750, and had laid the foundation of a large fortune by assisting the Penn family to pay the mortgage William Penn had been obliged to place on the Province when in financial difficulties, had married the daughter of Andrew Hamilton, the legal counsel of the Penns and Attorney-General of the Province? Through this marriage it came to pass that James Hamilton, the Deputy Governor from 1748 to 1749 and from 1754 to 1763, the son of Andrew, was the brother-in-law of the Chief Justice. Later, Ann, the daughter of William Allen, married John Penn, one of the Proprietors, who was also Deputy Governor from 1763 to 1771, and from 1773 to the Revolution; his brother Richard, (who married Mary Masters, the daughter of Mary Lawrence, whose brother John was the father-in-law of James Allen), serving in the interim from 1771 to 1773. William Allen, Jr., son of the Chief Justice, and brother- 114 A Plea for the Study of Genealogy. in-law of Governor Penn, became Attorney-General. Besides this, William Allen, Chief Justice, and the wife of Edward Shippen, of Lancaster, were first cousins ; and Edward Shippen, Jr., (Chief Justice after the Revolution) married the daughter of Tench Francis. Another daughter of Tench Francis married John Lawrence, and their daughter married James, the son of William Allen. Another daughter of Tench Francis married James Tilghman, Secretary of the Land Office, the brother of Edward, who married the sister of Benjamin Chew, who succeeded Tench Francis as Attorney-General and subsequently became Chief Justice. Tench Francis, Jr., the son of the Attorney-General, married the daughter of Charles Willing and Ann Shippen Willing, the latter the sister of Edward Shippen of Lancaster and mother of Thomas Willing, the eminent merchant, who as early as 1761 was one of the judges of the Supreme Court. In 1771, James Hamilton, Benjamin Chew, Lynford Lardner, James Tilghman, Andrew Allen (another son of the former Chief Justice) and Edward Shippen, Jr., were all members of the Governor's council, or, in other words, the large majority of his advisers on public measures were in some way connected with his family. With such relationships existing between the families I have named, is it any wonder that when Edward Shippen of Lancaster felt some doubt as to his being continued in the office of Prothonotary of the Lancaster Court, and wrote to Chief Justice Allen on the subject, the latter, after assuring him that the office was always considered a life appointment, should have added, "But in case the Proprietor should contemplate such a step, can you believe that your interest with the present Governor and his friends, your alliance with Mr. Francis and his family, to say no more, would not be sufficient to prevent anything of the sort being put into execution? Believe me, I think you are as safe from any danger of removal as I am from being dispossessed of the house in which I live." Knowing how deeply family influences entered into political affairs in Pennsylvania, I thought it probable that the A Plea for the &udy of Genealogy. 115 same condition of things must have existed in other colonies, and especially in New York, where the landed interest of some families was so great as to give them an especial prominence. Not feeling perfect confidence in my own opinion, however, I wrote to Mr. Edward Floyd De Lancey, one of the most competent authorities on everything relating to the Colonial history of his State. In reply, he says, "Family connections by blood had a great effect in New York Colonial politics from the end of the seventeenth century, through the eighteenth, down to the end of the Revolution. But, unlike the same thing in Pennsylvania, it was mixed with religion in this Province." From authorities pointed out by Mr. De Lan cey I gather that for years two parties contended for supremacy in New York ; the one headed by the De Lancey family, the other by the Livingstons. The former represented the Episcopal element, the latter the Presbyterian. In the ranks of the former were found the Philipses, Van Cortlandts, De Lanceys, Duanes, Crugers, Wattses, Waltons, Van Rensselaers, Beekmans, Bleeckers, Barclays, Joneses (of Long Island), Jays, Verplancks and Harrisons. The leader of this party for a number of years was the Hon. James De Lancey, Chief Justice in 1733, and Lieutenant-Governor from 1753 to 1755, and from 1757 to the time of his death in 1760. He, we know, was related to the Beekmans, the Wattses, the Verplancks, the Van Rensselaers, the Duanes and the Joneses. In the opposition to this party, headed by the Livingstons, we find the names of the Smiths, the Scotts and the Schuylers ; but the party does not appear to have been as closely united by blood and marriage as its opponents. However, there is sufficient to show that the same state of affairs existed in New York as in Pennsylvania, and I am confident that genealogists of Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina could show that the same influences were powerful in those States in Colonial days. He would certainly be a brave man who should undertake to write of the Livingstons of New York, of the Pinckneys of South Carolina, or of the Carrolls of Maryland, without consulting the genealogists of their respective States. 116 A Plea for the Study of Genealogy. Thackeray opens his lecture on George I. with the following passage: "A few years since I knew familiarly a lady who had been asked in marriage by Horace Walpole, who had been patted on the head by George I. This lady had knocked at Dr. Johnson's door; had been intimate with Fox, the beautiful Georgiana of Devonshire, and that brilliant Whig society of the reign of George III.; had known the Duchess of Queensberry, the patroness of Gay and Prior, the admired young beauty of the Court of Queen Anne. I often thought, as I took my kind old friend's hand, how with it I held on to the old society of wits and men of the world. I could travel back for seven score years of time— have glimpses of Brummel, Selwyn, Chesterfield and the men of pleasure ; of Walpole and Conway ; of Johnson, Reynolds, Goldsmith ; of North, Chatham, Newcastle ; of the fair maids of honor of George II.'s Court; of the German retainers of George I.'s, where Addison was Secretary of State, where Dick Steele held a place; whither the great Marlborough came with his fiery spouse, when Pope and Swift and Bolingbroke yet lived and wrote." While we may not have friends such as this, do we not all know persons whose lineage seems to connect them with the early history of our country so intimately that in their presence the past rises before us with a lifelike reality ? With some we seem to see the surrounding country as it was before the arrival of Penn, when a few scattered hamlets along the Delaware and Molatton, forty-five miles up the Schuylkill, represented all that there was of European origin in what is now the great State of Pennsylvania. By the side of others we stand on the deck of the Welcome as she beats her way up the Delaware, the country on either side hidden from view by the golden haze of an Indian summer, or, if seen, seen clothed in the gorgeous coloring ot an American autumn, while the air, as one of the passengers says, "smells as sweet as a garden new blown." Or, with the representatives of a later generation, we can fancy we hear Francis Rawle and James Logan discussing the question so pertinent to the colony, and which indeed A Plea for the Study of Genealogy. 117 has interested the citizens of Philadelphia from their day to ours : "The Ways and Means for the Inhabitants on Delaware to become Rich." Are there not persons whose names seem almost synonymous with those of Trenton and Brandywine, with Germantown and Stony Point, and with the Long Parliament that year after year gathered in Independence Hall and made its memories immortal ? I have a friend, the friend of many here—I need not name him—whose hand I never take but I think how much of the Colonial history of Pennsylvania his name represents. From the foundation of the Colony, in every walk of civil life, in military circles, in positions of trust and in high professional stations, the names of his ancestors appear; and worthily does he represent such an ancestry, for when the hour of his country's trial came, he ventured his life in her service, practising, under the hottest fire, unmindful of the danger with which he was surrounded, that healing art in which the name of Shippen had already become distinguished. Of late years history and genealogy have been brought more closely together than formerly through the establishment of hereditary and patriotic societies, which have not only stimulated an interest in the one, but have demanded an accuracy in the other which has eliminated from genealogy those loose statements that were so objectionable. To some these societies may seem incompatible with our republican principles; but it must be remembered that they represent services that resulted in the establishment of American institutions; and they have awakened an American spirit, a pride in our history, which has annihilated the Anglomania that a few years ago was so prevalent. I am confident that there is a healthier interest taken in American history at the present time than ever before, and that this is largely owing to the establishment of such societies as the Colonial Dames, the Sons and Daughters of the Revolution, and the Colonial Wars. The investigations necessary to establish a right to membership in them awakens an interest that generally continues long after the primary object is 118 A Plea for the Study of Genealogy. accomplished. There are women who visit our rooms today who are familiar, in a general way, with the construction of the Colonial governments, and who will discourse learnedly regarding the members of the Governor's Council, of the General Court, or of the duties of a Forester, and can tell you in what colonies such an officer was appointed. They are familiar with all the important events of our history, and if there is any truth in the accepted theory regarding the lasting qualities of lessons learned at a mother's knee (and who can doubt it?), will not this interest in American history continue? I do not think there is the least probability that the influence exercised by these societies will be ephemeral. The offering of prizes for historical essays, the conducting of series of historical lectures, the marking of spots of historical interest with memorial tablets, will preserve it ; while the genealogical and historical investigations which those who would join the societies have to make, will continue to infuse new life into them. It is true that these investigations have proved very disastrous to family traditions, as the truth of the statements made in applications for membership has to be subscribed to under oath or affirmation. I think this rule has reduced the aids to Washington by about seventy-five per cent., and the generals of the Revolution about fifty per cent., while many a man who, tradition claimed, was the trusted friend of Washington, on whom he leaned for support in the darkest hour of the Revolution, has been relegated to the ranks; and the Journals of Congress have been found to be perfectly correct regarding the number of generals commissioned. Useful as genealogy has proved in history, it is much more so in countries where the right of primogeniture and the law of entail are still in force. Indeed, one of the duties of the Herald's College is "to give professional advice and assistance in tracing pedigrees and the descent of properties and titles;" and as our own country increases and grows older, it is highly probable that the professional genealogist will be called to aid the lawyer. A Plea for the Study of Genealogy. 119 It was only a few years ago that every historical society in the neighborhood was asked to employ persons to search newspapers and church records of a certain period to find -evidence of the marriage of Colonel Richard Maitland, fourth son of the sixth Earl of Lauderdale in the peerage of Scotland, to Mary McAdam of New York. Richard Maitland was born in 1724 and died in 1772. He entered the British army in 1764, and was twice appointed AdjutantGeneral of the British forces in America. At the time of his death the evidence of his marriage either was wanting, or possibly, from the fact that he was a younger son, was not of importance. In the course of time, however, by the extinction of the elder branch of the family, the estates became vested in his representatives, and they were finally awarded to his descendant, Frederick Henry Maitland, who, through investigations made on this side of the Atlantic only a few years ago, proved that Colonel Maitland was his ancestor, and that he had been married on his deathbed, July 11, 1772, to Mary McAdam, making the children that had been born to them his legal descendants. I think, however, that the facts called forth by the distribution of the balance of the estate of Colonel James Moore afford the best illustration I have met with of how genealogical methods enter into the practice of the law. You who are members of the Bar are familiar with this case; but, for the benefit of those who are not, I will repeat to you its chief features, gathered from the history of the case, written by G. Heide Norris, Esq., one of the counsel. In the year 1800, James Moore, of Philadelphia, who had been a colonel in the Revolution, made an assignment of all his property for the benefit of his creditors, and removed to Virginia. He never returned to live in Philadelphia, and only visited it occasionally. After his debts were paid, a balance of $1327.23 was, in 1821, by order of Court, paid into the hands of a receiver, to be held for the benefit of those entitled to it under the deed of assignment. In 1891, this balance, having been invested and reinvested, amounted to over $18,000, and an attempt was made to escheat it to 120 A Plea for the Study of Genealogy. the State. Upon this, two sets of claimants appeared ; one representing his collateral heirs in Philadelphia, the other claiming to be his direct heirs in Maryland. The latter, in support of their case, submitted, among other things, a family Bible, containing a lineage of a James Moore, with his signature on the title-page. The Philadelphia claimants showed that their collateral ancestor had been a colonel in the Revolution, and a member of the State Society of the Cincinnati of Pennsylvania, and, by a sketch of Col. Moore written as early as 1805, that in 1784 he was at Wyoming with troops sent there to suppress the difficulties between the Connecticut and Pennsylvania settlers. From the fact that the Philadelphia claimants did not submit, in support of their claim, the signature of Col. Moore attached to the list of members of the Cincinnati, Mr. Norris, who represented the Maryland claimants, concluded that it was not the same as the signature attached to the deed of assignment; and to prove this, which, if true, would upset the claim of the collateral heirs, he at once set himself to work to discover an autograph of Colonel James Moore of the Revolution. In this he was successful, but it proved exactly what he did not wish it to prove, namely, that Colonel Moore of the Revolution and James Moore the assignee were one and the same. In other words, he had won the case for his opponents, and the money was ordered to be distributed among the collateral heirs. The case having attracted some attention, Mr. Norris gave the facts to a reporter, and the next day an article appeared in The Press, headed "Won by a 1784 Signature." About six weeks afterwards, Mr. Norris received a letter from Mrs. Catharine J. Crane, dated Independence, Tex., referring to the article in The Press, which had been copied by a New Orleans paper, stating that she was a grand-daughter of Col. James Moore, and her letter contained such inherent evidence of the truth of this, that Mr. Norris knew that at last he was on the right track. Five hundred dollars had been spent by order of the courts in advertising for the direct heirs of Col. Moore, but it had failed to call forth A Plea for the Study of Genealogy. 121 the information elicited by this paragraph printed as a curious incident. The order for the distribution of the money among the collateral heirs of Col. Moore was revoked, and it was finally distributed among upwards of fifty of his lineal descendants. Students of vital statistics will find much useful information in genealogical records. I remember reading, a short time ago, an elaborate paper based upon data gathered from genealogical works, showing how small a percentage of children born to parents married late in life arrive at maturity. Conclusive as the argument appeared—and I do not think that there can be any doubt of its truth generally— there are exceptions to the rule, and in genealogical studies remarkable instances are met with showing what a great length of time is sometimes covered by three generations of a family. About twenty years ago, the London Notes and Queries called attention to an instance of this kind in the family of Lord Hawarden. His father, Robert Maude, wa.6 born in 1673 and died in 1750. His son Cornwallis (Lord Hawarden) was born in 1729 and died in 1808; while his son Francis, who was born in 1798, was living in 1878— showing that at that time three generations had covered 205 years. The late John Jordan, Jr., called the attention of our members to this in the Pennsylvania Magazine, and at the same time pointed out the fact that the family of William Penn furnished an instance almost as remarkable. William Penn was born in 1644 and died in 1718. His son Thomas (second son of the second marriage) was born in 1702 and died in 1775. Thomas's son Granville was born in 1761 and died in 1844, making 200 years covered by three generations. Gilbert Cope at once pointed to an instance in the Jefferis family, of Chester County, which was more remarkable than either of these. Robert Jefferis was present at a court held at Chester in 1685. The date of his birth is unknown, but if he was fifteen years old at the time, a reasonable suggestion, he was born about 1670. He died in 1738. His son Richard was born in 1730 and died in 1817. llis son Isaiah was born in 1806 and was living in 1879, three generations having up to that time covered 209 years. , 122 A Plea for the &udy of Genealogy. In fiction, too, genealogy can play an important part. As delineators of life and character study the manners of those around them to give truthfulness to their productions, or search through old letters and diaries for the customs and thoughts that influenced the past, so, too, many of them have resorted to genealogical sources for the groundwork of their novels. The story of The Wandering Heir, by Charles Reade, is gathered from the life of James Annesley, son and heir to the Earl of Anglesey, of the Irish Peerage, whose career has more than a general interest to Pennsylvanians. His parents died when he was quite young, and at the instigation of his uncle, the next heir to the estate, he was kidnapped and sent to America. Indeed, there is reason to believe that after the death of the boy's mother, his father, who was a worthless scamp, connived with the uncle to put the son out of the way, as, without an heir, he could raise money on his estate. Be this as it may, James was sold in Philadelphia as a redemption servant, to pay the captain of the vessel that brought him over the price of his passage. Local tradition says that his master resided on the Lancaster Road, near the forty-mile stone, which would be somewhere near the eastern border of Lancaster County. On account of harsh treatment he ran away, and when arrested was confined in a log prison near Columbia, which was erected when it was supposed that Wright's Ferry, now Columbia, would be the county town of Lancaster. While living with his master, two strangers from County Wexford, Ireland, called there, and from the knowledge Annesley showed of the surroundings of his old home in Ireland, with which they were familiar, they became convinced that the story he told of being a nobleman was true. This story finally reached the ears of Robert Ellis, of Philadelphia, who made it known to Admiral Vernon, who carried Annesley to England, his residence in America having extended from 1728 to 1742. In England, money was subscribed to enable him to bring a suit of ejectment against his uncle; those advancing the money receiving notes pay- A Plea for the Study of Gemology. 123 able when the suit should be brought to a successful issue. To excite an interest in favor of Annesley, a novel was published entitled The Adventures of an Unfortunate Young Nobleman, in which truth and fiction are so confused that it is difficult to separate the one from the other. The novel was extensively reviewed in the Gentleman's Magazine, and by the time the trial commenced, considerable interest had been excited. In fact, it was an early Tichborne case, and the result not very different ; for while Tichborne lost his case and was cast into prison, Annesley won his, but failed to recover his estate. Right of possession was, as is so often the case, the stronger. The uncle appealed, and before a final decision was reached, Annesley and his children were dead, leaving the property in the hands of the rightful owner. So great was the interest taken in the case, that the Trial of Annesley passed through several editions, and his portrait, a copy of which I will now show you, was elaborately engraved. The story of his life is said to have been used not only by Charles Reade, but by Smollett, in his .Roderick Random; in the popular novel of Florence McCarthy, and by Sir Walter Scott in Guy Mannering. Then, too, there is that well-nigh forgotten but once widely read novel by Doctor Samuel Warren, Ten Thousand a Year. It must, I think, have been the realism that pervades the book, on account of its genealogical character, that rescued it from the dullness of the legal chapters in which the well-known names of John Doe and Richard Roe play an important part. True, these chapters furnish us with the pen-picture of that eminent lawyer, Oily Gammon, of the firm of Quirk, Gammon and Snap ; and it is possible that the narrow class prejudice and religious bigotry which pervade the work may have commended it to the aristocratic readers of the day, who could sympathize with the spirit that made every unpicturesque character a dissenter, and every particularly vile one a Unitarian, and centered all that was excellent and lovely in members of the Church of England and in the upper classes of society and their retainers. It was, however, the family history that 124 A Plea for the Study of Genealogy. attracted me, and in it I think I saw for the first time what has become so familiar to me since, a genealogical chart, drawn to show the relationship existing between the Earl of Drelincourt, Mr. Aubury and Tittlebat Titmouse. In that story the difference in the methods followed by the ecclesiastical courts, the Proctors of the Doctors' Commons, and the lawyers of the Common Courts, is dwelt upon, and confirms what I have already said about the connection of genealogy and the legal profession in England. When the pedigree of Tittlebat Titmouse was to be attacked, Sir Charles Wolstenholme, a lawyer of the King's Bench. said, "Their case will be laid on the rack, when the process of the Ecclesiastical Court is applied to it. You have then an examiner on the spot—all secret and mysterious—proctors ferreting out all sorts of old registers and musty documents that we should never think of. 'Tis quite in their line—births, deaths and marriages, and everything connected with them. By Jove, if there's a flaw, you'll discover it in this way." Thackeray, the greatest of our late novelists, must have been a born genealogist, notwithstanding the fact that he kills the mother of Lord Farintosh on one page and brings her to life on another ; but what genealogist has not been guilty of a like slip ? It is also true that he has his fling at the study and all connected with it; nevertheless, it is done in such a kindly spirit that it disarms the sarcasm of its sting. John Pendennis, he said, framed his Cornish pedigree, reaching back to the Druids and showing intermarriages with the Normans. He had taken it out of a trunk, as Sterne's officer called for his sword, now that he was a gentleman and could show it. No one can be angry with old Major Pendennis for feeling satisfied when he learned that his nephew's friend was one of the Warringtons of Suffolk, or for his reminding Pen that he came of a most ancient but fallen house ; that his father had reconstructed the family fortunes, as many a man of good family had done before him. "And you are a man of landed estate, by gad, sir, and a gentleman. Never forget you are a gentleman." A Plea for the Study of Genealogy. 125 The last unfinished work of Thackeray opens with a chapter headed "The Family Tree," and the notes he left behind him show with what care the relationship of his characters, their ages and the dates of the actions in which they figured were considered. Does not the following sound very much like a page from a genealogical note-book ? Blaise born, 1763. Henriette de Barr born in 1766-7. Her father went to Corsica in 1768. Mother fled, '69. Father killed at B., '69. Mother died, '70. Blaise turned out, '79. Henriette, Tiuryiveta, '81. La Motte's catastrophe, 1782. Rodney's action, 1782. His characters appear to have grown into his very life, and he seems never to have been willing to part with them. In one novel you will frequently find references to those in another; as, for instance, where the face of the Dowager Countess of Kew, in The Newcomes, is seen to look so strikingly like her brother, the late lamented Lord Steyne of Vanity Fair. The Dr. Goodenough who sent the Newcomes to Brighton for their health was the kind friend of nurse Brandon in Philip. That eminent artist, J. J., of Philip, was undoubtedly the same that painted the portrait of Mrs. Clive Newcome, number two, who, we are led to believe, was no other than Ethel. Certainly Captain Costigan of Castle Costigan, Costiganstown, the father of Pendennis's first love, was the unfortunate individual who shocked good Colonel Newcome by singing one of his most outrageous songs in the presence of Clive. It is in Esmond and The Virginians, however, that genealogy is used with the greatest effect, and so admirably is this done, that the late William B. Reed said that he once knew a lady who became so interested in the wonderful intricacy of the plot, that she drew out a pedigree of the Castlewood family, to understand the story better. An ardent admirer 126 A Plea for the Study of Genealogy. of Thackeray, in speaking of the excellence of his historical novels, says, "But I think Carlyle's dear old friend Dr. Dryasdust would have shaken his head and sighed over our folly. What,' we may hear him say, is history without dates—solid substantial dates—and above all, without pedigrees, which are its very bone and sinew ? ' This, after all, merely shows the imperfection of his own knowledge. Are we, the students of our Thaekeray, without our dates? Are we without our pedigrees? We can tell him the difference in age between Beatrix and Frank Esmond, and provide him with the information he craves as to the dates of their respective births. Can he do as much for us in the case of Mary and Ann Boleyn ? We can draw him a pedigree of the family of Newcomes. Can he do as much for us in the case of Cardinal Wolsey ? If he can do this much, can he do more? The same writer gives us genealogical tables of the Floracs and the Fokers, as well as of the Newcomes and the Esmonds. It is this feature of Thackeray's writings which seems to weave the characters in all his romances together, producing on the mind a very different effect from that made by his great contemporary, Charles Dickens. With all their excellence and interest, in reading Dickens's works you feel that you are in a crowded street, jostled by strangers having no connection with one another. The family relationship of father, mother, brother and sister is, of course, recognized, but no attempt is made to connect families. Indeed, there are few allusions to family history or ancestral study in Dickens, and the only one I can recall is in an early chapter of Martin Chuzzlewit, in which the members of the family were gathered around the death-bed of one whose birth was involved in obscurity. "Toby Chuzzlewit," he was asked, "who was your grandfather? " and with his last breath, he distinctly replied, "The Lord No Zoo." But no peerage, active or dormant, furnished the name of such a nobleman, and the family were forced to content themselves with the possibility that they were connected by a bend sinister, or a kind or heraldic over-the-left, with some unknown noble or illustrious house. A Plea for the Study of Genealogy. 127 "Do not give your characters local names," is the advice of our fellow-member Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, "unless you wish to make trouble for yourself, or you are a candidate for the position of secretary of a genealogical society." This was said as he handed me a letter received from San Francisco, in which the writer asked him if he could tell him anything about a family chart mentioned in Watson's Annals as having been seen by Deborah Logan, whose diary Dr. Mitchell had alluded to in Hugh Wynne, and whether this chart had been brought down to date. Local and family history have certainly been used with telling effect in Hugh Wynne, and the gentleman on the Pacific coast is not the only one who has been led to suppose that Dr. Mitchell is a genealogist. A number of persons have inquired if the So-and-so's of the novel were related to those of the same name residing in a certain locality, and if such was the case, if the doctor had not made mistakes in some of his statements. After the first chapters of the story appeared, I said to him, "Well, I suppose John Warder turns Tory, goes to England and marries there, like the real John." "No, he doesn't," he replied, "he stays here, goes into the army and fights like the —, well, like what you choose. But you do not mean to tell me," he continued, "that there really was a John Warder ? " "Certainly there was," I said ; "we have his letter-books in the fire-proof. Business took him to England about 1775, and not returning at once, he thought it best to remain there, fearing he might be arrested as a refugee if he returned. And so he stayed in England and married, and it is his wife's journal, written while visiting his relatives in 1786, that we lately published in the Pennsylvania Magazine, giving a lively picture of Quaker society at that time." The doctor looked serious for a minute, and then said—" Oh, that was not my Jack ; that was his first cousin." I have spoken to you of the connection of genealogy with history, with law, and with fiction ; but after all it is the study itself, springing from that inborn desire to know something of our ancestors, that attracts the students and 128 A Plea for the Study of Genealogy. makes them pursue it with a zeal indicating a greater desire to know where they came from than where they are going. Nevertheless, there is nothing in the study that should cause it to be looked upon other than as praiseworthy, when directed by a proper spirit. "I have never known a person," said Edward Everett, "whose self-reliance was of so austere a cast that he did not take pleasure, when it was in his power to do so, in tracing his descent from an honored line." In the early days of our Republic, when the influence of our own social and political revolution was fresh upon us, and that of the French Revolution was being felt throughout the world, the pendulum had swung so far towards extreme democracy that everything of an aristocratic character was looked upon askance, and a pedigree was not a thing to flaunt in the face of the public, particularly for one having political aspirations. Indeed, there are some purists to-day who think that genealogy gives such an aristocratic bias to our lives and thoughts that its study should find no encouragement on this side of the Atlantic. This perhaps might be so, if it were now pursued in the spirit which seems to have possessed the noble peer depicted in the first plate of Hogarth's Manage a la Mode, who, almost at the very moment that his son had contracted a mercenary match, was made oblivious to everything by his own selfimportance, and was completely absorbed in the contemplation of his ancestral tree, springing from the loins of a recumbent knight. But genealogy is not studied in such a spirit to-day. It is true there are some who, through bad taste or a mistaken idea as to the value of genealogy, have endeavored to connect their ancestral lines with illustrious houses of the same name, when the evidence for such connections is vague and unsatisfactory. In doing this, they have brought discredit on their pursuit, just as others have done, who, in endeavoring to avoid such rocks, have recorded incidents of a homely character, having no value whatever, as one did when he wrote, "Nancy married John 11■1—. He is said to have been a sea-captain, and to have A Plea for the Study of Genealogy. 129 been shipwrecked on an island inhabited by cannibals, who ate up most of his crew, but he, being very thin in flesh, did not tempt their palates—in fact, they refused to eat him." In steering between these two extremes, it is not necessary that a pedigree should be a mere collection of names and dates. There are few who, in compiling them, do not gain a knowledge of the lives, the services and the surroundings of their ancestors ; and this knowledge should be briefly recorded, as it gives to genealogy one of its greatest values. It raises a pedigree to the dignity of a family history, which, when well done, is the highest class of genealogical work. In such histories, however, services should not be exaggerated or circumstances distorted, for truth should be the chief end of family history, as it is of all history; and herein the present methods of genealogical research differ from those of the past. Formerly a pedigree was not considered worth constructing unless it led to some important connection; now the moving desire is to learn who our ancestors were and to preserve the information we gain for posterity. Occupying the position we do between the past and the future, we have the same feeling for our pedigree as we have for our children; let it be distinguished or humble, it is ours, and is of more value to us than that of any other man. A pedigree, we have learned, need not be distinguished to be honorable, any more than a distinguished one is always honorable. For there are, unfortunately, skeletons and closets in all families; and in many lines incidents are met with which human charity, whether mistaken or not, makes us pass by in silence; or if they are remembered, they are remembered as examples to be avoided. I should be sorry to think that a pedigree that boasts of no distinguished names, but that bears on it those of men and women who walked humbly before God and man, and who performed the services required of them to the best of their abilities, should not have the same value in the eyes of their descendants as if the record were fairly bristling with the names of notables. This, I am glad to 130 A Plea fof the Study of Genealogy. say, is not the case; and in confirmation of this view I can point to the hundreds of volumes of genealogy on our shelves that do not contain a single name known to history, which yet are as dear to those whose family records they preserve as if they were patents of nobility; and I believe such records will often have a restraining influence on those who can claim a place thereon, when in a moment of weakness they may be tempted to do a dishonorable act. "It is wise for us," said Daniel Webster, "to recur to the history of our ancestors. Those who are regardless of their ancestors and their posterity, who do not look upon themselves as a link connecting the past with the future in the transmission of life from their ancestors to their posterity, do not perform their duty to the world. To be faithful to ourselves, we must keep our ancestors and posterity within the reach and grasp of our thoughts and affections. Living in the memory and retrospect of the past, and hoping with affection and care for those who are to come after us, we are true to ourselves only when we act with becoming pride for the blood we inherit, and which we are to transmit to those who are to fill our places." While there can be no doubt that some such feeling as this will ever lead to the study of genealogy, I think that with us of to-day that study has been stimulated by more definite reasons : first, by the growing custom of celebrating the anniversaries of historical events, and the establishment of hereditary societies, creating a desire in the living to know how they are connected with actors in the past; and, secondly, by a sentiment that grows stronger as year after year is added to our national life, drawing all who can lay any claim to being Americans under a common roof-tree. Do not be frightened, my Democratic friends, and think I am going to preach the lost cause of" Native Americanism " or ask you to join the "Know Nothing Party." In studying history, it is the past by which we must measure the present. Professor McMaster, in one of his late essays, has pointed out the fact that the dread of naturalized citizens has never A Plea for the Study of Genealogy. 131 been wholly absent from our political life, and that its outbreaks have always followed periods remarkable for the great numbers of newcomers to our shores. It may be that this dread has been again awakened by the late large importations (I cannot call them immigrations) of foreigners to our country, to whom our past history and traditions are as nothing, and yet who eagerly avail themselves of the privilege of our naturalization laws to become citizens. This may have had something to do with the sudden growth of the taste for ancestral study, and with the interest in the history of American institutions that exists to-day. If this be so, and to some extent I believe it is, is it not better than if the same dread had taken shape in a new political organization? Is it not simply the development of a love of country, upon grounds common to every reasonable political creed and religious faith ? And, after all, what is stronger than love of country, when that country is ours by inheritance and in it there is some spot endeared to us by family ties ? Where will you find a stronger illustration of this land-love than in the career of Warren Hastings, who, as Macaulay tells us, "on a bright summer day," when but seven years old, "lay on the banks of the rivulet which flows through the old domain of his house to join the Isis. There, as threescore and ten years later he told the tale, rose in his mind a scheme which, through all the turns of his eventful career, was never abandoned. He would recover the estates which belonged to his fathers. He would be the Hastings of Daylesford. This purpose, formed in infancy and poverty, grew stronger as his intellect expanded and his fortunes rose. He pursued his plan with that calm but indomitable force of will which was the most striking peculiarity of his character. When, under a tropical sun, he ruled fifty millions of Asiatics, his hopes, amidst all the cares of war, finance and legislation, still pointed to Daylesford. And when his long public life, so singularly checkered with good and evil, with glory and obloquy, had at length closed forever, it was to Daylesford that he retired to die." 132 A Plea for the Study of Genealogy. Look, too, at the history of your own country. Read the names of those connected with the colonization and government of the older States and with the first settlement of the West, and then turn to the records of our great Civil War, and see how the sons of the soil rushed to the front—often the chosen leaders of their neighbors—to offer their lives in defence of their country. I do not mean that they fought better or did more than many naturalized citizens, or sons of naturalized citizens, but it was the love of a country of which they felt they were a part that stirred their blood and led many of them to die among the bravest of the brave. Love of country, I believe, is the spirit that pervades the study of family history in America to-day, and there can surely be no reasonable objection to a pursuit that tends only to make us strive to be worthy of our ancestors. And if, in doing this, it creates a class who feel that in the history of their country there is something that belongs to them by inheritance, something of which they are a part, is it to be despised? Does it not show us that deep below the surface of our social and political life, with its ever-changing phases and threatened dangers, there is something that binds the past and the present together, giving stability to American institutions? Does it not assure us that the spirit that inspired the men who settled this country, and those who followed them, to build on the foundations they laid, is inherited by their sons, and that in their hands the future is secure ?