Ellis: Generation Two, Immigrant Ellis was born in Wales in 1687 and was either 12 or 13 years old when he traveled with his family on theRobert and Elizabeth to Pennsylvania. Ellis was John Hugh's third child,following Jane (1683) and Rowland (1685). Ellis married Jane Foulke inAugust 1713 while still living at Gwynedd. Jane Foulke, who was threeyears older than Ellis, came from the same area (Gwynedd) of Wales and also had migrated on the 1698 voyage of the Robert and Elizabeth. (8) Ellisand Jane had seven children. The third, a daughter, apparently died at birthand remained un-named. Ellis died in 1764 at age 76 or 77 and Jane followed two years later at age 81.
In the
Oley Valley, Ellis clearly made his living by farming and operating his sawmill, but he
appears to have been more prominent for his leadership role in the local
Exeter Society of Friends. Records indicate that Ellis was instrumental in the success of the Society of
Friend's Exeter Meeting (located in Oley Valley)
during the middle 18th century. He was characterized as the most
prominent minister, or "Weightiest Friend" in Quaker terms. His memorialist
wrote of him that he embodied the Quaker ideal of charity, commitment, and
effort. A many-paragraphed commemoration in Quaker records
uses phrases such as "good example," "meek and loving,"
"instructively cheerful," "affectionate husband,"
"tender parent," and "kind
master."
At the same time, he was "...a lover of good order in the church,
and well knew the dangerous tendency
of undue liberty." This referred to the Quaker code that held members to
account for misconduct. Ellis, for example probably participated in
deliberations regarding one of his own sons, William, who was dismissed
from Exeter Meeting membership in 1754, after three disciplinary
episodes due to his excessive proclivity to drink.
That Ellis Hughes was the "Weightiest Friend" meant, in my judgment, that he was an important
leader in the Exeter Friends, Oley Valley, Pennsylvania community
during the apex of Quaker influence in Pennsylvania and in America. At
the time , religion was almost indistinguishable from government.
Ellis took ill, according to Quaker records, at the 1764 funeral of
his son (and our next ancestor), John,
and died eleven days later. Quaker records list them both as being
buried in the Exeter Meeting burial ground. _______________________________________________________________________ The Will abstract: "Ellis
Hugh, Formerly Oley, now Exeter, date Jan.5, 1764, probate Jan. 27, 1764. Provides for wife Jane. To son Samuel plantation and saw mill etc. whereon he lives in Exeter
containing 162 acres 54 perches.
To son Edward plantation etc. where he lives
containing 96 acres 38 perches.
To grandson George Hugh, son of John, deceased
plantation etc. where my son lately lived containing 52 acres 22 perches,
he allowing his mother Martha Hugh 1/3 of the profits during her
life. To Margaret wife of Samuel
Lee L5, having been advanced. Son-in-law Samuel Lee and sons Samuel
and Edward executors. Codicil -- same date,
gives to son William and revokes legacy of land to grandson George Hugh,
and gives it to all the children of son John, vis: George, Jane, Eleanor, and Samuel,
allowing George two shares. Letters to Samuel and Edward
Hugh. Witness Jesse Willets,
William Boone, James Starr, and Abel
Thomas." In this, grandson George Hugh
was, of course, our next ancestor.
He would have been 20 (almost 21) years
old at the time of Ellis's death in 1764. He is the one who married
Martha Boone, and then moved to the Catawissa/Roaring Creek area
after it was founded in about 1774. I think that the L5 (5 pounds
British currency) given to Margaret was not an insignificant sum in those
days when cash was not plentiful.
It's not clear how much went to William,
who had been ousted from the Society of Friends in 1754 for excessive
drinking. The "...mother Martha
Hugh." in this was John's
second wife. George's birth mother had been Hannah
Boone, but she died early
-- when George was only three years old -- and he undoubtedly knew his mother as Martha (Cole) Hugh, John's second
wife. ___________________________________________________________________________ See where they are actually
buried!
After Ellis' death, Jane (Foulke) Hughes lived with their daughter, Margaret, and son-in-law, Samuel
Lee of Oley until she died in 1766. This Samuel Lee is in the ancestry line
(via marriages) of Robert E. Lee, the Confederate Civil War General. Ironically, marriages
through the Boones also establish a Hughes
relationship to Abraham Lincoln. It's doubly ironic, in my view, that these two war
leaders, on opposite sides of the U.S.'s greatest war, came from pacifist
Quaker roots. John:
Generation Three, Pennsylvania John was the first in our line of Hugheses born on the
American continent. His birth in the Gwynedd area in March 1714 appears to have
pushed the bounds of propriety, coming as it did just seven and one-half
months after his parents marriage. (9) After Joining with his family's move to
the Oley Valley in 1731, John married Hannah Boone in November 1742.
Twenty two year-old Hannah was one of George Boone's daughters, and a
first cousin to Daniel Boone. John and Hanna had two children before she
died in March 1746. John's second marriage was to Martha Cole.
It is not clear that farming was this second John's main source of income in Oley valley. Although a
landowner, maps show
that he also owned a tavern and a tannery.
John's relationship to George Boone, his first father-in-law, led him into positions of responsibility
in the local Oley Valley government during the last 12 years of his life.
George Boone was Oley Valley's first
Justice of the Peace, appointed in 1728.
Justice of the Peace was the most powerful local official, supervising the
other county and township officers, in addition to serving as judge in
the legal system. George Boone also was instrumental in bringing a petition
to the Philadelphia County court in 1741 to create Exeter Township, so
named after the Boones' home in Exeter, Devonshire, England. (10) John
thus became part of a local Boone political network in the 1750's and 1760's
during which Boones and Boone relations dominated county and provincial assembly offices. John
served as Berks County Collector of Excise during
1752 -1763 and as a County Commissioner from 1762 until he
died in 1764. ___________________________________________________________________ What is a Township? William
Penn's 1681 charter decreed that "townships" would be Pennsylvania's primary form of
local government. Creating a township gave local residents the right
to have the king's peace upheld in their community, the poor cared for, stray livestock controlled,
and public roads provided and maintained. To
achieve these goals, township status brought with it the right to have a constable, a tax collector, a supervisor
of highways, an overseer of the
poor, and a keeper of the pound (who rounded up and secured stray
livestock). ___________________________________________________________________ John
died in March 1764 at age 49 (almost 50), and was buried at the Exeter Meeting House burial ground, according to Quaker
records. John left no will when he died, leading me
to believe that his death was sudden and unexpected. In December 1766, his
son George (our next ancestor) petitioned the Orphan's Court of
Philadelphia County to divide his father's estate in Exeter Township. The
estate consisted of about 190 acres, and was ordered divided "according to the value." In
addition to George, the heirs including George's sister, Jane
(Hughes) Boone, and some younger half sisters from John's second
marriage. ___________________________________________________________________ Leading up to the Revolutionary
War, England passed its infamous Stamp Tax in 1765, and the grant by Britain to
the East India Company of a monopoly on tea trade led to the "Boston Tea
Party" in 1773. ___________________________________________________________________
Historic Oley: The U.S.National Park Service added Oley Township to it's National Register of
Historic Places in 1983. The Park Service also has designated about three dozen
Oley Valley houses and other buildings, including the Exeter Friends
Meeting House build in 1759, as architectural land marks under the protection of
its Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS). (11) That these buildings
have survived is due mainly (in my opinion) to their construction
from Pennsylvania fieldstone, which consists of large, flat, irregularly shaped
rocks that the farmers must have picked ceaselessly for a couple of
centuries to try to make their fields easier to work.
The existing town of Oley was initially a "company hamlet"
that was established to house the many
workers required to operate Oley Forge. Oley Forge refined cast iron into
wrought iron that could be used by blacksmiths. My own observation (in September
1996) is that family farming still is important in Oley Valley, but that
the area's small iron ore deposits have long since been mined out and the forges closed. (12) Oley
now is a town with one-street about three-fourths of
a mile long. The houses that line the street are mainly of fieldstone, and are
lived in and well kept. There are no trashy modern establishments (such as
McDonalds), probably due to the influence of the National Park Service. Click Here To Continue Reading
(8) She was one of the nine children who Edward Foulke said escapedthe "sore mortality through the favor and mercy of Devine Providence,"in his account of the voyage on the Robert and Elizabeth. (9) This sort of "early" birth has not been all that uncommon amongfirst born Hugheses. (10) The area was still in Philadelphia County. Berks County wasn'tcreated out of the Oley Valley section of Philadelphia County until1752. (11) HABS records are available for public use at the Library of Congress (Prints and Photographs Division) in Washington, DC. (12) Within about 10 miles is the Hopewell Furnace National Historic site. |
|
THE HUGHES NETWORK: >Hughes Central | Hughes Geneolgy |