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Narrative of Thomas Mckean Thompson. Ill Although Always Narrative of Thomas McKean Thompson. Ill NARRATIVE OF THOMAS McKEAN THOMPSON. CONTRIBUTED BY P. F. THOMPSON. (Continued from page 77.) Although always popular and in public office from twenty-one or two years of age till near the close of life his manner of attaining public favors was anomalous, for he never courted it; indeed his outward manners were against such a result, for they were rather distant and cold and he seldom mixed with the people except on public occasions and was a novice in intrigue. I used myself to be surprised that he was popular and I have heard friends, his contemporaries, say they were ut- terly surprised at his popularity with his numerous clients when quite a young lawyer; his manner of sift- ing out the facts of the case submitted to him, espe- cially if there were any appearance of juggling being so pointed and severe. The secret to be developed must be referred to the selfish principle that rules the human heart. The people had confidence in his integrity, in- dustry and talents and were willing to commit their interests into such hands. Governor McKean's chief intellectual acquisition was a knowledge of law; he was a learned Jurist and must also have had experi- ence in the science of government, being a member of Congress during the whole of our Eevolutionary con- troversy with England, and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He was a man of sterling integrity, in public as well as private life; his attach- ment to the laws and institutions of the country was open and steadfast; his disposition was kind and af- fectionate, but he was not without faults, which those who esteemed and loved him most—most deplored; he gave no other evidence of attachment to religion than what is often given by men in high places—out- 112 Narrative of Thomas McKean Thompson. ward respect, such as going to Church on the fore- noon of the Lord's day, etc.; his temper, moreover, was too self-complaisant and irascible, and, as the fruit of these, dogmatical; he had no patience to bear contradiction and was too easily thrown off his guard, but kind forbearance and apparent acquiescence from others, although they could not cure, could avert any evil consequence of this constitutional infirmity. I uniformly experienced from him paternal kindness and should feel that I was an ingrate could I cease grate- fully to remember his affectionate beneficence toward me. Governor McKean had by his first wife two sons and three daughters, and one son and two daughters by his second. His eldest son, Joseph, was a respectable lawyer and for a number of years Attorney General of Pennsylvania and died in middle life. His widow and daughters, as I learned some years ago, were members of Eev. Mr. Barn's Church in Philadelphia and much attached to him personally. The Governor's second son Eobert married into a wealthy family of that city and died before his father. His eldest daughter Elizabeth married Andrew Pettit, Esquire, a merchant and an Alderman of the city and a prudent, respectable man, whose sister was the wife of Jared Ingersol, a distinguished lawyer, and mother of the two lawyers of that name, who at the present time are figuring in Congress. His other two daughters married two brothers in Baltimore, the youngest a merchant, the eldest Doctor Buchanan, who, with our old Delaware friend, Doctor Monro, went to Eden- burgh for their diplomas and both returned as they went skeptics on the subject of religion, but both after- ward became active professors of religion, the first in the Methodist and the other in the Presbyterian Church years before their death. The eldest daughter by the second wife married the then Spanish Minister, Narrative of Thomas McKean Thompson. 113 Marquis Yrusco, who was a well looking young man of excellent sense and who in addition to his salary of $12,000. was possessed of a large private estate— the other died young and unmarried. They were all accomplished and some of them unusually pretty women, especially the Minister's wife, and the three first mentioned were professors of religion. Of all Governor McKean's children, his youngest son Thomas alone survives. He is a wealthy merchant and re- sides in Philadelphia. Your paternal Grandparents as already stated were married by Doctor Allison in Philadelphia in the year 1758. I have no knowledge in respect to your grandmother, except what was de- rived from others. They resided, I apprehend, during my mother's life, for the most part at New Castle, my native place. She was represented to have been a woman of much sensibility, exemplary piety and de- voted to her children, on whose account she must have experienced much affliction; her first born daughter in the 13th year of her age and eldest son at the age of ten, both died the same year and afterward her youngest daughter aged twelve years and her own health was feeble probably for some time, previous to the close of her life. From circumstances now going to be related, I suppose your Grandfather removed from New Castle to his farm a year or two previous to the fall of 1777, the period of the British getting possession of Philadelphia and when we must have fled to "Fogs Manor" in Chester County as already related, and that my reverend mother must have died within the same period probably the spring or sum- mer of 77, for I well remember on going from out doors into my mother's chamber on the farm, I found her sitting up sewing, when I expected to find her in bed, and the thrill of pleasure experienced on that occasion I have a conscious sense of at the present VOL. LIL—8 114 Narrative of Thomas McKean Thompson. moment!—expressing to her the surprise and pleasure I felt at seeing her better; it is probable I soon left her and except at that time have not the faintest recol- lection of ever having seen her in my life. I am the more surprised at this, as if the preceding chronology- be correct, I must then have entered on the eighth year of my age. I can account for it to myself in no other way than by supposing I must have been sent from home about that period and continued absent till after my mother's death and burial, for had I been present the gloomy association accompanying such an event could not have been so entirely lost. After her death we must have removed to Chester County as I am satisfied she was not with us there. Thus my dear Hat, I have fulfilled my promise of making out a fam- ily register or (as it might be called) a short obituary notice of some of your relatives on your Father's side of the house, and will now proceed to give you, from the like kind of material some account of your mother's family and my own connection with it. Your maternal Grandfather John Halsted, Esquire, was a native American. His parents were probably from England, and the maiden name of your Grandmother, his wife, was "Waters" of French genealogy, but when he mar- ried her she was the widow of Captain Dehart and the mother of two children—Jacob and Margaret Dehart. Failing in his first suit with Miss Waters, the Captain having the start of him, he remained a bachelor till after the decease of her first husband and then mar- ried her as the widow of Dehart, on Staten Island in the State of New York. Some years after his mar- riage, your Grandfather removed with his family to Quebec in lower Canada and continued to reside there till the fall of 1775, when hostilities having commenced between the Colonies and mother country and divisions of American troops under the command of General Narrative of Thomas McKean Thompson. 115 Montgomery and Colonel Arnold been despatched on an enterprise against Canada on their arrival on the border of that country, being a Whig and having re- solved to make common cause with his native country- men, he renounced his allegiance to the crown and fled to the American Army and tendered his services to General Montgomery as a guide in his contemplated attack on Quebec and accompanied the General and his troops into the lower town of the city where that Commander gallantly fell and the whole enterprise entirely failed. Your Grandfather by this resolution sacrificed his worldly estate. He had been for some years extensively engaged in mercantile transactions and especially in the flour business; he owned a mill or mills where he manufactured and sold flour on a large scale and as I understood, profitable one. Those warehouses were afterward converted into barracks for British soldiers. Your Grandfather's effort after the peace to reclaim his former interest in Quebec proved an entire failure. The State of New York, however, by an act of her Legislature, made a grant of land to the Canadian refugees, as they were called, not far from the town of Plattsburg in remuneration for their loss of property in Canada out of which Mr. Halsted received three hundred acres and by an Act of Congress a body of land in the state of Ohio still known by the name of the Canadian refugee tract was appropriated for the same object, from which he re- ceived patents for two quarter sections of 160 acres each—all of which were afterward sold for a compara- tively small sum of money.
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