John ^Beale ^Bordley and the Sarly Years of the Philadelphia ^Agricultural Society *
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John ^Beale ^Bordley and the Sarly Years of the Philadelphia ^Agricultural Society * i PON a number of counts, John Beale Bordley is an important member of the group of American agriculturists who, stimu- U lated by the progress of the Agricultural Revolution in England and spurred by local needs, brought about during the last three decades of the eighteenth century what were at least the early stages of an agricultural revolution in America. As early as the decade of the sixties Bordley was keeping in touch with English agricultural literature1 and from that time on was a remarkably thorough student of Arthur Young, Coke of Norfolk, Bakewell of Dishley, and of English agricultural periodicals, as well as of con- tinental writings upon agriculture.2 He published a valuable treatise on Qrop-%otations in 1784, followed it with a number of essays and short articles upon that and other subjects, and in 1799 published an important book of nearly six hundred pages, entitled Essays and th(ptes on Husbandry and %ural oAffairs, a second edition of which was issued in 1801. A founder and vice-president of the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture (1785), he had numerous con- tacts among the chief agriculturists of his time. His interests in agriculture and those of Washington touched at many points.3 The study of crop rotation he shared in friendly association with Dr. George Logan for over fifteen years.4 Richard Peters, who later held the presidency of the Philadelphia Society for twenty-three years,5 * This article, to which several minor additions have been made, was written in 1932 as a Master's essay for Columbia University.—EDITOR. 1 E. B. Gibson, Sketches of the Bordley Family (Philadelphia, 1865), 91. 2 J. B. Bordley, Essays and Notes on Husbandry and Rural Affairs (Philadelphia, 1799), 1-250, passim. 3 W. C. Ford, ed., The Writings of Washington (New York, 1889-1893), XI, 302-307, XII, 442, XIII, 416. 4 Gibson, op. cit.y 123. 5 R. H. Gabriel, Toilers on Land and Sea (Pageant of America Series, New Haven, 1926), 100. 410 1942 THE PHILADELPHIA AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY 4II and George Clymer, its vice-president for nearly a decade,6 were but two of the large and influential group of Philadelphia agriculturists with whom he was associated; while John Taylor of Caroline7 and Thomas Jefferson8 were friends and associates of a southern group. Bordley's farm on Wye Island on the Eastern Shore of Maryland presents an especially interesting study of a large estate which, hav- ing experienced the transition from tobacco to wheat9 typical of its time in tidewater and piedmont Maryland and Virginia, and having developed a wide range of handicraft manufacturing,10 was handled with a careful regard both for financial returns and for progressive agricultural principles. Bordley was born February n, 1727, at Annapolis, Maryland, the posthumous son of Thomas Bordley, formerly of England, and of his second wife, Ariana Vanderheyden Frisby, the granddaughter of Augustine Hermann of Bohemia Manor.11 Thomas Bordley, who was of a substantial Yorkshire family, had come to Maryland in 1697, soon after the death of his father, the Reverend Mr. Stephen Bordley, rector of St. Mary's at Newington, Surrey, and a prebend of St. Paul's Cathedral. Thomas was then a boy of fourteen in the care of an older brother, Stephen, a young clergyman of the Church of England sent to the province by the Bishop of London in response to a request from Governor Nicholson. Thomas lived with his brother for a time in the Eastern Shore county of Kent. At the age of seventeen, he went to Annapolis, studied law, and achieved in early manhood a position of prominence in the profession.12 He was elected to the lower house of the Maryland Assembly in 1709, and from 1716 until his untimely death in London in 1726 was a legisla- tive leader of marked distinction. Two years after the death of her husband, Ariana Bordley mar- ried Edmund Jennings, secretary of the province, and later went 6 Memoirs ofthe Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture', 1808-1826 (Philadelphia, 1855), III, lxxv-lxxvii. Hereafter cited as Memoirs. 7 Minutes of the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture (Philadelphia, 1854), 77. Hereafter cited as Minutes. 8 Thomas Jefferson to John Beale Bordley. Private collection, Vol. 8. 9 Gibson, op. cit., 95. 10 Ibid., 98-102. n Ibid., 11-21, 6$. 12 Ibid., 13-14,4, 15- 412 OLIVE MOORE GAMBRILL October with him to England, leaving John Beale, then a boy of ten, in the care of her sister, Mrs. Charles Hynson of Chestertown.13 Mrs. Jennings died several years after her arrival in England and John Beale remained through his boyhood under the care of Colonel and Mrs. Hynson. He received at Chestertown a common-school educa- tion, studying under the Reverend Mr. Charles Peale, father of Charles Willson Peale. Going to Annapolis when seventeen, he read law with his half-brother Stephen Bordley, who shortly before had returned from nine years' study in London.14 The period in which John Beale Bordley came to maturity and was admitted to the bar was distinguished in the Maryland capital by the services of Daniel Dulany, the younger, described as the ablest lawyer in America; and by those of Stephen Bordley, whose career as lawyer, attorney general and councillor is well known.15 During the score of years that followed the Maryland bar carried on its noteworthy tradition for lawyers of ability and sound legal training. Thomas Johnson, Samuel Chase and Thomas Stone emerged from their studies in the colonies and Charles Carroll of Carrollton and William Paca returned from the Inns of Court.16 Bordley, however, seems never to have felt the keen interest in law evinced by his father and half-brother. For a short time he experimented as a merchant, and although he continued in the legal profession, he never attained distinction as an attorney.17 He married, October 13, 1751, Margaret Chew, "an agreeable well accomplished young lady, with a good fortune/'18 and a member of a family which had held a position of prominence in Maryland for a century. Among its distinguished members during Bordley's life- time were Dr. Samuel Chew, who, after leaving Annapolis, was ap- pointed in 1741 chief justice of the three "lower counties" of Dela- ware; and his son, Benjamin Chew, who in 1774 was made chief justice of Pennsylvania. Mary Chew, a sister of Margaret, became the wife of William Paca and the two families were thereafter closely associated. 13 Ibid., 25, 66. 14 Ibid., 25, 66-67, 27. 15 Maryland Gazette, December 13, 1764. 16 E. A. Jones, American Members ofthe Inns of Court (London, 1924), 39-40, 16$-66. 17 Gibson, op. cit., 46. 18 Maryland Gazette, October 16, 1751; Gibson, op. cit., 71. 1942 THE PHILADELPHIA AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY 4I3 In 1753 Bordley was appointed clerk of Baltimore County, an office which he carried on by deputy, holding it until 1769.19 It will be remembered that the years 1760 and 1768 witnessed the work of the joint boundary commission of Maryland and Pennsylvania in determining the eastern boundary between Maryland and the " three lower counties/' In 1763, Stephen Bordley relinquished his place on the commission because of illness, and John Beale Bordley was appointed by Governor Sharpe in his stead. Occasional demands were made upon his time and effort until the completion of the difficult task in 1768.20 In 1766, shortly after moving his residence from Joppa, the county seat of Baltimore County, to Baltimore, Bordley was appointed by Governor Sharpe judge of the provincial court, and the following year he was made judge of the admiralty court. He held both judge- ships until the breakdown of the proprietary government.21 On May 24, 1768, Bordley was seated in the Maryland Council. He continued to serve as councillor during the tumultuous years that marked Sir Robert Eden's administration.22 During this period the local interest in a long contest between the Assembly and Council over the payment of officers' fees gave way to the national move- ment which resulted in the establishment of a provisional govern- ment in Annapolis, June 24, 1774, and the ultimate destruction of the proprietary government several days after the last meeting of the Council, which took place on June 12, 1776. After 1770 Bordley entered seriously upon his thirty-years' work as an agriculturist, becoming, as he said, "enthusiastically fond of husbandry" and gradually withdrawing from public affairs. In that year, upon the death of Philemon Lloyd Chew, brother of Margaret Bordley and Mary Paca, Wye Island came into the possession of the John Beale Bordleys and the William Pacas.23 The island lies 19 Gibson, op. cit.y 72. The statement made by Mrs. Gibson (p. 82), and followed in part by- Professor W. C. True in his account of Bordley in the Dictionary of American Biography, that Bordley resigned his office in 1765 because of unwillingness to serve under the Stamp Act, is in error. 20 Correspondence of Governor Sharpe (Archives of Maryland, Baltimore, 1888-1890), III, 126; Gibson, op. cit.y 80; J. T. Scharf, History of Maryland (Baltimore, 1879), I, 407. 21 N. D. Mereness, Maryland as a Proprietary Province (New York, 1901), 253; Gibson, op. cit.y 75. 22 Archives of Maryland, XXXII, 232, 256-385, passim. 23 Gibson, op. cit., 82. 4I4 OLIVE MOORE GAMBRILL October near the mouth of the Wye River, on the southern boundary of Queen Anne's County. It is an irregular area, approximately five and three-quarters miles in length and a mile and a half in breadth at its widest point.