The Ewings of Lancaster Catholic Elites in Ohio and Maryland by Lorle Porter
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Vol. XXXVI, No. 9 September, 2011 The Ewings of Lancaster Catholic Elites in Ohio and Maryland By Lorle Porter There was a small but influential cadre of settling in Lancaster. The dapper Boyle, attired in a Roman Catholic elites in America before the massive flowering waistcoat and white beaver hat, served Irish and German immigration of the 1840s. Aside three decades as Fairfield County’s clerk of courts from religion, these people shared a common culture and was an intimate of the state’s legal fraternity.1 and political heritage with their Protestant neighbors. This fraternity included Virginian Philemon Bishop Edward Fenwick, who established Beecher, a classically trained lawyer, resident in Catholic churches in Kentucky and was the Apostle Lancaster from 1801. Beecher was elected Speaker of Ohio, was one of the aristocratic Marylanders of the Ohio House in 1807 and served five terms as who epitomized the American character of such Congressman. Beecher married Eleanor Boyle’s Catholic elites; so were the Ewings of Lancaster, sister, Susan Gillespie. After Eleanor’s early death, Ohio. The Ewing story was played out against the landscape of Lancaster, a bustling town on Zane’s Trace. With a population of 1,000 in 1820, it was one of the largest towns in the state. Three days from Frederickstown, Maryland, it was an important commercial stop. The “movers” journeying down the Trace were “opening wide the gates of the West.” The Muskingum River made Zanesville a commercial center; the Scioto did the same for Chillicothe. Lancaster developed as the legal center of the state. Interesting folk peopled this stage. Hugh Boyle was the son of well-to-do Irish Catholics in County Donegal who, denied education in Ireland, sent their son to France. Boyle was a scholar of Greek, Latin and French who favored the losing side in the Irish Rising of 1798. He fled to America, locating with his uncle’s friend Neil Gillespie in a busy tavern in Brownsville, Pennsylvania. There Boyle married Hon. Thomas Ewing (1789-1871) Eleanor Gillespie and the couple moved west, (Eva Montgomery Collection) 269 Hugh Boyle moved next door the Beechers and his The youth worked grueling months at the two daughters were raised by three parents in a Kanawha Salt Works in Virginia, saving money to French speaking home.2 pay off the farm’s mortgage. “By the light of the In 1810 the Beecher-Boyle-Irwin circle was furnace fires at night” he taught himself French and joined by Charles and Mary Hoyt Sherman. Charles devoured any book he could obtain from the was the grandson of Roger Sherman, Connecticut’s “Coonskin Library”—a subscription library in representative at the Constitutional Convention, and Amesville. Pelts paid for new books, which were the son of Taylor Sherman and Elizabeth Stoddard, purchased in the East. Ewing read his books to stern Puritans from Norwalk. Charles was a “rough-hewed men” around the fire.6 graduate of Dartmouth College and Mary of the Ewing was delivering salt to Marietta in 1810 female seminary at Poughkeepsie, New York. The when he became captivated by a frontier trial. He couple built “a little brown house” on Wheeling Hill devoured Blackstone’s Commentary. Thus self- down the street from the courthouse. These were taught, he applied to the new college at Athens (Ohio powerful attorneys, but the city’s legal pre-eminence University). The authorities accepted him by waiving would be secured with the arrival of Thomas Ewing.3 his lack of Greek. Alternating between books and Ewing would become Ohio’s famous “Old salt, Ewing and his friend Nova Scotian Jacob Parker Saltboiler” and “The Logician of the West,” but his became the college’s first graduates. Ewing was early days were spent in the Ohio Territory near Fort twenty-six when he faced the final examining panel, Frye and the Indian massacre site of Big Bottom in which included Charles Sherman. Sherman invited Muskingum County. His was a hard-scrabble Parker and Ewing to read law in Lancaster with childhood. The first winter of camp along Federal General Philemon Beecher, “the Father of the Ohio Creek the Ewings lived in a lean-to and ate out of a Bar.” The men arrived in the town in July, 1815 and single wooden bowl while using sharpened sticks as spent sixteen hours a day reading law. When Beecher forks. The family had been substantial, but lost its left for Congress in 1817, Ewing assumed his property during the Revolution while Tom’s father practice.7 George endured winter at Valley Forge. In 1795, Ewing’s mentors had an immense impact on claiming soldiers’ land, the Ewings were on the Ohio him. Beecher’s vast legal knowledge formed his Frontier, digging ginseng and boiling salt.4 legal mind; Sherman’s genial nature and popular At night, Ewing’s sister Abigail taught the lad to touch taught him about life and people.8 As a read, and in 1797 his parents took him “in a canoe member of Ohio’s Supreme Court, Sherman traveled to Aunt [Sarah Ewing] Morgan’s near West Liberty” the state and formed deep friendships with men such so he could go to school with cousin Edward Lloyd as Columbus Delano, a Mount Vernon lawyer who Morgan. Other than this brief schooling, it was the would serve twice in Presidential Cabinets, and magic of books which fed the boy’s intellect. At Samuel Curtis, one of that town’s businessmen. eight he received Aesop’s Fables and The Vicar of Friendship bounds increased when Jacob Parker Wakefield. A Waterford physician lent him The married Sherman’s sister Elizabeth and moved to Aeneid. A Brown University-trained physician Mansfield to open an office there. Another of taught him basic science. And, although they lived Sherman’s relatives, his niece Amelia, married in wilderness, the Ewings were not isolated. A Parker’s partner Robert McComb. This well- mailboy carried packets from Clarksburg to connected network would prove important to the Chillicothe weekly and stopped for the night at the Sherman family.9 Ewings. The latest news was digested by George, a The decisive influence on Tom Ewing was his staunch Federalist, and his brother-in-law “Uncle marriage to “Pa” Beecher’s foster daughter Maria [John] Morgan,” a Jeffersonian. Hot debates were Wills Boyle, a woman of gracious beauty and de rigueur in Tom Ewing’s childhood.5 sparkling personality. This marriage brought him into 270 Neal Gillespie Neal Gillespie Jr. Maria Gillespie James G. Blaine died 1815 born 1772 m m 1766 died 1838 Ephraim Lyon Blaine Eleanor Dougherty m m Thamar Eliz. Purcell John Purcell Gillespie Elizabeth Gillespie Ann Brown born 1797 (Mother Angela, CSC) m Mary Miers Mary Gillespie she m (2) Wm. Phelan born 1820 married her cousin Eleanor Gillespie Maria Wills Boyle Philemon B. Ewing m born 1801 Hugh Boyle m 1829 Ellen Ewing Thomas Ewing born 1824 born 1789 m Cump Sherman Hugh Ewing born 1826 m Henrietta Young Margaret Gillespie Tom Ewing m born 1829 Luke Walpole m (Indiana) Ellen Cox Charley Ewing born 1835 m Virginia Miller (below) Maria Theresa Ewing born 1837 m Col. Steele foster parents Susan Boyle Hampton Denman born 1804 born 1830 m Mayor of Leavenworth Sam Denman Jr. m Mary Young six others Susan Gillespie Frances Beecher born 1789 born 1817 m m 1840 Gen Philemon Beecher Henry Stanberry died 1839 (Zanesville) (US Atty Gen) Maria Beecher Fannie Van Trump mm Philadelphia Van Trump "Gov." F. Moore seven others Mary Gillespie Eleanor Krepps John Krepps Miller Virginia L. Miller m m (Congressman) m John Krepps Judge Eli Miller Charley Ewing (above) (Mt. Vernon) Thomas Ewing Miller John Gillespie Hannah Gillespie Dr. Jonathan Miller m Thomas Miller (Columbus) James Miller Henry Miller Elizabeth Brown Eleanor Irwin mm Judge William Irwin Dr. William Wolfly Foster children of Thomas & Maria Susan Irwin Ewing m William Clark 271 the orbit of Ohio Catholicism and the Maryland elite. exciting. A second generation of able lawyers entered Maria was deeply devout and raised their children the bar and the family circle. Philadelphus Van Trump in the faith. Although Tom Ewing was “a pew holder” married Mary Louise Beecher, whose sister Frances and frequently attended St. Mary’s, he did not had married Henry Stanbery.14 Stanbery was a New become a member until shortly before his death. Yorker who graduated at sixteen from Washington Tom’s rather vague religious positions were lamented College and established himself in Zanesville reading by his wife. She wrote her son Tommy that “Your law with Ewing’s friends Ebenezer Granger and pa was quite sick on Sunday (You know he is always Charles B. Goodard. Stanbery apprenticed law with sick on that day).” Catholicism was the core of Ewing for seven years. When Ohio established the Maria Ewing’s identity.10 office of Attorney General in 1846, Stanbery was Charles Sherman’s untimely death brought the choice. In time he had private offices in Cincinnati Tecumseh Sherman into this orbit. Charles “left his and Washington, but kept his home on the lot behind family poor in everything but friends.” During that Ewing’s in Lancaster and wrote of his friend that “I dreadful week in 1829, his eleven children were owe more to the teaching and example of Tom Ewing parceled out to those friends: to Mount Vernon, to than to any man, living or dead.”15 Mansfield and up the block to the Ewing home, where That example shaped the children. Cump, who “the big man who was the father of his friends” treated sprang from a family “that helped to frame the Cumpy “like one of his own.” Throughout adulthood, Constitution,” moved from a deeply patriot home Cump would sign letters to Tom Ewing into another one.