Benjamin Chew
Benjamin Chew was a fifth-generation American, a Quaker-born legal scholar, a prominent and successful Philadelphia lawyer, head of the Pennsylvania Judiciary System under both Colony and Commonwealth, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Province of Pennsylvania. Chew was well known for his precision and brevity in making legal arguments as well as his excellent memory and knowledge of statutory law, his primary allegiance was to the supremacy of constitution. Trained in law at an early age by Andrew Hamilton, Benjamin Chew inherited his mentor's clients, the descendants of William Penn, including Thomas Penn and his brother Richard Penn, Sr. and their sons Governor John Penn, Richard Penn, Jr. and John Penn. The Penn family was the basis of his private practice, he represented them for six decades, he had a lifelong personal friendship with George Washington, said to have treated Chew's children "as if they were his own." Chew lived and practiced law in Philadelphia four blocks from Independence Hall, provided pro bono his knowledge of substantive law to America's Founding Fathers during the creation of the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Benjamin Chew was the son of Samuel Chew, a physician and first Chief Justice of Delaware, Mary Galloway Chew. He was born in Maryland, at his father's plantation of Maidstone. Benjamin Chew's great-great-grandfather, John Chew, a successful merchant, arrived in Jamestown in 1622 on the ship Charitie; the young Chew took an interest in the field of law at an early age. In 1736, when he was 15 years old, he began to read law in the Philadelphia offices of the former Attorney General of Pennsylvania, Andrew Hamilton the speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives; the year before, Hamilton had won a landmark case in American jurisprudence by his eloquent pro bono defense of the publisher Peter Zenger. It established the precedent of truth as an absolute defense against charges of libel. Chew was influenced by Hamilton's ideas about a free press, the reading materials which his mentor provided him Sir Francis Bacon's Lawtracts, his understanding of English legal history, the Charter of Liberties, enhanced by his studies at London's Middle Temple, fostered Chew's enduring commitment to the civil liberties that are guaranteed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution the right to free speech.
After Hamilton's death in August 1741, Chew sailed to London to study law at the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, one of the four Inns of Court. He began to read what friends recommended, his friend John Dickinson was studying in London, a frequent destination for aspiring generations of young men from North America. Following his father's death, Chew returned to Pennsylvania in 1744, he began to practice law in Dover, while supporting his siblings and stepmother. Although Chew was raised in a Quaker family, he had first broken with Quaker tradition in 1741, when he agreed with his father, who had instructed a grand jury in New Castle on the lawfulness of resistance to an armed force. In 1747, at age 25, Chew went against Quaker tradition when he took the Oath of Attorney in Pennsylvania. Chew moved to Philadelphia in 1754, he continued his legal responsibilities in both Pennsylvania for the rest of his life. After early appointments in the Quaker-dominated government, following his second marriage he went into private practice in 1757.
He was taking a separate path to influence outside the Quaker elite. Chew wed Mary Galloway, his mother's niece, on June 13, 1747, at West River, Maryland, they had five daughters. From 1754 to 1771, Chew and his family lived on Front Street in Philadelphia, he married again to Elizabeth Oswald, daughter of James and Mary Oswald. Elizabeth was the heir to the estate of Captain Joseph Turner. Benjamin and Elizabeth had seven more daughters, two sons. In 1758, Chew joined the Church of England, they worshipped there with their growing family, at St. Peter's Church when they moved out to Germantown; this was part of a process of Anglicization that had begun when he was studying law at the Middle Temple in London. Chew increased both wealth and property holdings when he married Elizabeth Oswald, they held numerous slaves to cultivate their commodity crops. In 1760, on the Chew's property "Whitehall" in Delaware, Richard Allen, was born into slavery. In 1768, recognizing the boy's early genius, Chew sold Allen eight years old, all members of his immediate family to Stokley Sturgis, a known abolitionist and owner of a neighboring property in Delaware.
Richard Allen became a preacher in the Methodist Church in Philadelphia, co-founder of the Free African Society, the founder and first bishop of the African Methodist
Walter Franklin (judge)
Walter Franklin was a Pennsylvania lawyer, state Attorney General, state judge. Franklin was born in 1773, the son of Thomas Franklin, a prosperous merchant; the family moved to Philadelphia in 1775, during the War, Thomas was appointed commissary of prisoners. Franklin was admitted to the bar in Philadelphia county in 1792, age 19, he married Anne Emlen in 1802. Five of their children survived to adulthood, he was appointed state Attorney General in 1809, served until 1810, when Judge John Joseph Henry retired as president judge of the Second Judicial District consisting of York and Dauphin counties, Franklin was appointed to take his place. Franklin was impeached twice by the state House of Representatives, in 1818 and in 1825, for alleged judicial misconduct, but the Senate acquitted him both times. Two of his sons, three of his grandsons, would become members of the Lancaster bar. Of the sons, Thomas E. Franklin would serve two terms as state Attorney General. Franklin died in office. Information about Franklin and family Frank Marshall Eastman.
Courts and lawyers of Pennsylvania: a history, 1623-1923. Volume 3. American Historical Society. Pp. 591–6. Franklin Ellis, Samuel Evans. History of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania: With Biographical Sketches of Many of Its Pioneers and Prominent Men. Everts & Peck. Pp. 234–6
Alma mater
Alma mater is an allegorical Latin phrase for a university, school, or college that one attended. In US usage it can mean the school from which one graduated; the phrase is variously translated as "nourishing mother", "nursing mother", or "fostering mother", suggesting that a school provides intellectual nourishment to its students. Fine arts will depict educational institutions using a robed woman as a visual metaphor. Before its current usage, alma mater was an honorific title for various Latin mother goddesses Ceres or Cybele, in Catholicism for the Virgin Mary, it entered academic usage when the University of Bologna adopted the motto Alma Mater Studiorum, which describes its heritage as the oldest operating university in the Western world. It is related to alumnus, a term used for a university graduate that means a "nursling" or "one, nourished". Although alma was a common epithet for Ceres, Cybele and other mother goddesses, it was not used in conjunction with mater in classical Latin. In the Oxford Latin Dictionary, the phrase is attributed to Lucretius' De rerum natura, where it is used as an epithet to describe an earth goddess: After the fall of Rome, the term came into Christian liturgical usage in association with the Virgin Mary.
"Alma Redemptoris Mater" is a well-known 11th century antiphon devoted to Mary. The earliest documented use of the term to refer to a university in an English-speaking country is in 1600, when the University of Cambridge printer, John Legate, began using an emblem for the university's press; the device's first-known appearance is on the title-page of William Perkins' A Golden Chain, where the Latin phrase Alma Mater Cantabrigia is inscribed on a pedestal bearing a nude, lactating woman wearing a mural crown. In English etymological reference works, the first university-related usage is cited in 1710, when an academic mother figure is mentioned in a remembrance of Henry More by Richard Ward. Many historic European universities have adopted Alma Mater as part of the Latin translation of their official name; the University of Bologna Latin name, Alma Mater Studiorum, refers to its status as the oldest continuously operating university in the world. Other European universities, such as the Alma Mater Lipsiensis in Leipzig, Germany, or Alma Mater Jagiellonica, have used the expression in conjunction with geographical or foundational characteristics.
At least one, the Alma Mater Europaea in Salzburg, Austria, an international university founded by the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in 2010, uses the term as its official name. In the United States, the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, has been called the "Alma Mater of the Nation" because of its ties to the country's founding. At Queen's University in Kingston and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia, the main student government is known as the Alma Mater Society; the ancient Roman world had many statues of the Alma Mater, some still extant. Modern sculptures are found in prominent locations on several American university campuses. For example, in the United States: there is a well-known bronze statue of Alma Mater by Daniel Chester French situated on the steps of Columbia University's Low Library. An altarpiece mural in Yale University's Sterling Memorial Library, painted in 1932 by Eugene Savage, depicts the Alma Mater as a bearer of light and truth, standing in the midst of the personified arts and sciences.
Outside the United States, there is an Alma Mater sculpture on the steps of the monumental entrance to the Universidad de La Habana, in Havana, Cuba. The statue was cast in 1919 by Mario Korbel, with Feliciana Villalón Wilson as the inspiration for Alma Mater, it was installed in its current location in 1927, at the direction of architect Raul Otero. Media related to Alma mater at Wikimedia Commons The dictionary definition of alma mater at Wiktionary Alma Mater Europaea website
Thomas E. Franklin (lawyer)
Thomas Emlen Franklin was a distinguished Pennsylvania lawyer and served two terms as state attorney general. Franklin was born in the son of Walter Franklin and Anne Emlen, his father at the time was serving as state attorney general, upon his father's appointment to a judgeship in 1811, the family moved to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Franklin graduated from Yale College in 1828 and was admitted to the bar in 1831, opening an office in Lancaster, where he resided for the rest of his life. In 1837, he married Serena A. Mayer, they had 11 children. Two sons became lawyers, two daughters married lawyers. Franklin was twice appointed attorney general for the state, he was a delegate to U. S. presidential nomination conventions three times. He declined. In local business, he was a founding director for the Lancaster and Harrisburg Railroad Company, a director of the Farmers' National Bank, president of the Lancaster Fire Insurance Company. Franklin was active in Episcopalian Church affairs, in his years served as chancellor of the diocese for central Pennsylvania.
Annual Report of the American Bar Association. Volume 9. American Bar Association. 1886. Pp. 539–43. Franklin Ellis, Samuel Evans. History of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania: With Biographical Sketches of Many of Its Pioneers and Prominent Men. Everts & Peck. Pp. 234–6. 1838 portrait by Jacob Eichholtz
Find a Grave
Find A Grave is a website that allows the public to search and add to an online database of cemetery records. It is owned by Ancestry.com. It receives and uploads digital photographs of headstones from burial sites, taken by unpaid volunteers at cemeteries. Find A Grave posts the photo on its website; the site was created in 1995 by Salt Lake City resident Jim Tipton to support his hobby of visiting the burial sites of famous celebrities. He added an online forum. Find A Grave was launched as a commercial entity in 1998, first as a trade name and incorporated in 2000; the site expanded to include graves of non-celebrities, in order to allow online visitors to pay respect to their deceased relatives or friends. In 2013, Tipton sold Find A Grave to Ancestry.com, saying that the genealogy company had "been linking and driving traffic to the site for several years. Burial information is a wonderful source for people researching their family history." In a September 30, 2013, press release, Ancestry.com officials said they would "launch a new mobile app, improve customer support, introduce an enhanced edit system for submitting updates to memorials, foreign-language support, other site improvements."As of October 2017, Find A Grave contained over 165 million burial records and 75 million photos.
In March 2017, a beta website for a redesigned Find A Grave was launched at gravestage.com. Public feedback was mixed. Sometime between May 29 and July 10 of that year, the beta website was migrated to new.findagrave.com, a new front end for it was deployed at beta.findagrave.com. In November 2017, the new site became the old site was deprecated. On August 20, 2018, the original Find; the website contains listings of graves from around the world. American cemeteries are organized by state and county, many cemetery records contain Google Maps and photographs of the cemeteries and gravesites. Individual grave records may contain dates and places of birth and death, biographical information and plot information and contributor information. Interment listings are added by individuals, genealogical societies, other institutions such as the International Wargraves Photography Project. Contributors must register as members to submit listings, called memorials, on the site; the submitter may transfer management.
Only the current manager of a listing may edit it, although any member may use the site's features to send correction requests to the listing's manager. Managers may add links to other listings of deceased spouses and siblings for genealogical purposes. Any member may add photographs and notations to individual listings. Members may post requests for photos of a specific grave. Although it does not ask permission from immediate family members before uploading the photos, it will remove and take down photos or a URL for a deceased loved one at the request of an immediate family member. Find A Grave maintains lists of memorials of famous persons by their "claim to fame", such as Medal of Honor recipients, religious figures, educators. Find A Grave exercises editorial control over these listings. Canadian Headstones Interment.net United States National Cemetery System's nationwide gravesite locator Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness Tombstone tourist Official website
Jared Ingersoll
Jared Ingersoll was an American lawyer and statesman from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was a signer of the United States Constitution, he served as DeWitt Clinton's running mate in the 1812 election, but Clinton and Ingersoll were defeated by James Madison and Elbridge Gerry. Born in New Haven, Ingersoll established a legal career in Philadelphia after graduating from Yale College; the son of British colonial official Jared Ingersoll Sr. Ingersoll lived in Europe from 1773 to 1776 to avoid the growing political conflict between Britain and the Thirteen Colonies. In 1778, having committed himself to the cause of American independence, Ingersoll returned to Philadelphia and won election to the Continental Congress. Ingersoll became convinced of the need for a stronger national government than that provided by the Articles of Confederation, he was a delegate to the 1787 Philadelphia Convention. Though seeking amendments to the Articles of Confederation, he supported the new Constitution, produced by the convention.
He served as the Pennsylvania Attorney General from 1791 to 1800 and from 1811 to 1816. He served as the United States Attorney for Pennsylvania and as the city solicitor for Philadelphia, he argued the cases of Chisholm v. Georgia and Hylton v. United States, two of the first cases to appear before the United States Supreme Court. Ingersoll affiliated with the Federalist Party and was disturbed by Thomas Jefferson's victory in the 1800 presidential election. In 1812, the Democratic-Republican Party split between President Clinton; the Federalists decided to support a ticket of Clinton and Ingersoll in hopes of defeating the incumbent president. Madison prevailed in the election. Jared Ingersoll was a supporter of the Revolutionary cause, his training as a lawyer convinced him that the problems of the newly independent states were caused by the inadequacy of the Articles of Confederation. He became an early and ardent proponent of constitutional reform, like a number of his colleagues at the Constitutional Convention, he believed this reform could be achieved by a simple revision of the Articles.
Only after weeks of debate did he come to see that a new document was necessary. His major contribution to the cause of constitutional government came not during the Convention, but during a lengthy and distinguished legal career when he helped define many of the principles enunciated at Philadelphia. Born in New Haven, Ingersoll was the son of Jared Ingersoll, a prominent British official whose strong Loyalist sentiments would lead to his being tarred and feathered by radical Patriots; the younger Ingersoll spent more than eighteen months in Paris, where he formed the acquaintance of Benjamin Franklin. In 1765, the year the Stamp Act was imposed on the colonies in America, the British Crown appointed the elder Jared Ingersoll as Stamp Master, the colonial agent in London, for the colony of Connecticut; as the next few months passed and animosity over the Stamp Act grew, Ingersoll became the most hated man in the Colony. On August 21 of that year the Sons of Liberty hung his effigy in New London, Connecticut and in Norwich, Virginia.
He wrote an account of Isaac Barre's speech made during the Parliamentary debate on the Stamp Act to the governor of Connecticut, Thomas Fitch. He would be involved in a controversial role as the agent who enforced the resulting Stamp Act in Connecticut; the younger Ingersoll completed Hopkins Grammar School in New Haven in 1762, graduated from Yale College in 1766, studied law in Philadelphia, was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1773. Although by training and inclination a Patriot sympathizer, the young Ingersoll shied away from the cause at the outset because of a strong sense of personal loyalty to his distinguished father. On his father's advice, he sought to escape the growing political controversy at home by retiring to London to continue his study of the law at the Middle Temple School and to tour extensively through Europe, he spent more than eighteen months in Paris. Shortly after the colonies declared their independence, Ingersoll renounced his family's views, made his personal commitment to the cause of independence, returned home.
In 1778 he arrived in Philadelphia as a confirmed Patriot. With the help of influential friends he established a flourishing law practice, shortly after he entered the fray as a delegate to the Continental Congress. In 1781 Ingersoll married Elizabeth Pettit. Always a supporter of strong central authority in political affairs, he became a leading agitator for reforming the national government in the postwar years, preaching the need for change to his friends in Congress and to the legal community. At the Convention, Ingersoll was counted among those who favored revision of the existing Articles of Confederation, but in the end he joined with the majority and supported a plan for a new federal government. Despite his national reputation as an attorney, Ingersoll participated in the Convention debates, although he attended all sessions. Once the new national government was created, Ingersoll returned to the law. Except for a few excursions into politics—he was a member of Philadelphia's Common Council, and, as a stalwart Federalist who considered the election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800 a "great subversion," he ran unsuccessfully for Vice President on the Federalist ticket in 1812—his public career centered on legal affairs.
He served as attorney general of Pennsylvania, as Philadelphia's city solicitor, as U. S. district attorney
Whig Party (United States)
The Whig Party was a political party active in the middle of the 19th century in the United States. Four presidents belonged to the party while in office, it emerged in the 1830s as the leading opponent of Jacksonian democracy, pulling together former members of the National Republican and the Anti-Masonic Party. It had some links to the upscale traditions of the long-defunct Federalist Party. Along with the rival Democratic Party, it was central to the Second Party System from the early 1840s to the mid-1860s, it formed in opposition to the policies of President Andrew Jackson and his Democratic Party. It became a formal party within his second term, receded influence after 1854. In particular terms, the Whigs supported the supremacy of Congress over the presidency and favored a program of modernization and economic protectionism to stimulate manufacturing, it appealed to entrepreneurs, planters and the emerging urban middle class, but had little appeal to farmers or unskilled workers. It included many active Protestants and voiced a moralistic opposition to the Jacksonian Indian removal.
Party founders chose the "Whig" name to echo the American Whigs of the 18th century who fought for independence. The political philosophy of the American Whig Party was not related to the British Whig party. Historian Frank Towers has specified a deep ideological divide: The Whig Party nominated several presidential candidates in 1836. General William Henry Harrison of Ohio was nominated in 1840, former Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky in 1844, General Zachary Taylor of Louisiana in 1848, General Winfield Scott of New Jersey in 1852 and the last nominee, former President Millard Fillmore from New York in 1856. In its two decades of existence, the Whig Party had two of its candidates and Taylor, elected president and both died in office. John Tyler succeeded to the presidency after Harrison's death in 1841, but was expelled from the party that year. Millard Fillmore, who became President after Taylor's death in 1850, was the last Whig President; the party fell apart because of internal tension over the expansion of slavery to the territories.
With deep fissures in the party on this question, the anti-slavery faction prevented the nomination for a full term of its own incumbent President Fillmore in the 1852 presidential election—instead, the party nominated General Scott. Most Whig Party leaders quit politics or changed parties; the Northern voter base gravitated to the new Republican Party. In the South, most joined the Know Nothing Party, which unsuccessfully ran Fillmore in the 1856 presidential election, by which time the Whig Party had become defunct having endorsed Millard Fillmore's candidacy; some former Whigs became Democrats. The Constitutional Union Party experienced significant success from conservative former Whigs in the Upper South during the 1860 presidential election. Whig ideology as a policy orientation persisted for decades, played a major role in shaping the modernizing policies of the state governments during Reconstruction; the name "Whig" repeated the term that Patriots used to refer to themselves during the American Revolution.
It indicated hostility to the king. Despite the identical name it did not directly derive from the British Whig Party; the American Whigs were modernizers who saw President Andrew Jackson as "a dangerous man on horseback"—like a king—with a "reactionary opposition" to the forces of social and moral modernization. The Democratic-Republicans who formed the Whig Party, led by Kentucky Senator Henry Clay, drew on a Jeffersonian tradition of compromise, balance in government and territorial expansion combined with national unity and support for a Federal transportation network and domestic manufacturing. Casting their enemy as "King Andrew", they sought to identify themselves as modern-day opponents of governmental overreaching. Despite the apparent unity of Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans from 1800 to 1824, the American people preferred partisan opposition to popular political agreement; as Jackson purged his opponents, vetoed internal improvements and killed the Second Bank of the United States, alarmed local elites fought back.
In 1831, Henry Clay started planning a new party. He defended national rather than sectional interests. Clay's plan for distributing the proceeds from the sale of lands in the public domain among the states was intended to serve the nation by providing the states with funds for building roads and canals, which would stimulate growth and knit the sections together. However, his Jacksonian opponents distrusted the federal government and opposed all federal aid for internal improvements and they again frustrated Clay's plan. Jacksonians promoted opposition to the National Bank and internal improvements and support of egalitarian democracy, state power and hard money; the Tariff of Abominations of 1828 had outraged Southern feelings—the South's leaders held that the high duties on foreign imports gave an advantage to the North. Clay's own high tariff schedule of 1832 further disturbed them as did his stubborn defense of high duties as necessary to his American System. However, Clay moved to pass the Compromise of 1833, which met Southern complaints by a gradual reduction of the rates on imports to a maximum of twenty percent.
Controlling the Senate for a while, Whigs passed a censure motion denouncing Jackson's arrogant assumption of executive power in the face of the true will of the people as represented by Congress. The Whig Party began to take shape in 1833. Clay had run as a National Republican against J
