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The Founding Fathers: Pennsylvania
Fitzsimons (FitzSimons; Fitzsimmons) was born in Ireland in 1741. Coming to America about 1760, he pursued a mercantile career in Philadelphia. The next year, he married Catherine Meade, the daughter of a prominent local merchant, Robert Meade, and not long afterward went into business with one of his brothers-in-law. The firm of George Meade and Company soon became one of the leading commercial houses in the city and specialized in the West India trade.
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Living History with Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett at Fort Boonesborough email:
Daniel@boonesboro.com |
Clymer
was orphaned in 1740, only a year after his birth in Philadelphia. A wealthy
uncle reared and informally educated him and advanced him from clerk to
full-fledged partner in his mercantile firm, which on his death he bequeathed to
his ward. Later Clymer merged operations with the Merediths, a prominent
business family, and cemented the relationship by marrying his senior partner's
daughter, Elizabeth, in 1765.
Franklin
was born in 1706 at Boston. He was the tenth son of a soap and candlemaker. He
received some formal education but was principally self-taught. After serving an
apprenticeship to his father between the ages of 10 and 12, he went to work for
his half-brother James, a printer. In 1721 the latter founded the New England
Courant, the fourth newspaper in the colonies. Benjamin secretly contributed 14
essays to it, his first published writings.
The
son of Jared Ingersoll, Sr., a British colonial official and later prominent
Loyalist, Ingersoll was born at New Haven, CT, in 1749. He received an excellent
education and graduated from Yale in 1766. He then oversaw the financial affairs
of his father, who had relocated from New Haven to Philadelphia. Later, the
youth joined him, took up the study of law, and won admittance to the
Pennsylvania bar.
A
member of the fourth generation of a Pennsylvania Quaker family who had
emigrated from England, Mifflin was born at Philadelphia in 1744, the son of a
rich merchant and local politician. He studied at a Quaker school and then at
the College of Philadelphia (later part of the University of Pennsylvania), from
which he won a diploma at the age of 16 and whose interests he advanced for the
rest of his life.
Of
French and English descent, Morris was born at Morrisania estate, in Westchester
(present Bronx) County, NY, in 1752. His family was wealthy and enjoyed a long
record of public service. His elder half-brother, Lewis, signed the Declaration
of Independence.
Morris
was born at or near Liverpool, England, in 1734. When he reached 13 years of
age, he emigrated to Maryland to join his father, a tobacco exporter at Oxford,
Md. After brief schooling at Philadelphia, the youth obtained employment with
Thomas and Charles Willing's well-known shipping-banking firm. In 1754 he became
a partner and for almost four decades was one of the company's directors as well
as an influential Philadelphia citizen. Wedding Mary White at the age of 35, he
fathered five sons and two daughters.
Wilson
was born in 1741 or 1742 at Carskerdo, near St. Andrews, Scotland, and educated
at the universities of St. Andrews, Glasgow, and Edinburgh. He then emigrated to
America, arriving in the midst of the Stamp Act agitations in 1765. Early the
next year, he accepted a position as Latin tutor at the College of Philadelphia
(later part of the University of Pennsylvania) but almost immediately abandoned
it to study law under John Dickinson.