HISTORICALLY SPEAKING
Published in 1888 and written by cousins, George S. L. Ward, U.S.A. and Louis Richards of Reading, Pa., A fort on the hill at Allentown confirmed by a contemporary map would explain the town’s immunity during the Revolutionary war.
III. SAMUEL, born February 12, 1727. He resided for many years at Allentown, where he held considerable estate, part of which was left to him by his father. His name is found upon a list of Associators organized in 1778 for home defence against the enemy and the Tory marauding parties and refugees with which Monmouth County was especially infested during the Revolutionary war.
(Just previous to the battle of Monmouth, which was fought June 28, 1778, a column of the British army under Lord Cornwallis took up a position at Allentown, but, with exception, the village had immunity from the presence of the enemy during the war, and it suffered but little in comparison with other sections of the county from the violence of either a foreign or domestic foe.)
The original paper is in the office of the Secretary of State, at Trenton. He was appointed on the three Commissioners of Forfeited Estates for Burlington County by an Act of the New Jersey Assembly passed June 5, 1777, entitled "An Act of Free and General Pardon and for other purposes therein mentioned." The latter part of his life was spent in Burlington County, his death occurring in Chesterfield Township, near Bordentown, in November, 1813, in the 88th year of his age. His remains are interred in the Hopkinson Burial ground. He was twice married: 1st, May 23, 1765, to Sarah Hyne, by whom he had three children, Elizabeth, born February 10, 1766, and Samuel born February 2, 1769, who both died in infancy and Ann, born February 2, 1768, who married, November 30, 1790, Samuel Forman, (an officer of the New Jersey line, and belonged to the Monmouth family of Formans, distinguished for their military services in the war of Independence) and had one son, Samuel Rogers [Forman], born November 3, 1791; died January 27, 1793.
Sarah Hyne Rogers died October 1, 1770, aged 32, and is buried in the Episcopal [Lakeview] ground at Allentown. Samuel Rogers married, 2d, December 24, 1773, Mary Kirkbride, sister of Joseph Kirkbride. She died March 11, 1800, in her 72d year, without issue. As he had no children living at the time of his death, he divided his estate among collateral relatives and his friend and housekeeper, Lydia Bunting. His residence, a handsome old mansion, a little out of Bordentown, on the Crosswicks Road, erected by him in 1788, is still occupied by one of his nieces, Miss Maria H. Nutt.
IV. ISAAC, born February 25, 1728. He resided all his life at Allentown, and engaged in the mercantile business, being also a large land-owner, and of considerable estate. His family residence, a quaint one-story frame dwelling, was situated on the main street, between the two taverns. It was torn down in 1878, having stood for considerably over a century.
Mr. Rogers was an active promoter of the patriotic cause at the outset of the Revolutionary struggle, his death occurring before the events of the war had demonstrated the success of the project of Independence. He was a member of the Committee of Allentown, which was in correspondence on public affairs with the Council of Safety of Pennsylvania. In a communication of the latter, bearing the date of October 14, 1776, they take occasion to refer to the well-known attachment of the Committee to the cause of America, and their readiness to render any essential service to their country (Pa. Archives, 2d Series, I., 633.)
Like his father, Isaac Rogers was a zealous Episcopalian and reared his family in that communion. He died in April, 1777, aged 49. He married September 29, 1757, Hannah Tallman, of Shrewsbury, by whom he had eight children. His wife, who survived him, afterwards married, 1778, Colonel Joseph Haight, of Colts Neck. They had no issue. The children of Isaac and Hannah Tallman Rogers were: 1. Samuel, born July 11, 1758; died in infancy; 2. Benjamin, born October 27, 1759; married, 1784, Helena Reading, daughter of Daniel and Mary Ried Reading of Flemington, by whom he had seven children:
(1.Euphemia, born September 23, 1785; married Samuel G[ardiner] Wright; had four children; died March 29, 1876; 2.Isaac, born November, 1786; died 1809, unmarried; 3.Eliza, born 1788; died 1829, unmarried; 4.&5. Robert and Sarah, born 1790; the former died 1864, unmarried, and the latter married Henry Bostwick, Professor of Languages in the University of New York, and died in 1830, without issue; 6.James, born November 25, 1792; married February 22, 1816, Mary, daughter of Ezekiel and Anna Robbins; had four children; died December 20, 1868; 7.Helena, born January, 1794; married John C. Chambers; had five children; died November 4, 1870. Benjamin Rogers died of fever at Reading, Pa., in the autumn of 1794, while serving in the expedition against the "Whiskey Insurrection" in Western Pennsylvania, in the capacity of a non-commissioned officer of the New Jersey militia. His widow, Helena Reading Rogers, afterwards married Captain James Montgomery, and had three children, John, Esther, and William R., Major U.S.A., and subsequently Brigadier-General U.S.V.),
[Benjamin] died in 1794; 3. James, born January 14, 1763of whom further notice is mademarried February 16, 1779, Harriet Luttrell; had seven children; died May 29, 1791; 4. Elizabeth, born August 22, 1764, married James Wilson; had one daughter, Mary, who died unmarried; 5. Mary, born July 17, 1767; married April 6, 1797, Lloyd Wharton, son of Thomas Wharton, Jr., President of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, by his first wife Susanna, daughter of Thomas Lloyd; no issue; 6. Sarah, born August 5, 1769; married February 4, 1790, William Haight, son of Colonel Joseph Haight, who married the widow of Isaac Rogers; had four children, Thomas Griffith; Joseph; Marianne, who married John E. Conover, and Charles, died August 1, 1799; 7. Samuel, born August 12, 1772, married, 1st, December 14, 1797, Helena Hendrickson; had by her two children; 2d, July 30, 1809, Sarah, daughter of Burnet Montgomery; had by her seven children; died about 1836; 8. Ann, born January 21, 1774; married Stephen Sicard.
V. MARY, born February 13, 1730; married Joseph Kirkbride. Colonel Kirkbride was a native of Pennsylvania, of Quaker ancestry, and a grandson of Joseph Kirkbride, who was one of the original settlers of Bucks County, in 1682. He was a member of the Provincial Convention of Deputies of 1774, and of the Convention of 1776, which framed the first Constitution of the State; served in the General Assembly from 1776 to 1778, and was Lieutenant of the County of Bucks from 1777 to 1780, in which latter capacity he was charged with the duty of raising the various levies for the Continental service. He also commanded, in 1775, the First Battalion of the Bucks County Associators. In 1778, while the British occupied Philadelphia, the lower part of Bucks County was greatly infested with Tories, who were supported and encouraged in their depredations upon their neighbors by the enemy in the city. Colonel Kirkbride’s activity in the cause of Independence excited the special hostility of the disaffected. The British burned his handsome residence and all his other buildings at "Bellvue," opposite Bordentown in the month of May, at the same time they destroyed the property of his brother-in-law, Colonel Borden. In a communication addressed shortly afterwards to President Wharton, of the Supreme Executive Council, (Pa. Archives, 1st Series, VI., 503.) Colonel Kirkbride attributes this act to the malice of a neighbor, without indicating the individual.
("The captain of the party and several of the officers informed that Miss Polly Riche, sometime in the city with the enemy, daughter of Mr. Thomas Riche who lives opposite Bordentown, made them promise to burn Colonel Kirkbride’s house before they returned from the expedition." "Pennsylvania Packet," June 6, 1778. Mr. Charles Biddle, afterwards Vice-President of the State, who had shortly before this commanded an armed brig which lay in the Delaware, off Bordentown, to guard the stream, and who had enjoyed the hospitality of both Colonel Kirkbride and Mr. Riche, being much in the society of the daughters of the latter, discredits the malicious agency imputed to Miss Mary Riche in the affair of the destruction of Colonel Kirkbride’s property, considering it inconsistent with the well-known amiability of her character, though he admits she had good reason to detest Kirkbride, who had her father, (a noted Tory,) taken, when he was ill of the gout, and confined in Newtown jail. "Autobiography of Charles Biddle," 102.)
He then removed permanently to Bordentown, and built a large brick mansion on the river bank, at the end of main street [Farnsworth Ave.], which is still standing, and which, with some subsequent additions, has been occupied for many years as a young ladies’ seminary. (The noted Thomas Paine, who, like himself, was a zealous Whig, and had employed his literary talents with marked effect in the patriotic cause, often visited Colonel Kirkbride at his residence here, and traditions of the animated incidents of his sojourn in the village are still handed down Bordentown.) Colonel Kirkbride died October 26, 1803, aged 72, and a monument over his remains in the Hopkinson ground commemorates his services in the cause of the country. Mary Rogers Kirkbride, his wife died in 1808, aged 78. They had no issue.
Historically Speaking is a regular column presented by John Fabiano, president of the Allentown-Upper Freehold Historical Society. For information about the historical society, send e-mail to [email protected].