Ellis: Generation Two, Immigrant Ellis was born in Wales in 1687
and was either 12 or 13 years old when he traveled with his family on the
Robert and Elizabeth to Pennsylvania. Ellis was John Hugh's third child,
following Jane (1683) and Rowland (1685). Ellis married Jane Foulke in
August 1713 while still living at Gwynedd. Jane Foulke, who was three
years older than Ellis, came from the same area (Gwynedd) of Wales and 
also had migrated on the 1698 voyage of the Robert and Elizabeth. (8) Ellis
and Jane had seven children. The third, a daughter, apparently died at birth
and remained un-named. Ellis died in 1764 at age 76 or 77 and Jane 
followed two years later at age 81. 

 

          In the Oley Valley, Ellis clearly made his living by farming and

operating his sawmill, but he appears to have been more prominent for his

leadership role in the local Exeter Society of Friends. Records indicate that

 Ellis was instrumental in the success of the Society of Friend's Exeter

Meeting (located in Oley Valley) during the middle 18th century. He was

characterized as the most prominent minister, or "Weightiest Friend" in

Quaker terms. His memorialist wrote of him that he embodied the Quaker

ideal of charity, commitment, and effort. A many-paragraphed

commemoration in Quaker records uses phrases such as "good example,"

"meek and loving," "instructively cheerful," "affectionate husband," "tender

parent," and "kind master."

 

            At the same time, he was "...a lover of good order in the church, and

well knew the dangerous tendency of undue liberty." This referred to the

Quaker code that held members to account for misconduct. Ellis, for

example probably participated in deliberations regarding one of his own

sons, William, who was dismissed from Exeter Meeting membership in

1754, after three disciplinary episodes due to his excessive proclivity to

drink.

 

            That Ellis Hughes was the "Weightiest Friend" meant, in my

judgment, that he was an important leader in the Exeter Friends, Oley

Valley, Pennsylvania community during the apex of Quaker influence in

Pennsylvania and in America. At the time , religion was almost

indistinguishable from government.

 

            Ellis took ill, according to Quaker records, at the 1764 funeral of his

son (and our next ancestor), John, and died eleven days later. Quaker

records list them both as being buried in the Exeter Meeting burial ground.

 

_______________________________________________________________________

The Will abstract:

 

            "Ellis Hugh, Formerly Oley, now Exeter, date Jan.5, 1764, probate Jan. 27,

1764.  Provides for wife Jane.  To son Samuel plantation and saw mill etc.

whereon he lives in Exeter containing 162 acres 54 perches.  To son Edward

plantation etc. where he lives containing 96 acres 38 perches.  To grandson

George Hugh, son of John, deceased plantation etc. where my son lately

lived containing 52 acres 22 perches, he allowing his mother Martha Hugh

1/3 of the profits during her life.  To Margaret wife of Samuel Lee L5,

having been advanced.  Son-in-law Samuel Lee and sons Samuel and Edward

executors.  Codicil  --  same date, gives to son William and revokes legacy

of land to grandson George Hugh, and gives it to all the children of son

John, vis:  George, Jane, Eleanor, and Samuel, allowing George two shares.

Letters to Samuel and Edward Hugh.  Witness Jesse Willets, William Boone,

James Starr, and Abel Thomas."

 

 

In this, grandson George Hugh was, of course, our next ancestor.  He would

have been 20 (almost 21) years old at the time of Ellis's death in 1764.

He is the one who married Martha Boone, and then moved to the

Catawissa/Roaring Creek area after it was founded in about 1774.

 

I think that the L5 (5 pounds British currency) given to Margaret was not

an insignificant sum in those days when cash was not plentiful.  It's not

clear how much went to William, who had been ousted from the Society of

Friends in 1754 for excessive drinking.

 

The "...mother Martha Hugh."  in this was John's second wife.  George's

birth mother had been Hannah Boone, but she died early  --  when George was

only three years old  --  and he undoubtedly knew his mother as Martha

(Cole) Hugh, John's second wife.

___________________________________________________________________________

 

 

See where they are actually buried!

            After Ellis' death, Jane (Foulke) Hughes lived with their daughter,

Margaret, and son-in-law, Samuel Lee of Oley until she died in 1766. This

Samuel Lee is in the ancestry line (via marriages) of Robert E. Lee, the

 Confederate Civil War General. Ironically, marriages through the Boones

also establish a Hughes relationship to Abraham Lincoln. It's doubly ironic,

in my view, that these two war leaders, on opposite sides of the U.S.'s

greatest war, came from pacifist Quaker roots.

 

          John: Generation Three, Pennsylvania John was the first in our

line of Hugheses born on the American continent. His birth in the Gwynedd

area in March 1714 appears to have pushed the bounds of propriety, coming

as it did just seven and one-half months after his parents marriage. (9) After

Joining with his family's move to the Oley Valley in 1731, John married

Hannah Boone in November 1742. Twenty two year-old Hannah was one of

George Boone's daughters, and a first cousin to Daniel Boone. John and

Hanna had two children before she died in March 1746. John's second

marriage was to Martha Cole.

 

            It is not clear that farming was this second John's main source of

income in Oley valley. Although a landowner, maps show that he also

owned a tavern and a tannery.

 

            John's relationship to George Boone, his first father-in-law, led him

into positions of responsibility in the local Oley Valley government during

the last 12 years of his life. George Boone was Oley Valley's first  Justice of

the Peace, appointed in 1728. Justice of the Peace was the most powerful

local official, supervising the other county and township officers, in

addition to serving as judge in the legal system. George Boone also was

instrumental in bringing a petition to the Philadelphia County court in 1741

to create Exeter Township, so named after the Boones' home in Exeter,

Devonshire, England. (10) John thus became part of a local Boone political

network in the 1750's and 1760's during which Boones and Boone relations

 dominated county and provincial assembly offices. John served as Berks

County Collector of Excise during 1752 -1763 and as a County

Commissioner from 1762 until he died in 1764.

___________________________________________________________________

 What is a Township?

 

 

          William Penn's 1681 charter decreed that "townships" would be

Pennsylvania's primary form of local government. Creating a township

gave local residents the right to have the king's peace upheld in their

 community, the poor cared for, stray livestock controlled, and public roads

provided and maintained. To achieve these goals, township status brought

 with it the right to have a constable, a tax collector, a supervisor of

highways, an overseer of the poor, and a keeper of the pound (who rounded

up and secured stray livestock).

___________________________________________________________________

 

           John died in March 1764 at age 49 (almost 50), and was buried at the

 Exeter Meeting House burial ground, according to Quaker records. John left

no will when he died, leading me to believe that his death was sudden and

unexpected. In December 1766, his son George (our next ancestor)

petitioned the Orphan's Court of Philadelphia County to divide his father's

estate in Exeter Township. The estate consisted of about 190 acres, and was

 ordered divided "according to the value." In addition to George, the heirs

including George's sister, Jane (Hughes) Boone, and some younger half

sisters from John's second marriage.

 

___________________________________________________________________

 

Leading up to the Revolutionary War, England passed its infamous Stamp Tax in

1765, and the grant by Britain to the East India Company of a monopoly on tea

trade led to the "Boston Tea Party" in 1773.

___________________________________________________________________

 

 

            Historic Oley: The U.S.National Park Service added Oley Township

to it's National Register of Historic Places in 1983. The Park Service also

has designated about three dozen Oley Valley houses and other buildings,

including the Exeter Friends Meeting House build in 1759, as architectural

land marks under the protection of its Historic American Buildings Survey

(HABS). (11) That these buildings have survived is due mainly (in my

opinion) to their construction from Pennsylvania fieldstone, which consists

of large, flat, irregularly shaped rocks that the farmers must have picked

ceaselessly for a couple of centuries to try to make their fields easier to work.

 

            The existing town of Oley was initially a "company hamlet" that was

established to house the many workers required to operate Oley Forge. Oley

Forge refined cast iron into wrought iron that could be used by blacksmiths.

My own observation (in September 1996) is that family farming still is

important in Oley Valley, but that the area's small iron ore deposits have

 long since been mined out and the forges closed. (12) Oley now is a town with

one-street about three-fourths of a mile long. The houses that line the street

are mainly of fieldstone, and are lived in and well kept. There are no trashy

modern establishments (such as McDonalds), probably due to the influence

 of the National Park Service.

 

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        (8)  She was one of the nine children who Edward Foulke said escaped
the "sore mortality through the favor and mercy of Devine Providence,"
in his account of the voyage on the Robert and Elizabeth.
        (9)  This sort of "early" birth has not been all that uncommon among
first born Hugheses. 
        (10)  The area was still in Philadelphia County. Berks County wasn't
created out of the Oley Valley section of Philadelphia County until
1752.
        (11)  HABS records are available for public use at the Library of 
Congress (Prints and Photographs Division) in Washington, DC. 
        (12)  Within about 10 miles is the Hopewell Furnace National Historic 
site.
 
 

 


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e-mail: hugh875@comcast.net Last updated 7/03/08 by R R Hughes