Bad news, good news, bad news, good news...

Unfortunately I must admit an error in my earlier research. Bad news! The General Wayne Inn of Merion, Pennsylvania-- with its colorful history of Edgar Allen Poe, ghosts, and murder-- is not a part of our Harris history.

But, good news! My Chester County pal (thanks, Dan!) was able to ascertain the correct location of Campbell Harris' General Wayne Inn, and it was located in Frazer, East Whiteland township.

Now the bad news. Dan reports "This building has been abandoned for years. It has been on the market for years and once someone bought it and was going to convert it into a store front. Nothing ever became of it. I think it is in disrepair by now. "

But here's good news for those of us who live a world away. You can sit on your rump and still SEE the building that Mary Harris grew up in, and the home to Mary's father Campbell Harris and mother Jane Lee!!! Mary was born in 1811 and the family moved to New York in 1817, and it looks like the family lived here during that time. Here it is, and if you click the arrows, you can move around, get different views of the building, and take a tour of the neighborhood.


View Larger Map

More from Joe...

"

(Do you think he would mind me referring to him as Joe???) I don't know how it happened, but I've overlooked this before. Another Joseph Smith Harris history, with lots of additional information on our ancestors. Stephen Harris (1798-1851), Joe's dad, was brother to our Campbell Harris (1781-1853). More later, but the whole book is available for free at Google books.

Here's a great place to spend an hour!

Part of the Joseph Smith Harris collection at Yale includes photographs, several dozen of which are available online here. These photographs are fascinating and you will love them, even if you aren't connected to the Harris family!!!

Harris descendents are the luckiest people in the world!

I'm a newbie at genealogy research. BUT.... I doubt that finds like this often happen for most folks looking into their family's history. And now it has happened a second time! The personal papers belonging to the aforementioned Joseph Smith Harris are held at Yale University (Yale??? Well, that's too bad!)

Here are a couple of lines from the collection's description and I think you will agree that there might be terrific information for Harris descendents in these papers:

The correspondence is arranged chronologically and consists primarily of letters by Harris to his family... Harris's letters for 1848-53, written to his mother and siblings, mention visits to relatives and journeys to and from school.

This collection is open to the public, so I guess there'll be a trip to New Haven in the future.

Homage to Joe

Anyone with a connection to the Hooper/Harris lines needs to pay homage to Joseph Smith Harris (1836-1910). Harris was first cousin to our Mary Harris and nephew to Campbell Harris, and he was the one who so faithfully documented her weight (220 lbs). Hey, that's my great-great-great grandmother you were talking about!

Harris wrote two detailed genealogy histories of the Harris family, both of which have previously been discussed. They are here and here. I am SO grateful to have these detailed, interesting histories of ancestors who-- without these documents-- would be unknown and forgotten forever. Thank you so much, Joseph Smith Harris.

Seeing the detailed works on family history that Harris authored, I assumed he didn't do much with his time, other than work on family genealogy. Well that couldn't be further from the truth! Take a look at his Wikipedia page and you will agree that Harris can be forgiven for his snarky comments about his cousin Mary.

And here's a very brief biography of Harris' professional life:

Joseph S. Harris was a railroad surveyor and topographer, a land surveyor, an astronomer, and a mathematician, during the period 1853 to 1870. He was employed by the North Pennsylvania Railroad, the Kentucky Geological Survey, the U.S. Coast Survey, and the U.S./Canadian Northwest Boundary Survey prior to the Civil War. During the Civil War he advised Admirals Farragut and Porter, and General Butler for the New Orleans campaign. After the war he was a civil and mining engineer for coal mines and railroads in Pennsylvania, later he became an executive officer for numerous railroads, including the Central Railroad of New Jersey.

This passage is from the U.S. Army Military History Institute Carlisle Barracks where a copy of the "Autobiography of Joseph Smith Harris" is held. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that Joe's autobiography is available online or elsewhere.

Francis Lee, the Indian Queen, and Elizabeth Wilson

There's a TON of information online about Francis Lee. The first story I'll point you to is this, as told here a horrific story about a woman who was unjustly accused, convicted, and executed for killing her babies. This version of the story indicates that the woman was a relative of Francis Lee. (In my limited research, I haven't been able to confirm the kinship and it is unclear to me how they would be related.)

Evidently, this story is well known and notorious, with lots of different versions. All of the versions indicate that the Indian Queen Hotel in Philadelphia was involved, which many sources indicate that Francis Lee owned at the time... so we can at least confirm that Francis Lee figured into this infamous story.

Francis Lee of Carrickfergus Antrim Ireland

Here is a picture of the Carrickfergus castle in Ireland, near where Francis Lee was born in 1749. He emigrated to America around 1770. Some sources say he eloped with Jane Alexander, marrying her on the ship. He landed in Philadelphia where he prospered in real estate and other entrepreneurial activities. He was a private in the Revolutionary War.

Francis moved to Chester County after 1796. He was an important guy in Chester County, a major landowner and breeder of horses, and he was appointed Justice for the area by the governor in 1800.

Francis Lee and Jane Alexander had eleven children. Only Jane Lee and three of her siblings survived to adulthood; five died at less than 2 years of age. Jane Alexander died around age 35. Francis Lee married at least twice more after the death of Jane Alexander.

An educated woman!

A History of the Moravian Seminary for Young Ladies At Bethlehem, PA

Jane Lee and her sister Eleanora (in other records spelled Eleanor) were educated at the Moravian Seminary for Young Ladies at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. This type of higher education for women was virutally non-existent at the end of the 18th century. My guess is that Jane Lee, born in 1781, attended this school in the mid 1790s.

I found this passage about a young girl leaving her home to receive her education at this school, which I believe may be reminiscent of Jane Lee's experience:

By 1800, Pittsburgh had a population of only 2,400. Consequently, educational opportunities for girls were still very limited, and some traveled east to boarding school:

[Eliza Leet Shields'] grandmother . . . in 1800 . . . was taken by her father, an officer of the revolution, from her home in Western Pennsylvania on a mule, over the Allegheny Mountains, her father riding beside her and two attendants following behind, with her wardrobe, packed in paniers, a blue satin pelisse being one of the articles, which I remember she never forgot to speak of as having been very much mussed by the close packing. She attended a school at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, kept by Moravian Sisters, where in addition to the usual branches of English, she was taught to cook, sweep, embroider beautifully, paint in oils and play on the piano.

Tracing its institutional history to 1742, Moravian is America’s sixth oldest college, after Harvard, William and Mary, St. John’s (Annapolis), Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania.

The plot thickens: the Francis Lee family

One of the first names I entered on my family tree was "Jane Lee". Jane was the mother to our (large) Mary Harris Hooper. Other than her name, I didn't have a shred of additional information. No parents, no date of birth, no nothing!

I remember thinking at the time that Jane was certainly a small, thin, sickly woman from a poor family. My reason for thinking this? Because I knew a kid in elementary school named Randy Lee, and he was poor, thin, and sickly.

In the Harris Family History, this is all that was said about Jane:

"(Campbell Harris' wife,) Jane Lee, was a daughter of Francis Lee, born in Antrim Ireland, who came to America about 1775, and Jane Alexander. The Lees were at the time of Jane's marriage residents of East Whiteland. She died February 25, 1846."

This abbreviated entry was another reason why I assumed that Jane's pedigree wasn't too impressive, as Joseph Harris, the author of the Harris family history, writes at length about the important families that the Harris line married into. As you see, Jane Lee received only two sentences in the Harris history.

I did a couple of quick searches on Jane Lee, but other than the above information, could find nothing about Jane or her family. Until this weekend. Come to find out... she was definitely not from a poor family and the status of the Lees seems to equal that of the Harris family. More on the Lee family in the next entries.

Photo above is of Francis Bazley Lee, grand-nephew of Jane Lee Harris. Tons of Lee genealogy in this history written by him: Genealogical and Personal Memorial of Mercer County, New Jersey By Francis Bazley Lee

The Harris Connection to the General Wayne Inn

Campbell Harris (1781 to 1853) is my great-great-great-great grandfather, and the father to our (large) Mary Harris, husband of Sanford. Joseph Smith Harris, Campbell's nephew, wrote two books on the Harris family genealogy. Here are excerpts from the books regarding Campbell and the General Wayne Inn.


Notes on the Ancestry of the Children of Joseph Smith Harris and Delia Silliman Brodhead By Joseph Smith Harris: (pg. 17)



This entry references Campbell's father, William Harris. This entire book is available for free via Google Books at the above link. The following is on page 19:




Joseph Smith Harris also references Campbell Harris and the General Lee in the aforementioned Harris Family History" (page 47).

"Campbell Harris was a farmer. In his early married life he had a farm of forty acres in East Whiteland, Chester county, and was proprietor of the General Wayne inn, on the Philadelphia and Lancaster turnpike."

It would appear from these entries that Campbell's young children possibly grew up in the Inn. Mary Harris was born in 1811; the Harris family history indicates that Campbell moved to Geneseo in 1817. Mary would have been 6 years old when the family moved.

ANOTHER! Sill Standing! Former Residence of an Ancestor!

Update! Posting in error. See this.

How many 21st century Americans can see (in person or on the internet) the residences of their 19th century ancestors? Probably not many, but I've uncovered the second for those lucky enough to be descended from the Hooper and Harris families!

First there was the Hooper House in Belle Plaine Minnesota, world famous for its second story outhouse. And now there is the General Wayne Inn in Merion, Pennsylvania, even more world famous (infamous?) than the Hooper House! This post will provide a little information about the General Wayne Inn, and in my next post I'll detail the sources for the Harris connection.

Now a synagogue, the General Wayne Inn dates to 1704. Plenty of famous guests spent time there, including George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and William Penn. Edgar Allen Poe supposedly wrote The Raven at the Inn.

For two centuries, the General Wayne Inn has been famous for the legends of its ghosts. Its been the subject of serious investigations, including this one (can someone please read it and let me know if they believe there are ghosts there?) There's also this YouTube video, from NBC's Unsolved Mysteries series. Lots of photos and a detailed history of the Inn and the ghosts here.

The A&E series "City Confidential" featured the Inn in its story on a 1996 murder involving the property's owners. Here's a synopsis of the show and the crime.

(photo from the Lower Merion Historical Society)