The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1886-09-24
Gleanings from Ye OIden Time
The wilson's OF the Last Century.
For The Egis and Intellgencer.
No.3.


who removed from Anne Arundel, we have but
meagre information. He was born about 17a)
and was farmer. That he favored the struggle
for independence 10 as great an extent, perhaps
as could reasonably be expected of him as dis
ciple OF George Fox, is proved by an official doc
ument signed, Richard Dallam, 1t. H'fd coun-
ty," certifying that civilian Wilson has procur-
ed soldier for the American army agreeable to
Act Of Congress" He certainly, however, did
not act in that great DRAMA the aggressive role of
those equally staunch Quakers, his brother Hem
ry and the latters son of the same name. both of
approximation in that supreme crisis, despite
their evangel of peace. He was not a member of
the Revolutionary Committee and his name APP
pears but once in its proceedings, when he ia
summoned as witness to refute charge made
against another Quaker of overt disloyalty to the
patriot cause. He had two sons, William and
Samuel. and one daughter, Rachel, who had the
misfortune to lose her eyesight in infancy or
early youth. 1t appears from his will that he
lived on tract Of land called Aquila's Inherit
ance. This tract was long owned and resided on
by Rev. William Finney, and is now the property
of Mr.. Joseph Beaman.
William Wilson died in 1880. After making
comfortable provision in his will for his wife
plantation and an adjoining tract called Good
NeiRhborhood Enlarged to his younger son Sam
and the remaining 400 to his son William; of his
thirty-three negroes, twenty-seven are distribut-
ed among his three children; one is left to his
wife as servant-maid and tiye-four of whom
are old couples are Ito be freed as soon as the
balance of my debt TO John Harris for the tract
called Good Neghborhood enlarged is paid aud
not BEFORE" Each of his sons is required to
build on the land left him house for one of the
two old couples, and to set apart twenty acres of
land thereof for their use. They are also to have
COW and calf each. two or three sheep, and q
SOW and pigs. The single one who is to be freed
is to get COW and calf, but no land. L mention
these particulars to show that good old Quakers
OF century ago-and William Wilson was as
good as the best of them-treated their slaves
neither better nor worse than they were treated
by all good masters hereabouts.
Rachel, who survived her father thirteen years.
never married. Samuel, the younger son, most
probably resided on 1.-The dwelling plantations"
Aquila's Inheritance, left to him by his father.
He seems to have made divers speculations in
land in that vicinity, with, however, but inditfer-
ent success financially. Not long after his fathers
death he bought $50 acres of Jericho from Thomas
Hall for S6.I5 an acre and in 1890 sold II to Free
born Brown at the same rate. This was. no
doubt, part of tho excellent farm now owned by
bought of John Rumsey and his wife, Martha,
Green Spring Forest, a tract of 20 acres on Grave
Yard Branch, which Col. John Hall had devised
10 said Martha, his daughter Samuel Wilson
died intestate in 1901. The above-naIned John
Rumsey-who as well as Freeborn Brown. had
been member of the Revolutionary Committee,
was, at this time, chief judge of the Orphans
Court, and granted letters of administration on
he esae ehe wdoY s Mary ~. and eight children
55SH acres of the estate to Joseph Husband at
$3.50 an acre, Freeborn Brown, the purchasers
portion of this land is now the famousiy pro-
ductive farm of Mr.. William Woolsey.
or the nine heirs of Samuel Wilson, the widow
and all her children except a daughter who had
married Ephraim Cox, proprietor Of Cox's NOW
Davis's) Mill. removed not long afterwards to
Logan county, Ky. One OF the daughters, Mary,
died soon after their removal. With the vast
wilderness then intervening, correspondence be-
gradually ceased and for many years--as was SO
often the case with friends thus separated in
those days-nothing was heard in Maryland of
the emigrants. AT the request of DR.. Wilson
Hon. Stevenson Archer, about 1870, when men,
Der of Congress, inquired of the representative
from the district including Logan county, for in
formation Concerning them. On a thorough in
vestgaton the member from Kentucky reported
that no trace whatever of them could be found.
They had no doubt years before removed further
west or south and Mrs. Cox and her family hav-
ing also emigrated westward many years ago not
u single one of Samuel Wilson's descendants SO
far as Is now known, was left in the State.
II any centenarian who may still survive among
them could return and view that extensive an
cestral estate, from whose old fields followed by
a flock of lf-naked, but well-fed and happy
pickaninnies) he used to pluck wild Strawberries
sedge-grass. or gallep veteran mules around hum
dreds OF open cropless acres unimpeded by fences
of any kind. 1t would be no easy task to convince
him That just there, where the heaviest crops of
grass and grain that Maryland can boast, now
grow, was the common free-to-all hunting
ground OF his boyhood and that the land which
then sold for paltry six or seven dollars an
acre, has gone up into the hundreds. If the truth
must be told, however, no small portion of it sold
for about the same paltry sum Within much less
time than half hundred years ago, and was still,
even then, the common elysium of berry picking
Migrants and registering sehoolboys.
born about 1745. His ledgers show that he was
the proprietor Oh TWO OF more stores IN the cOuu-
ty, from July LIST, 1771, until the connections
which preceded the War for Independence Grip
Piled his business, in common with that of others
engaged in similar pursuits; and he seems never
to have fairly resumed mercantile operations In
1880 he began to build frame house 26x4S feet
at New Town-possbly for a store. But alas
seems TO have vanished from the face of the
earth more completely even than the first three
or four il-fated capitals Of Baltimore county;
for their sites at least can be Indicated with toll
cradle certainty. m1iQjd JuF' may be applied to
sleeps somewhere in her ashes, but unlike them
she Is still awaiting her Schliemann, to tell us
wherel
Two or three years after peace was declared
William Wilson built the present substantial
dwelling on his portion of Gibson's Park, using
5000 bricks which were not made in England
but on the spot, out of native earth. The edifice
was completed in September, 1856, precisely GEN.
tury ago, and calls modestly for centennial cell
ebraton. During the building of this house an
old negro woman, who lived alone in a secluded
spot on the farm, was one day found murdered in
cold blood, evidently for the pittance of money
she had saved She was probably one of that old
couple (ner husband being now dead) for whom
the will directed that a house should be built.
For some time no clue could be found for the de-
lection of the murderer, and he seemed likely to
escape the penalty OF his heinous crime, when
one day Mr.. Wilson by chance overheard two of
thenegroes, Leander and Adam, conversing in a
low tone. His suspicious were at once aroused,
aSd ne n paused ed to sten n6ey were talking
eagerly every word; and before he left the spot
he had heard enough to justify the arrest of
hung. There is among these papers single
scrap of indirect evidence which shall presently
be given, strongly confirmatory of this story.
l am led by this tradition to relate another
which the builder of this house transmitted to
his son, DIR. Joshua Wilson, many years ago. At
the beginning of the revolutionary movement in
this county, one of two suspected brothers nam
cd Paul was detected point-blank, while secretly
favoring in some way the cause of tyranny. The
indignant patriots at once took the matter in
hand and arrested him, probably under the direc-
ton of the Revolutionary Committee, at that
offender was powerful man and too VIGOROUSLY
reckless of life to be trfed with, they pnioned
him and placed him In an unoecupied house of
some kind hear the water-Bush river, IL l right
ly recollect-and set two trusty guards over him
with loaded muskets. When night came on he
hours he rose, slipped the cords that bound him
and making sudden rush against the door with
his brawny shoulder, broke 1t down and fled forth
into the darkness. The guards promptly fred on
him, but missed their aim. Next day he was
tracked and pursued by crowd of ardent patri-
whereupon he took to the water, and wading out
TO depth Of several feet, stood detiantly at bay
the rushing after him.
Georges lone representative, planted on firm
bottom. seized them one by one as they approach
ed and chucked them beneath the wave-their
death-gurgles rising all around him and had the
rest not been called Off he would, no doubt, have
made short work of it with the whole pack The
story ends most provokingy just at this critical
point, as though 1t were an advertisement in the
New York Ledger. What became of the bury
Wuctuor inc phtrlOls, aumlrlnR MS In
domitable pluck, let him severely alone ever
afterwards. (of course they could easily have shot
him from the shore. had they wished to take his
life), or whether he fled the county, / have not
been able to learn. Perhaps some one will for
the nonce, assume the role of the above-named
enterprising journal, and furnish the remainder
OF this thrilling story.
Soon after his house was finished. Mr.. Wilson
married Cassandra, ninth and youngest child of
Joshua Bond and Ann Partridge, AID continued
his farming operations, varying them, like ali
other farmers OF those good old ante-prohibitory
frnm hmm ida,
and grain, litt of the of damnation Chat
ts what once heard an eloquent divine call it, in
the pulpit for the stomachs sake. In 1893 he was
appointed surveyor of the revenue, Thos. Jefrery
being at that date collector. In 1903 he was a
County Commissioner; at another time magis-
Court. He died intestatc 1873, leaving besides a
valuable and weli-stocked property in land, cash
and bank-stock amounting to nearly $30OO0
There are In William MilsOn,s hand ,uritirn