By way of introduction: I was born in Belfast in 1967, and though three of my grandparents were Irish, my paternal grandmother was born Dorothy Gordon Hibbard in Philadelphia in 1899. She has left us a large number of typescript memoirs, which I am gradually transforming to the screen.

In among my grandmother’s papers, I found this typescript document addressed to Neva Eileen McGrath (1911-1992), my grandmother’s second cousin, on her fifteenth birthday by her father Francis Sims McGrath (1877-1959). It is over 12000 words long (so get yourself an appropriate beverage before you tackle it), and covers the history of their ancestors in the Bordley, Dulany, Lloyd, Chew, Heath, Belt and Key families in colonial Maryland, the family line of Sims’ mother Elizabeth Gibson Bordley “Lily” Belt (1842-1922). She was the sister of my own great-great-grandmother Frances Wyatt “Fanny” Belt (1837-1912), so her ancestors are my ancestors too.

I thought that I was reasonably well versed in the lore of my grandmother’s grandmother’s Maryland ancestors, but there were a couple of surprises for me here, notably that the glamorous 16th century Czech cartographer and pirate Augustine Herrman is an ancestor of ours. I also found that Sims had preceded me on the route of my own research in July 2024. Great minds, I suppose!

We won’t get back to them again in the narrative below, so it’s worth just noting here that Sims McGrath (always known by his second name) was the youngest of his mother’s five children, though by 1926 his two brothers had died and only his two sisters were still living. He was a corporate lawyer, specializing in anti-trust cases, a partner with the firm Cadwalader, Wickersham and Taft, which incidentally was co-founded by his aunt Fanny’s step-son George W. Wickersham. (The Taft here is the President’s brother.) He refers below to his office between Pine and Cedar Streets (presumably on Pearl Street) in New York, a block and a half from Wall Street;

Sims McGrath married Neva van Zandt Smith (1880-1963) in 1910; they had four children. Eileen McGrath, his oldest child (also always known by her second name), the addressee of this letter, ultimately qualified as a surgeon and married Frank Vanderlip; they had no children. Her sister Margaret, known as Peggy (1915-1996), famously married David Rockefeller (1915-2017). They had two brothers, mentioned in passing below: another Sims McGrath (1918-1998) who was an early radar engineer, and Gordon McGrath (1920-1990), whose career I have not yet been able to trace.

Sims McGrath maintained his interest in family history, and in 1949, more than 20 years later, he published Pillars of Maryland, a 700-page book which incorporates all the below material and much much more. You can read it online here.

Sims McGrath presumably sent copies of the typescript to anyone who he was still in touch with in his mother’s extended family. My grandmother, aged 27, was living in Paris, and I imagine that Sims sent a copy to one of her aunts, who were his first cousins and her closest relatives. (The relationship is through my grandmother’s mother, who had died twenty years before; her aunts had no children of their own.) Our copy is in decent shape, the first page of our copy being the most battered.

August 14, 1926

Dear Eileen:

Although you are growing older I can still remember when you rather noisily registered your first birthday. Indeed, who could forget who heard you in those days registering any event of your life, and there seemed to be many. I was then thirty-five times your age – now I am little more than three times as old, so you seem to be catching up. As time wears on and nature quietly registers my age, you’ll catch up, and I hope go well beyond. Before that time comes I owe you one duty – perhaps two or three, but at least the duty of helping you to answer in a meager way the question no one ever fully answers but which you, like every other thoughtful person, will some day put to yourself. People, as you have already found out, are much like cats and dogs, in that we are all animals together; but without risking a comparison of moral natures, I will assure you of your superiority intellectually, to any cat or dog when you seriously inquire of yourself “who am I?”

Years will pass before you feel more than a casual interest in this letter, but one of the disconcerting things about years is that they do pass, they will pass, no Verdun can be set up against them. So put this letter away, and years from now take it into the light and in reading reflect that you who read are what survives of a thousand people. At that moment your ancestors will be living in you, and you who think of yourself only as Eileen will, in fact, be in the midst of your ancestors every day of your life. It is true you are Eileen, and only Eileen, in the sense of having an independent will to deal with impulses, tastes, desires and intellectual qualities inherited fron your forefathers; but nevertheless you can work only with the tools and materials your parents have placed in your hands. More than that, you must work with those materials. Impulses projected into you from the past, even a distant past, will not be denied. Perhaps in time to come you will feel some inclination to be a writer or a painter of, like some of your southern ancestors, a planter, and if you couple industry with inclination you will succeed; but whatever it may be, as your powers ripen, you can turn back to the pages of the family annals and find the roots which are blossoming again in you, more freely perhaps, more closely approaching perfection we will hope, but easily recognizable after a hundred years. The immortality of the flesh is reaffirmed as each generation furnishes new forms to house the changing but continuous characteristics of a family. If a conscious spirit survives, imagine with what interest your ancestors are observing you. Are you interested in them? At least you are fortunate in having many who deserve your interest and I shall tell you of them, and in course of time perhaps you will grope about for yourself and find some shadows of the past no reincarnated in your own person.

McGraths

Some day I shall tell you of your Mother’s family, but since all the materials for this are not yet before me, I shall begin with my own. My father’s family, while originally Scotch, moved long ago to the North of Ireland, where for generations they remained as Scotch-Irish, a substantial Protestant famtly to be distinguished from the many Roman Catholic McGraths of the South of Ireland who have been coming to this country in recent years. In the early part of the last century your great grandfather McGrath, then still a young men, disagreed with his father and, having a hot yielding temper, left home and came to America, never from that time seeing his parents. Your great grandfather was a physician, your grandfather a lawyer, his brother a physician and surgeon in the Civil War. In fact, nearly all of the men in that branch of the family were doctors, lawyers or clergymen. They never aroused my interest as a family, and I know little about them except that while endowed with natural abilities above the average, some of them were rather intemperate people and fell upon evil days which had best be forgotten.

“There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.”

Sometimes, however, the tide engulfs the man and the family will remain submerged until a more powerful swimmer breasts the tide. These periods of prosperity and obscurity often last for generations and, as you will see, have occurred in the history of your own family. We are now, I like to think, well afloat, and I fully expect you children to establish yourselves and your families on the crest of the wave.

Sims McGrath’s father (and Eileen’s grandfather) was Robert Hunter McGrath (1837-1912), a Philadelphia lawyer, as Sims reports. The medical brother seems to have been John McCrelish McGrath, born in 1834. The medical father, who emigrated from Northern Ireland, is Robert Hunter McGrath senior, probably born in 1806; his wife’s name is recorded as Mary McCrelish.

I am naturally inclined to wonder which part of Northern Ireland these McGraths were from. According to Barry Griffin’s fantastic website, McGrath was the 44th most common surname in Ireland in 1901, with 95% of McGraths being Catholic, concentrated in the Waterford / Tipperary / Limerick Clare belt but with representation everywhere. Protestant McGraths are fewer, but still several hundred, with the Church of Ireland ones concentrated in the lower Lagan Valley and the Presbyterians around Antrim Town and the Lower Bann. (NB that in Ireland, the ‘th’ at the end of the name is not usually pronounced.)

Mary McCrelish is a different matter. The 1901 and 1910 censuses have nobody called McCrelish in Ireland at all. The 1901 census does have one solitary McCreelish household with two ‘e’s, a Presbyterian couple in Shelton South townland, abut 20km north of Ballymena, 15 km west of Ballymoney and 17 km south of Ballycastle, which is not very far from the Lower Bann Presbyterian McGraths mentioned above. So my bet would be that Robert and Mary were both from the heart of Presbyterian County Antrim, met and married there and then moved to Philadelphia, which has many connections with that part of the world – exploring a different branch of my family tree in August 2025, I was struck by the number of nineteenth-century headstones in the churchyards at Newtown Crommelin and Aghadowey which mention a direct Philadelphia connection.

Sims’ reference to some of the McGraths being “intemperate people” who “fell upon evil days” is most intriguing, but I can shed no light on it.

Bordleys

If you apply your arithmetic to the family tree you will readily count

• 2 grandfathers
• 4 great grandfathers
• 8 second great grandfathers
• 16 third great grandfathers
• 32 fourth great grandfathers

and so on until you reach your great grandfather Adam. He was the first planter in our family, and some of his characteristics will undoubtedly crop out in Sims and Gordon [Eileen’s brothers, the writer’s sons]. There were also some distinguished pre-Adamites in the family, but to keep within the bounds of recorded history, I will begin with the Bordley family, with many members of which I was brought up and therefore felt myself, as I was, one of them.

In very early times, before the days of Columbus, there was a village of Bordley in Yorkshire, England, with a family mansion beyond the village limits called “Bordley Hall”. This was the first known seat of your ancestors, then people of substance and learning. They are referred to briefly in Potts Gazetteer of England and again in the correspondence of the Rev. William Bordley written in England about 1700. During the reign of Henry VII one of the family was sent from Yorkshire as Sheriff of London, but the detailed history of the family begins about the year 1650 with the Rev. Stephen Bordley (1637-1695), your fifth great grandfather, who was then Prebendary or Canon of St. Paul’s in London. The old Cathedral had been destroyed by the great fire of London in 1666 and the present Cathedral designed by Sir Christopher Wrenn [sic], although then under construction, was not completed until long after your grandfather’s time.

His son, your fourth great grandfather, Thomas Bordley (1682-1726), came to this country in 1694 with his older brother Stephen (1672-1709), when he was only 12 years old, and settled in Annapolis. He there studied law, becoming an eminent lawyer and serving for many years as a member of the General Assembly and as Attorney General of the colony. In 1726 he retured to England for a surgical operation and, as often happened under those circumstances, died. Although but 43 at the time of his death, he left a large estate in Maryland and seven children, among them being two sons, of even greater ability than their father. The elder of these, Stephen Bordley (1709-1764) your third great uncle, following in his father’s footsteps, became a distinguished lawyer, Attorney General of Maryland and a man of large fortune. Early in life he seems to have decided that the Christian virtues could be practiced without detriment to worldly success, for in a letter written when he was 16 to his great uncle in England, the Rev. William Bordley (1666-1741), he says: “All my aim is to oblige my friends, which I can never better do than by doing the best for myself.”

Stephen, like most of your Bordley ancestors, was sent to England for his education, and remained there ten years at his own urgent request. In writing of the colonies at the age of 18, he said:

“I should be much troubled ever to see that country without being capable of serving it. It was for that purpose I was sent out here, and therefore to return without so doing would be adverse to the intentions of my father. **** Unless you give me so plentiful an education that I may be able to serve others as well as myself, it will all be in vain.”

He also kept a sharp eye on his young brother Will (1716-1762), who rather neglected his books, and admonished him as follows – Will being then fifteen years old, just as you are now:

“Think on your present course of life. How will it enable you to serve your country, your friends, or even to keep yourself from starving. ‘Tis a matter well worth your consideration.”

But, although your uncle Stephen applied his industrious mind successfully in all worldly ways, he failed sadly where he most wished to succeed; for the beautiful Peggy Shippen refused to marry him. For his part he refused to marry anyone else and remained faithful to this one affection of his life, a trait which, as you will see appeared again in the Bordley family.

“Nous mettons l’infini dans l’amour.
Ce n’est pas la faute des femmes.”

[“We put the infinite in love.
It’s not women’s fault.” (Anatole France)]

Hardly had your uncle returned to Annapolis from his studies in England when he threw himself into a hopeless contest with Lord Baltimore, Proprietor of the Province, to recover a “very beautiful hill” and 230 acres of land inherited from his father Thomas Bordley. Lord Baltimore Is said to have coveted the hill. At all events, he saw to it that the whole property was confiscated for public use. The Governor’s house was built on the hill, and the rest of the property comprised what is still the heart of the City of Baltimore. “Could I, though with the ruin of my whole fortune, balk his avaricious man of this morsel of land”, wrote your Uncle, “I should glory in the action.” But, although he contended for many years, and went to England to carry his complaint to the House of Lords, Lord Baltimore in the end prevailed. Reports of the case, a celebrated one at the time, are still to be found in the early law reports of Maryland and it is of interest to read in these records that it was another one of your great grand-fathers, Daniel Dulany, who as Attorney General representing Lord Baltimore succedded in canceling the original deed which granted this valuable property to your great grandfather Thomas Bordley.

This heavy disappointment did not prevent your uncle from leading a happy and successful life among the cultured and prominent people of his day. He was active in public affairs as a member of the Provincial Assembly, and as I have said, was for some years a leader of the bar and Attorney General of the Province. In the early Marylend law reports the names of Thomas Bordley and then Stephen Bordley appear as counsel on one side or the other in almost every case of importance for two generations. Your uncle was sociable and seems to have been noted among his friends for the fine quality of the wines which he imported from Europe and generously distributed. On one occasion we find him writing to his agents in London – “A pipe of your best Madeira wine, cost what it will; as I do not stint you in price I hope you will not slight me in the wine.” Another commission to his French merchants, often repeated in his order book, was “A cask of Champaign and two of Burgundy”. And so he lived, and in 1764 died.

In 1750 no one of the seven children of his father had married, but in that year he wrote:

“We are all still single; a strange family perhaps you will say, but Beale is now in pursuit of a Dove and I am apt to believe will soon break the enchantment.”

Because of that “Dove” and the broken enchantment you are here today to read this account of your forefathers. Beale (John Beale Bordley, 1727–1804) was your third great grandfather and a man of unusual character and distinction. The Dove was Margaret Chew (1735-1773), a member of a very noted revolutionary family. But let me return for a moment to the subject of faithfulness to an old love, in which you are so much interested. Stephen’s sister, your great aunt Elizabeth Bordley, born in 1717 (died 1789), was much admired in her young days and according to the old records received several eligible offers of marriage, but her biographer tells us –

“when young she had given the first affection of her heart to an amiable and exemplary young man, who died in England and, although she never told her this was generally understood to be the cause of her remaining single.”

Your sympathetic heart will be relieved to know that “This fond fidelity did not at all depress her mind or cloud her brow; she was remarkable for being always serene and cheerful, temperate in all her habits, diffident of herself, pleased with social life and its innocent amusements, and contributed always her full share towards promoting the gaiety and happiness of young persons.” There, you see, was at least one temperate member of the family.

Elizabeth’s brother, your great uncle, Mathias Bordley (1725-1756), was more fortunate, in that he married a very beautiful girl of sixteen, to whom he was deeply devoted. In little more than a year she died and he, unwilling to live without her, grieved and in a few months also died. (I find her as Peggy Bigger, 1729-1755, so she was 26 not 16.)

“They were considered a very interesting young couple. Their affection had been the theme of much admiration and caused a deeper tone of feeling for their loss, which was long deplored. The lines on Theodosius and Constantia were often applied to them: ‘They were lovely in their lives, and in their deaths they were not divided’.” (The story of Theodosius and Constantia, whose families forced them both to join the Church and become celibate, was popular in the late 18th century. But this line is originated in the Bible, describing Saul and Jonathan, 2 Samuel 1:23)

Your third great grandfather, John Beale Bordley, was born in 1727, four months after his father Thomas had died in the hands of the famous English surgeon Dr. Chesselden. He was brought up by a step-father, who, “though an estimable man, was hardly equal to the heavy charge of minutely conducting the fortunes and education of so many step-children – ten besides his own five; and engaged as he was in public duties and political affairs, their interests rather languished.” This meant that Beale was not educated in England, a hardship which he overcame, however, with marked success. In view of what he accomplished later, it is interesting to know that he was a man of extreme modesty and diffidence, and so indifferent to worldly success that during his career he refused to accept many high public offices, among them the Chief Justiceship of the Provincial Court, preferring to continue in his own way the life he had mapped out for himself.

After adopting law as his profession, he was appointed Prothonotary of Baltimore County, in charge of the public legal documents, an office which soon tested his independence of spirit; for in 1765, when the hated Stamp Act was passed, he was required as Prothonotary to enforce its provisions. Rather than do so he promptly resigned his office. In 1766 he was appointed one of the judges of the Provincial Court, and a year later, Judge of the Admiralty, both of which offices he held until the change of government in 1776, and he was therefore the last judge of the Admiralty appointed by the British Government. You may see his portrait if you choose in his official robes, painted by the noted American artist Peale, in the gallery of the New York Historical Society; and you should be interested to know that it was your grandfather who enabled Peale, whose portraits of Washington and other prominent men of the revolutionary period are of so much historical value today, to obtain his artistic education.

Peale’s father was your grandfather’s schoolmaster. Your grandfather therefore interested himself in his son when he showed artistic talent, and in 1767 raised a fund, to which he contributed very largely himself, to send Peale to England to study under the English portrait painter Sir Benjamin West. No doubt it was on this account that Peale painted so many portraits of the Bordley family. One of these, of your second great grandfather Matthias Bordley, was in my own home for many years and is now the most valued painting in the home of your cousin Lady Hadfield In England.

Although Judge Bordley served as a member of the Governor’s Council as one of the commissioners to draw the boundary line between Maryland, Pennsylvania and Delaware, and held a number of other pubLic offices, his inclination was against public life, and in 1770, his wife having inherited one-half of a beautiful island at the mouth of the Wye River on the eastern shore of Maryland with a family mansion known as Wye House, he moved his family there and, while still keeping his residence in Annapolis, became intensely interested in agriculture. The other half of the Island of Wye was left to your grandmother Bordley’s sister, your third great aunt Mary Chew (1736-1774) who married William Paca (1740-1799), Governor of Maryland and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

At the outbreak of the Revolution your grandfather Bordley was appointed a member of the Committee of Public Safety and one of the first judges of the General Court of Maryland, but ha still gave most of his tine to the development of his 1600 acres of land on Wye Island and other large farms or plantations which he owned in Maryland and neighboring states. Being a patriot he believed in developing home resources to the exclusion of foreign imports, and set about making the Island of Wye as self-supporting as was humanly possible. He established carpenter and blacksmith shops, looms and spinning wheels, rope walls, brick yards and kilns, salt grounds, a brewery, warehouses, smokehouses, and all the usual farm buildings for his own use and a village of slaves. Power was obtained from an uncommonly large windmill, while the hops, flax, cotton, fleeces, and all food products were grown on the plantation. Wharves were built, on which cargoes of wheat were shipped to England and Spain. His books showed that one cargo of wheat shipped to Barcelona produced $900, and that the average return per cargo was $750.

Your grandfather not only took up the scientific development of agriculture for his own purposes, but attempted to spread his knowledge among the colonists by writing, publishing and distributing pamphlets on the best practical methods of raising fruits, vegetables, crops and livestock, and by publishing larger works as his experience increased. His principal work on agriculture, of more than 600 pages, was widely used and reached four editions, but to show you how many things he was interested in here is a partial list of pamphlets which he wrote and published:

1789 “Moneys, Coins, Weights and Measures”

1790 “National Credit and Character”

1793 “Yellow Fever”

1794 “Intimations on Manufacture, Agriculture and Trade”

1797 “Sketches on Rotation of Crops”

1797 “Queries from the Board of Agriculture of London with Answers”

1798 “On Pasturing Cattle”

1799 “On Hemp”

– “Essays and Notes”

1800 “Husbandry Dependent on Livestock”

1803 “Epitome of Forsyth on Fruit Trees with Notes by an American Farmer”

Remarkable results were accomplished at Wye in developing fruits and vegetables, his plums, peaches, pears and grapes being particularly noted for their extraordinary size and delicious flavor; but in addition to these he was successful in raising fruits, nuts and crops which have since entirely disappeared from cultivation in Maryland. For instance, the fig was extensively grown, the pomegranate, the soft shell almond, hops, the English madder plant for fiber, and the palma-christi for oil. From the abundance of his crops he was also able to send shiploads of supplies to the Continental Army and beef from his island in Chesapeake Bay (Pool Island) which he had stocked with cattle, deer, wild turkeys, English hares and partridges. These activities of your grandfather as a farmer culminated some years later when he organized the Agricultural Society of Philadelphia, the first society of the kind in this country, with Franklin, Washington and other distinguished men as charter members.

Although occupied with agriculture the life of your grandfather on Wye Island, where he spent so many years of his life, was far from monotonous, for in those days it was usual for visitors to come in May and stay until November, while every connection of the family, however distantly related, felt entitled to the welcome he always received. There were other families like your grandfather Bordley’s, with estates on the Eastern Shore, and as hospitality was the order of the day, there was constant visiting, with balls and entertainments. Dancing was fully as popular in the Revolutionary times as it is now. General Washington was an inveterate dancer, which in those days was generally done to the accompaniment of a violin. Patrick Henry would often leave his law office early in his impatience to tale part in a dance, and it is recorded that on one occasion, when a slave was dispatched to tell Jefferson of the burning of his father’s house, and Jefferson inquired: “Did you save any of my books?” He answered, thinking he knew his master’s taste, “No Massa, but I saved the fiddle”.

Your grandfather was an early riser, and would spend an hour and a half or two hours before breakfast in his garden of eight acres, laid out by himself, where he was fond of taking part in pruning and grafting as well as directing the work of the gardeners. After breakfast he would ride over the plantation, superintending all that was going on and looking after the welfare of the people on the place. About two o’clock he would return to prepare for dinner, one preliminary seldom forgotten being the drinking of a “cool tankard” made of wine sangaree with sprigs of balm and burnet cooled with ice. After dinner his daughter records that he liked to delay a little with his friends over “a well cooled glass of Madeira and a profusion of exquisite fruit”, perhaps discussing the pleasures of a fox hunt, which always made his eyes sparkle. The afternoon was reserved for study and writing until the arrival of visitors in ten-oared barges, manned by as many slaves. All of which indicates a sound reason for your grandfather’s love of the country, and since deep attachment to the country is supposed to be coupled with a love of solitude we may conclude your grandfather, like the poet Cowper, loved his solitude to be tempered with friendship:

“How sweet, how passing sweet is Solitude:
But grant me still a friend in my retreat
Whom I may whisper, Solitude le sweet.”
[From William Cowper’s poem ‘Retirement’, quoting an unnamed (and possibly fictional) Frenchman.]

Like all intelligent parents, your grandfather Bordley was seriously concerned about the education of his children. His boys went to Eton, but girls were not sent across the ocean in those days; so when the time came for his daughter Henrietta (1762-1825) to go to school she was sent to Philadelphia upon the advice of your grandfather’s friend Mr. John Cadwalader (1742-1786), and for years she was watched over by General and Mrs. Cadwalader (who was born Elizabeth Lloyd, 1742–1776). Your grandfather was led in this way to visit Philadelphia to see his daughter, and then a great change came in his life. In 1773 he became a widower and after some years of mourning, I am sorry to tell you, he found himself totally lacking in that fine quality of the wild goose which you know of and which distinguished other members of the family. While visiting the Cadwaladers he met the widow Mifflin (born Sarah Fishbourne, 1733–1816), and it is recorded that his visits to his little daughter then became more frequent. To quote from one familiar with the facts:

“Amongst those valuable acquaintances he often heard mentioned and sometimes met, the widow Mifflin, whom he found much loved and respected and always spoken of in terms that marked high regard. He heard her praised fer her good sense, good temper, candor and prudence, by persons who were cautious how they spoke of others; and they commended her for her judicious care of her son John Mifflin and her step-son Thomas Mifflin ***** and her discreet management of her handsome property *****. In the course of his Philadelphia visits Mr. Bordley visited in the family of Col. White (father of our venerable Bishop White). Here he sometimes met this same widow Mifflin, and he could not fail to observe that she was a distinguished favorite with Mrs. White, whose judgment and goodness he equally respected. With such claims to respectful attention, joined with an engeging address and appearance. Mrs. Mifflin soon became the object of Mr. Bordley’s devoted attachment. Her friends were his friends, and anxious for his success. In short, they were married by the Rt. Rev. Bishop White October 8th, 1776.”

The step-son this lady took such good care of was Major General Mifflin of the Revolutionary Army, General Washington’s first Aide-de-camp, President of Congress and later Governor of Pennsylvania.

In the year 1777, when Annapolis was celebrating with bells and cannon the capture of Burgoyne at Saratoga, your grandfather’s daughter Elizabeth, your third great aunt Gibson, was born (Elizabeth Bordley, 1777-1863, who married Dr James Gibson). Until she was thirteen her family continued to live at Wye Island, with occasional winters in Philadelphia. During that time she was educated by her father, but at last, when it was felt necessary to send her to school, your grandfather decided to abandon the estate at Wye and to move to Philadelphia. For those days, Judge Bordley had advanced views about slavery. He thought the system was wrong, at the same time realizing that any change would have to be made gradually. He therefore freed a great number of his slaves, disposed of many more under contracts by which they were to be freed at the end of a certain term, and retained comparatively few for himself and for his son on Wye Island. His son Matthias, having completed his education in England, was living with his father and was attached to country life. From his quiet disposition and steady habits it was predicted he would live and die a bachelor, but, as your aunt Gibson later remarked, “that was not the age of prophecy”. He married and had fifteen children. The estate of Wye was turned over to him, and in 1791 your grandfather Bordley established his family in a house next door to General Washington. He had always kept in friendly communication with Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, and other men in public life; one of his nephews was Edmund Rendolph of Virginia, Secretary of State under President Washington, and his associations were naturally with that group. Upon moving to Philadelphia, however, then the seat of the federal government, he became more closely associated with them and with the diplomatic representatives of other countries. The engraving of Louls XVI which we have was given him by the French Minister when he was called back to France at the time of the French Revolution. President Washington appointed him a commissioner to organize the Bank of the United States as soon as he moved to Philadelphia in 1791 but he continued to avoid public life and, apart fron social pleasures, occupied his time with the development of a piece of property of 360 acres which he purchased in Chester County, thirty miles fron Philadelphia. He also bought a small stretch of land on the Schuylkill opposite Fairmount, and so he continued occupied with his agricultural pursuits and with the publication of his works on agriculture until his death in 1804. He was a man of high character and strong and vigorous intellect, an outstanding personality in the period in which he lived. The small engraving we have by St. Memim shows him near the close of his career in 1798.

His daughter Elizabeth married James Gibson of Philadelphia and, according to the old custom, was known to her nieces and great nieces, of whom my mother was one, as Aunt Gibson. On making her home in Philadelphia she formed a close intimacy with Nellie Custis, Mrs. Washington’s granddaughter. They were “brought out” at a ball given for both of them by Mrs. Washington, and had their portraits painted for each other by Gilbert Stewart. Both of those paintings are now in the Academy of Fine Arts of Philadelphia.

When you go to Mount Vernon you will see the Nellie Custis room, kept as it was in those days when your aunt often stayed there. She was a highly accomplished woman, cultured and intellectual, a talented musician and of exceptional literary ability, as show in her biography of the Bordley family. In your grandmother’s home in Washington you may see some beautiful landscapes which she painted in water colors. Her life was spent mostly in Philadelphia, but at times she visited Wye Island; for we know that when married to Mr. Gibson the entire bridal party, including numerous bridesmaids, groomsmen and her cousin the venereble Bishop White, traveled in their great coaches of that day and with riding horses following from Philadelphia to Wye Island, where the marriage took place. She died in 1863, at the age of 87.

As I write two hundred years have passed since the death of Thomas Bordley, who first came to this country. My own birth was one hundred and fifty years after the birth of his son Judge Bordley and one hundred years after the birth of his daughter Aunt Gibson, and yet how few are the generations which cover that period. You probably think of the Revolution and of General Washington as part of a far distant age, yet my mother, whom you know so well, lived for many years in Philadelphia with Aunt Gibson, who was in turn an intimate friend of General Washington – she danced with him. In the home in Philadelphia was the chair always used by him, his special cup for tea, and other personal things which made the association seem to my mother still a living thing. That thought may take you closer to the first days of our government.

So Matthias Bordley, your second great grandfather (1757-1828) lived on Wye Island and begat fifteen children. He was fond of music, painting, bistory, literature and the life of a country gontleman. He amused himself translating Seneca’s letters and writing comments, his beautiful manuscript volume being still in your grandmother’s library in Washington; but while he did these pleasant things his liberal inheritance from his father dwindled. He lived at Wye and there died on the 71st anniversary of his birth.

In a short sketch of his life published in Walsh’s National Gazette of Philadelphia in 1828, it is said:

“A taste for classic literature early acquired at Eton College and cherished through life with a decided and improved talent for painting enabled Mr. Bordley in his retirement to cultivate the minds of his children and agreeably diversify his leisure hours. Conspicuous for independence of mind, with invincible love of truth and rectitude, he uniformly supported the character of the modest gentleman and lived respected and esteemed.”

Then the curtain falls. Wye was sold and what little property remained was distributed among the many children. One of them, Beale Bordley (born 1800), was a talented artist like his father. On his death in 1882 the Baltimore American of March 14th, 1882, after sketching the history of the family, said:

“John Beale Bordley was a true representative of the old school of refined Maryland gentleman. In early life he entered the law office of his kinsman Chief Justice Gibson of Philadelphia, but afterwards became a portrait painter. By close application to his profession for thirty-five years his name became prominent in art circles and his work was held in high esteem.”

Another of the children was my grandmother Sally Rebecca Heath Sims Bordley Belt (1805-1884), who spent the last years of her life in my family. One of her daughters was Frances Wyatt Belt Wickersham, stepmother of Attorney General Wickersham and mother of your cousins Lady Hadfield and Lily Wickersham, the latter being now in France, where I hope you will see her.

Frances Wyatt Belt Wickersham (1837-1912) was my own great-great-grandmother; I am descended from her daughter Rebecca Sims Wickersham (1867-1905). After Rebecca’s early death, my grandmother was informally adopted by her aunts, Lady “Bunnie” Hadfield (1862-1949) and Lily “Zora” Wickersham (1870-1956).

Another daughter was my mother, Lily ElIzabeth Gibson Bordley Belt McGrath. My father sometimes inserted Singleton Gordon before the Belt. But he was of a lavish disposition.

As you have noticed, the Bordleys were Patriots, or Whigs, as they were called in revolutionary days as distinguished from Loyalists or Tories, who did not wish the colonies to separate from England. Perhaps Judge Bordley’a patriotism was Intensified by his education in the colonies, for he seemed to think his son Matthias when studying at Eton in England needed a little warning on this subject. In 1772 he wrote to latthias, then fifteen years old,

“I wish you may not be put off from your affection for your own country by growing prejudices. You went away young [S McG: 10 years old]; do not forget you are a Buckskin; I hope you are an improved one; which Is better than being a spoiled Englishman.”

Belts

You may have noticed that your grandmother was a Miss Belt. When you are in Washington visiting your grandmother you may see the monument which was erected by the Society of Colonial Wars in memory of your [gap in manuscript, Sims probably intended to fill in the correct number, which is “fourth”] great grandfather Col. Joseph Belt (1680-1761). Humphrey Belt (1615-1663) landed, at Jamestown, Va., in 1635, and settled in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. His grandson Col. Joseph Belt took part in all the important activities of his day, which was a long one as he lived to be 86. Among other tracts of land, he owned a thousand acres which he called Chevy Chase in what is now the City of Washington, part of which is the present Chevy Chase Country Club. A large boulder inscribed to his memory was placed on the Club grounds only a few years ago. His manor house, built in 1725, was still there In 1907, but the past has to give way and it was taken down to be replaced by modern buildings. He was the great grandfather of Gov. Samuel Sprig of Maryland (1783-1855) and Gov. Thomas G. Pratt (1804-1869, also a governor of Maryland) , and was the six times great grandfather of the present Lord Fairfax whom you sometimes hear mentioned because he is the only American who is a member of the English House of Lords.

Your grandmother’s grandfather was Horatio S. Belt. His grandfather was George Gordon. There is a tradition in the family that he was closely related to the Lord George Gordon who appeared so often in Barnaby Rudge (a lesser known Charles Dickens novel, set during the 1780 London riots fomented by Lord George Gordon). As to this I am skeptical (so am I), but am glad there was at the worst no direct descent. It would be better to have you descended from the raven of the same tale. Lord George Gordon was about the most rattle-brained character in history, and after being turned out of several countries in Europe wound up his career in New Gate jail, where he lived at his ease for many years, giving dinners and dances until death put an end to his folly. If he were our ancestor Gordie would have a great deal to answer for, and our only consolation would be that Dickens might not have written Barnaby Rudge if Lord George had not contributed the riot.

Augustine Herrman

If the thought of an ancestor leading a riot, sacking the Bank of England and opening prison doors tickles your imagination, be satisfied with the knowledge that you had a pirate in the family. He was a respectable pirate, but you cannot have everything as you would.

Augustine Herrman was born in 1605 in Bohemia, where the Gypsies come from, and after many adventures lived to the good old age of 82 and died ia Maryland in 1686. His father was a person of character and good standing in Prague and paid more attention to the education of his son than do the careless parents of today. Augustine could speak fluently in German, Dutch, French, Spanish, English and Latin. By profession he was a surveyor, like George Washington and many men of those days when there were great tracts of land to be surveyed and mapped out. He was also an artist, a merchant and a diplomat, and he evidently had his own ideas about religious matters, because it was the religious persecutions in Bohemia which forced him to loave his own country. For a time he went into the service of the Dutch East India Company and seems to have adopted for himself the old Dutch motto – “my road is upon the sea and my paths are in many waters” for as early as 1629 he was in Virginia, and later traveled to the Antilles, to Curaçao and to Surinam. He also became one of the owners of the privateering frigate La Grace, which captured many a Spanish ship for the benefit of Augustine’s pocket – and that is where his piracy came in. According to present puritanical standards, a man is not supposed to sail on the high seas, attacking and gathering in other people’s ships for his own amusement and profit but in those days it was rather usual for anyone who could afford the luxury of a frigate to prey on the commerce of an unfriendly country, and those who did so, if successful in the venture, were welcomed in the best society.

Your grandfather Augustine finally abandoned his roving life and settled in New Amsterdam in 1643, where he became prominent as a leader of the interests of the Dutch settlers against the very overbearing behavior of Peter Stuyvesant. In 1647 he was one of the first board of nine appointed to protect the interests of the settlers, and with them prepared a memoriel to the States General in the Hague, which resulted in a sumnons to Peter Stuyvesant to appear in Holland and explain his iniquitous behavior. When Peter Stuyvesant received the sunnons he said: “I will do as I please”, and of course he pleased to stay where he was, and continued bullying the unlucky settlers. Your grandfather amused himself sometimes with painting, for in 1656 he made a sketch of New Amsterdam, which is still preserved and is the only picture of the City of that period which has survived. Peter Stuyvesant’s greatest trouble was the attempt of the English to turn the Dutch out of New Ansterdam which, as you know, they soon did and changed the name to New York. This seemed at the time to be as much a calamity for your grandfather as for the Dutch, for in 1651, he had bought a substantial slice of New Jersey from the Indians extending from Newark Bay to Elizabethtown. When the English took possession his grant was canceled and sone English settlers bought the land a second time from the delighted Indians. The loss of this property was soon made good as you will see.

There were long negotiations in the attempt to keep the English out, and Augustine Herrman was selected by Peter Stuyvesant to go as Ambassador to Rhode Island in 1652 and with Resolved Waldron to Maryland in 1659, where it is said: “They presented the Dutch claims so forcibly that further English aggression was postponed until 1664.” “Herman’s Journal”, the account he kept of these negotiations, is of considerable historic interest. Your grandfather seems to have been a good diplomat, for he not only represented the Dutch colonies successfully, but established such cordial relations with Lord Baltimore that he was employed to prepare a map and survey of the colonies of Virginia and Maryland, and as a reward for this important work was presented by Lord Baltimore with a charter for 30,000 acres of land called “Bohemia Manor”, with manorial privileges and the title of Lord. Your grandfather then established himself in Maryland as Lord of Bohemia Manor, on the Bohemia River, and whenever Lord Baltimore was in the colonies he stayed at this Maryland home of your grandfather. He was your sixth great grandfather, your great grandmother Ariana, wife of John Beale Bordley, having been his granddaughter. When living in New Amsterdam his house was on the waterfront and his orchard extended back beyond what is now Pine Street. My present office is between Pine and Cedar Streets, so the office building probably stands where the old orchard used to be.

Dulanys

Now, if you will tale a long breath and hold fast, we will whirl through three centuries to the Herald’s Office in London on the morning of March 7th, 1612, when Gideon DeLuné of Blackfriars received the coat of arms of the Dulany family, that branch of your family which remained loyal to England during the revolution. The family was of French origin, as indicated by the name DeLuné and the fleur de lys on the arms, but we have little detailed information about them until they came to this country in 1703. The name DeLuné was eradually changed into Delany, and after 1710, Dulany. One branch of the family remained in England, for the records show that in 1748 Daniel Dulany of Somerset died and left his daughter Elizabeth the plantation of Kilkenny. Whether this daughter was one of the original Kilkenny cats I will leave for you to investigate.

At all events, the family had separated before that time, a number of them moving to Queens County, Ireland, where your fifth great grandfather Daniel Dulany (1685-1753) was born. He was the first cousin of Dr. Dulany, Dean of Down and Master of Trinity College, Dublin, who is known to literary people as a friend of Dean Swift. Your grandfather attended the University of Dublin, but his home having become “messy”, as the account says, owing to the presence of a step-mother, he decided to come to this country, although he was only 18 years old and almost penniless. Indeed, he did not have enough money to pay his passage to Maryland, and would have been indentured for a number of years to the Captain of the ship to pay the cost of tho trip if Col. George Plater, at that time Attorney General of the Province and later Governor, had not come to his rescue and taken him as a clerk into his own office – a kindness which your grandfather handsomely requited some years later by marrying Col. Plater’s daughter. (Unusually, Sims has got confused here. Colonel Plater’s daughter did marry a relative of ours, but that was Philip Barton Key, of whom more below. Daniel Dulany’s three wives were Charity Smallwood née Courts, Rebecca Smith from whom we are all descended, and Henrietta Maria Chew née Lloyd.)

After being admitted to the Bar in Maryland he studied at Gray’s Inn, in London, and finally returned to Annapolis to become the most distinguished lawyer of his period. He became Attorney General, Judge of the Admiralty, Commissary General, Receiver General, and one of the governor’s council through three administrations. The Maryland Gazette of December 6th, 1763, in mentioning his death, said:

“Yesterday died the Hon. Daniel Dulany, Esquire: Commissary General of this province; one of his Lordship’s Council of State and Recorder of this City. *** He came into the country very young but by the strength of his natural parts (which were extraordinary) and his diligent application, particularly to the law, he became very eminent in that profession. He possessed several of the greatest offices of honor and trust in the government, especially that of the Attorney General and Judge of the Admiralty, and in all of his several stations he acquitted himself with equity and unwearied diligence. He was an humane, generous and charitable gentleman and a great promoter of the public good by encouraging all kinds of industry. towards which he largely contributed, and was very instrumental in settling the back parts of this province. He was a tender husband, the best of fathers, a good provider and lover of his family, a steady friend and kind neighbor, and truly deserving the love and esteem of all mankind.

The vault in St. Ann’s Church, Annapolis, may still be seen where he was interred, “his Pall being supported by his Excellency the Governor, four of his Honorable Council and the Worshipful Mayor of the City.” (More on his burial place below.)

His daughter Rebecca Dulany (1721-1746) married James Paul Heath (1712-1745), whose daughter (actually granddaughter) in turn married your great grandfather Matthias and became the mother of my grandmother. You are therefore descended directly from Daniel Dulany through his first (actually second) wife Rebecca Smith, but you are also descended from his second (actually third) wife through the Bordleys. His second wife was Henrietta Maria Lloyd (1707-1765), whose grandmother of the same name (your sixth great grandmother) was named after her godmother Queen Henrietta wife of Charles I, her mother Anna Gill having been a maid of honor to the Queen.

Lloyds and Chews

The Lloyds were perhaps your first ancestors to settle in this country, Edward Lloyd (1606-1695), your seventh great grandfather, having emigrated to Maryland in 1634. From 1636 to 1657 he was a member of the Governor’s Council. His grandson Edward Lloyd (actually great-grandson) was acting Governor of Maryland in 1740 when your grandfather Daniel Dulany arrived in this colony. As I have said, Daniel married Henrietta but she had previously married Samuel Chew, and their daughter Margaret Chew was the “Dove” who married John Beale Bordley and became your fourth great grandmother. As curious as it may seem, you come by direct blood descent from both of Daniel Dulany’s wives (well, two out of three, which ain’t bad).

To make confusion worse confused, you are descended from Daniel Dulany’s daughter Rebecca through the Heaths and from his son Walter through the Belts. Walter Dulany (1723-1773), your fourth great grandfather, was Judge of Probate and otherwise a distinguished man. His daughter Margaret was maid of honor to the Queen of George III. Several of the younger Dulanys moved to England owing to the Revolution and established families. Daniel Dulany Jr’s granddaughter, for instance, married Sir Richard Hunter, the court physician, whose descendants are still heard from. Lloyd Dulany (1748-1778), one of your great uncles, son of Daniel Dulany, also settled in England, but when criticised on one occasion for his American connections he challenged his critic, fought a duel and was killed.

Although an able man himself, the most signal service performed by Daniel Dulany the older was in bringing into the world his son Daniel Dulany the younger (1722-1797), your fourth great uncle. This distinguished son, born in 1722, after being educated at Eton College and Cambridge University, England (specifically, he attended Clare College from 1738 to 1741; I myself was also a student at Clare College, exactly 250 years later), and being admitted to practice law at the Middle Temple, London, returned to the Province to become the greatest lawyer of his time in Maryland. Like his father, he became Attorney General and a member of the Governor’s Council.

In writing the life of Chief Justice Taney (a brother-in-law of Francis Scott Key) [Samuel] Tyler says, in speaking of your uncle Daniel Dulany:

“The opinions of this great Maryland lawyer had almost as much weight in Maryland, and hardly less with the crown lawyers of England, than the opinions of the great Roman jurists, made authority by edict of the Emperor, had in Roman courts. The high reputation of this great lawyer stimulated the ambition of the Maryland bar, while his opinions were models of legal discussion for their imitation.”

In 1760 he was appointed by Frederick Lord Baltimore to act as one of the commissioners to fix the boundary line between Maryland and Pennsylvania, which you will often hear spoken of as the Mason and Dixon line; Mason and Dixon being the names of the two English surveyors employed to work out the line. In addition to Daniel Dulany Lord Baltimore appointed as members of the Commission your great grandfather John Beale Bordley, your great uncle Stephen Bordley, your cousin Edward Lloyd and your cousin by marriage Benjamin Tasker Jr. It was almost a family affair. Their labors were completed November 9th, 1768.

The French and Indian wars had caused a very heavy expense to England, and the British Government having decided in 1765 that the colonies should contribute to the cost of their defence, passed the Stamp Act, which required all legal documents in the colonies to bear stamps upon which a duty should be paid. The colonists, you will remember, Indignantly denied the right of the British Parliament, in which they were not represented, to impose taxes upon them of any kind, and it was at this time that your uncle Daniel Dulany wrote a celebrated essay which he called “Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing faxes in the British Colonies for the Purpose of Raising a Revenue by Act of Parliament.” This has always been recognized as the best defence of the rights of the colonies which appeared during the controversy. The essay was republished in London and was used by Pitt as the basis of his great speech in the House of Connons in favor of the repeal of the Stamp Act. President Wilson says in his History of the American People:

“Mr. Daniel Dulany’s Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes in the British Colonies supplies the great Pitt with the chief grounds of his argument against taxing America. A Maryland lawyer had turned from leading the bar of a province to set up the true theory of the constitution of an empire with the dignity, the moderation, the power, the incommunicable grace of a great thinker and genuine men of letters.”

You will notice that your uncle took the side of the colonists in this dispute, but when it came to separating from England he remained a Royalist. In this he was not by any means alone, for Maryland was opposed to a separation in the beginning and instructed her delegates to the Continental Congress to vote against independence. Daniel Dulany at the time was Secretary of the Province, a member of the Proprietary’s Council, and constant advisor of the Proprietary Governor. When the province finally decided in 1776 to separate he could not agree with the decision and retired into private life. If he had not decided in this way, his abilities would probably have made him one of the leading members of the revolutionary government.

I will quote now a long extract from McMahon’s History of Maryland, which, in addition to being inspired by your great uncle’s talents, in deserving of attention as an example of those flowing mellow periods for which the older southern authors and orators were noted:

“Conspicuous amongst the essays of that day in opposition to the Stamp Act, is one to the honor of which Maryland lays claim, as the production of her most distinguished son. It came from the pen of one, whose very name was a tower of strength. Abilities thet defied competition, learning that ranged with an eagleflight over overy science, accomplishments that fascinated and gentleness that soothed even envy all conspired to render Daniel Dulany the fit advocate of such a cause. *****

For professional learning and general ability, he had long been conspicuous; as the defender of colonial liberties, he now acquired more extensive and gratifying distinction. He became the Pitt of Maryland; and whilst his fellow citizens hailed him with one voice as the great champion of their liberties, even foreign colonies in their joyous celebrations of the repeal of the act, did not hesitate to place him in their remembrances with a Camden and a Chatham. “

After a homily on the common fate of mortals and hastily catching his breath the historian goes on:

“But half a century has gone by; and the very name of Daniel Dulany is almost forgotten in his native state, where the unquestioned supremacy of his talents was once the theme of every tongue and the boast of every citizen. *****

We may admit that tradition is a magnifier, that men seen through its medium and the obscurity of half a century, like objects in a misty morning, loom largely in the distance. Yet with regard to Mr. Dulany, there is no room for such illusion. ‘You may tell Hercules by his foot’ says the proverb; and this truth is as just, when applied to the proportions of the mind, as to those of the body. The legal arguments and opinions of Mr. Dulany which remain to us, bear the impress of abilities too commanding and of learning too profound, to admit of question. Had we but these fragments, like the remains of splendour which linger around some of the ruins of antiquity, there would be enough for admiration. Yet they fall very far short of furnishing just conceptions of the character and accomplishments of his mind. We have higher attestations of these, in the testimony of contemporaries. For many years before the Revolution he was regarded as an oracle of the law. It was the constant practice of the courts of the Province to submit to his opinion every question of difficulty which came before them; and so Infallible were his opinions considered that he who hoped to reverse them was regarded as hopiing against hope’. Nor was his professional reputation limited to the colony. I have been credibly informed, that he was occasionally consulted from England upon questions of magnitude; and that in the southern counties of Virginia adjacent to Maryland it was not infrequent to withdraw questions from the courts, and even from the Chancellor of England, to submit them to his award. Thus unrivalled in professional learning, according to the representations of his contemporaries, he added to it all the power of the orator, the accomplishments of the scholar, the graces of the person and suavity of the gentleman. Mr. Pinckney, himself the wonder of his age, who saw but the setting splendour of Mr. Dulany’s talents, is reputed to have said of him ‘that even amongst such men as Pitt, Fox and Sheridan, he had not found his superior.”

The ancestors of whom I have been telling you lived in Maryland and took part in the social life of Annapolis. As you know, Baltimore is now the capital of Maryland, but there was a time when Annapolis was the city and Baltimore the town. For many years Annapolis was not only the capital of Maryland, but the center of culture and social life in the colonies. The Frenchman, Abbé Robin, in describing Annapolis at the time of the Revolution, says:

“The furniture of the houses here is of the costliest description. They have light and elegant carriages which are drawn by fine horses. The coachmen are slaves and are richly dressed. There appears to be more wealth and luxury in Annapolis than in any other city I have visited in this country. and the extravagance of the women surpasses that of our Provinces. A French hairdresser is a man of great importance. A lady here pays hers a thousand crowns a year.”

There were six families in Annapolis who drove six horses to a coach, and it wes thought hardly respectable to have fewer than four. The best race course in the country was at Annapolis and the first theater built in the colonies was there. It is surprising, too, that in those days 10s. or $2.50 was paid for a seat in the theater which, in comparison with the value of money, was more than even the prices we complain of so much in New York today.

The men of the time were a jovial lot, and I suspect had many celebrations like the one on the British frigate I shall tell you about later when your cousin Philip was spirited away. In reading the account of General Washington’s tour through the southern states, you will find he was elaborately entertained, no banquet being considered worthy of the occasion unless they drank at least fourteen formal toasts, the informal ones being left to conjecture. In Annapolis there was a noted supper club called the Tuesday Club of Maryland, where they always began by drinking to “The ladies”, then “The King’s Majesty” and then “The deluge”.

Social standards were strictly enforced in Annapolis and were not always understood at first by the young men educated in England, who thought after some years at Eton and Cambridge they were returning to Indian tepees when visiting the Colonies. An example of how one of these young men, Walter Dulany Addison (1769-1848), a son of your third great aunt Rebecca Dulany (1750-1829), was set right on this subject is described in a letter which he wrote after going to an entertainment given one evening by your fifth great grandmother Mary Grafton Dulany (1727-1812). He said:

“My uncle John and myself were invited to an evening party. After dinner, as was his wont, he took an airing in the riding costume of an English gentleman, which he had brought with him from England. It consisted of small clothes of yellow buckskin, blue coat, red cassimere vest and fine top boots. Of this swell costume he appears to have been vain, and on his return he did not disrobe, but presented himself in this trim to an astonished assembly of elegantly dressed ladies and gentlemen. He had not anticipated such a scene (which equalled anything he had seen in London) and thought he could dress as he pleased. Great was his dismay and confusion. He was met at the door by his Grandmamma Dulany in highly offended dignity. ‘What do you mean, Walter, by such an exhibition? Go immediately home to your room and return in a befitting dress.’ And he was very glad to go and soon returned in silk stockings, embroidered vest &c. He told me of his great astonishment at the splendour of the ladies’ dresses, and the adornments of the apartments.”

(Not clear who the narrator of the above letter is. Sims says that it is Walter, but Walter is referred to in the third person.)

Another letter which has been preserved, written by your same great grandmother to her son Walter Dulany, mentions the celebration in Annapolis when peace was declared at the end of the Revolution.

Annapolis 23 April 1783

My Dear Wat:

Thursday our races begin and Kitty has just gone off in a superb Phaeton & four with a very flaming beau to the ground. Yesterday was his first appearance with our infinity of French Beaux, all of whom are very gallant. We have a dismal set of players too, who will act every night of this joyous week. Tomorrow we celebrate Peace. I hear there is to be a grand dinner on Squire Carroll’s Point, a whole ox to be roasted & I can’t tell how many sheep & calves besides a world of other things. Liquor in proportion. The whole to conclude with Illuminations & squibs &c. I had liked to have forgot to mention the Ball which I think had better be postponed. I am horribly afraid our gentlemen will have lighter heads than heels. I think to keep myself snug at home & pray no mischief may happen & for Kitty’s safe return from the Ball. The shoes &c. came very opportunely for kitty, just two days before our gaities commenced. They are very pretty. You must accept her thanks thro’ me, as she is entirely taken up at present & will be for several days.

I am my dear Wat. Yr. affect. Mother

M. Dulany”

Kitty who received the shoes, etc. in time for the dance was probably her daughter Catharine (our ancestor, 1764-1830) whose thoughts may have been taken up that night with your great great grandfather Horatio S. Belt (also our ancestor, 1746-1796) whom she afterwards married.

Although your great grandfather Daniel Dulany, Sr. was penniless when he reached the colony, in two generations the family had amassed a great fortune and were the owners of many thousends of acres of land and what seems to have been a beautiful country seat called “Hunting Ridge”, six miles distant from Baltimore. In the published letters of William Eddis, an Englishman, deseribing the social life of Maryland in 1769, you will find a letter to his wife written while he was staying at Hunting Ridge in which be says:

“I write to you from one of the most delightful situations on the continent of America, where I have obtained an occasional retreat from the noise, the tumult and the miseries of the public world. From the back piazza of our habitation we command a truly picturesque view into several fertile countries; a distant prospect of the Eastern Shore; the magnificent waters of the Chesapeake, and the river Patapsco, from the entrance at the Bodkin Point, to its apparent termination at the town of Baltimore. After this inadequate description, I need not observe, that we reside on a lofty eminence, where

‘the air
Nimbly, and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle senses’.”

(the quote is from Macbeth, where King Duncan says how much he likes the atmosphere of the place where he is about to be murdered.)

After the close of the Revolution the property of Loyalists was confiscated and this, of course, included the property of Daniel Dulany. In 1781 his real estate, including Hunting Ridge, was sold at public auction for £84,602, or $423,000, a vast sum to be paid for property at that time, when the pound was worth many times more than it is today. In spite of the strong feeling which naturally existed between the Loyalists and the Patriots, some of the Dulany family remained friendly with members of the revolutionary party, and in an entry in Washington’s diary of December 22nd, 1785, he mentions going fox hunting with Daniel Dulany, Jr. (1747-1825), who was a son of the great uncle I have been telling you about. Another son, Benjamin Dulany (1752-1811), married Elizabeth French (1757-1822), of Fairfax County, Virginia, General Washington’s ward, and gave to General Washington the celebrated horse Blueskin, which he rode during the war of the Revolution, When the war was over the horse was returned to Mrs. Dulany with the following note:

“General Washington presents his best respects to Mrs. Dulany with the horse Blueskin, which he wishes was better worth her acceptance. Marks of antiquity have supplied the place of those beauties with which the horse abounded in his better days, nothing but the recollection of which and of his having been the favorite of Mr. Dulany in the days of his courtship can reconcile her to the meager appearance he now makes. Friday, past 2 o’clock.”

In the old graveyard of St. Ann’s Church at Annapolis is the tomb of your great grandfather Daniel Dulany’s wife Rebecca Smith. Under the emblazoned arms of the family is the following inscription:

“Here lies the remains of
Rebecca, late wife of
Daniel Dulany of Annapolis, Esgre.
and fourth daughter of Colonel Walter Smith.

She faithfully and diligently discharged her duty in all relations of a daughter, a wife, a mother, a friend and a neighbor. She was virtuous and charitable without affectation. She lived an unblemished life, and died universally lamented.

The 18th day of March 1737 – aged 47 years.”

I visited this grave in July 2024, and it is indeed an impressive monument. I am surprised that Sim’s McGrath doesn’t mention that Daniel Dulany the elder himself is buried there too – he mentions “the vault where he was interred” earlier as if it were a separate place. The second part of the inscription is:

Here lies also the remains of The Honourable Daniel Dulany Esquire Commissary General of the Province one of his Lordships Council of State and Recorder of this city who died 5 December 1753 in the LXVIII [ie 68th year] of his age

There are many Smiths, but it would be interesting for you some day to trace the lineage of Rebecca Smith and see whether she was also an ancestress of your mother. Judging from the description of her virtues, I would say she was. The arms of which I have a copy were granted in 1642 to Sir William Smith of Cranstock, Cornwall. These Smiths seem to have been rather eager to join our family, for your great grandmother Rebecca, not content with marrying your great grand-father, saw to it that her sister Eleanor Smith married Thomas Addison, whose grandson Thomas was to marry your third great aunt Rebecca Dulany.

Keys

If you ever decide to visit the tombs of your ancestors in St. Peter’s Churchyard in Philadelphia, St. Paul’s in Baltimore and St. Anne’s at Annapolls, you should not finish your pleasant round until you have been to the Village of Chaptico in St. Mary’s County, Maryland, where, in Old Christ Church the Key family had the satisfaction of being buried in a vault arched under the church Itself and bearing on the stone door the coat of arms with the family motto of “Faithful to the faith”.

I visited this tomb in July 2024 also, and endorse Sims’ recommendation. The church is indeed beautiful, but if the stone door to the Key vault survives, access to it is blocked by a rather functional metal cover. The tomb was horribly desecrated by British soldiers during the war of 1812, a few weeks before the bombardment of Fort McHenry which is discussed below.

The Key family descended from John Key, who was the first poet laureate of England in the time of Edward IV (1461).

John Kaye describes himself as “poet laureate” in the dedication of his “The Siege of Rhodes” to Edward IV (who ruled, off and on, from 1461 to 1483). “The Siege of Rhodes”, his only surviving work, is prose rather than poetry, and any information about Kaye’s descendants is very speculative.

Several other members of the family figure in English history, such as Robert, Queen Elizabeth’s treasurer.

Nobody of that name, or anything similar, is recorded as having been Lord High Treasurer of England under Elizabeth I.

The founder of the family in this country, however, was Philip Key (1696-1764), Lord High Sheriff of Maryland and your fifth great grandfather. He was evidently a very devout man, for Queen Anne presented him with the organ and baptismal font for Christ Church, and it is further recorded that, the Church being rather dark, he reserved the entire gallery where the windows were located for his own family, and never permitted the service to be begun until he had taken his seat. He also left an indication of piety for posterity to admire in the wording of his will which began as follows:

“In the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost – Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity – one God blessed forevermore, I Philip Key of St. Mary’s Co. in Md. son of Richard and Mary Key, born in the Parish of St. Paul’s, Covent Garden in London ye 25th March, 1696, O.S., being of sound and disposing mind and memory and knowing ye uncertainty of this mortal life, do make and ordain this to be my testament and last will, to wit:”

The Honorable Philip Key had inherited a large fortune and made himself comfortable in the colonies. His residence was called “Wolf Holds” and is described as having been “a very elegant building of brick – the bricks being imported from England. The large drawing room was panelled from the ceiling and original oil paintings were inlaid alternately with large mirrors entirely around the wall.”

Many of his descendants were distinguished lawyers but the most noted was his third great grandson Francis Scott Key (1779-1843) author of The Star Spangled Banner. You are a fifth great granddaughter of Philip Key through another son which makes Francis Scott Key your seventh cousin.

This is complicated stuff, and Sims has got it wrong. Francis Scott Key was a great-grandson of Philip Key, three generations on, not a third great-grandson which would be five generations on; this makes him Eileen McGrath’s second cousin four times removed, not her seventh cousin, and even if Sims had got Francis Scott Key’s descent right, the relationship would have been fourth cousins twice removed, not seventh cousins. I myself am two generations further on than Eileen, so Francis Scott Key is my second cousin six times removed.

Born in 1779 in Frederick County, Maryland, he was educated at Annapolis, studied law and became District Attorney in the District of Columbia under President Jackson. During the war of 1812 the English army captured Washington and the navy controlled Chesapeake Bay. They then began to mass for an attack on Fort McHenry near Baltimore, probably expecting to capture Baltimore and undo all the work of the American Revolution. In this situation a prominent citizen of Maryland, a friend of Francis Scott Key, Dr. William Beans, was taken prisoner and hoping to secure his liberation, Key obtained permission from President Madison to go to the British Admiral under a flag of truce. Admiral Cockburn agreed to the release, but as the fleet was on the point of attacking Fort McHenry, he compelled Francis Scott Key to remain under guard on his own vessel, which was lashed to a British ship on the side of the American fire. In this way Key watched the bombardment of Fort McHenry during the night of September 14th, 1814, and during all that night paced the deck watching the shells burst and without knowing whether the fort had fallen or the flag was still in its place. During the night and in the midst of the bombardment the thought of the poem came into his mind and when the sun rose, showing the attack had falled and the flag was still flying, he finished the lines on the back of an old letter. You can realize with what feeling he wrote –

“O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous flight,
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming:
And the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?”

Francis Scott Key seems to have inherited some of the poetic talent of his ancestor the poet-laureate, and the religious spirit of Philip Key, for you will find hymns Nos. 307 and 454 in the Church Hymnal were written by him, and a collection of his poems was published in 1851, with an introduction by Chief Justice Taney. He died in 1843, and was buried in Frederick, Maryland.

The two hymns are “Before the Lord We Bow” and “Lord, with Glowing Heart I’d Praise Thee”, neither of which was ever a staple anywhere that I have worshipped.

As already mentioned in passing above, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney was married to Francis Scott Key’s sister Anne. Nowadays of course he is remembered for the notorious Dred Scott judgement, widely considered to be the worst ruling in the history of the Supreme Court. So far.

Sims misses another connection to celebrity here. We (meaning me, Sims, Eileen and most of the people who will read this) are all descended from Philip Key’s son Richard. Francis Scott Key was the grandson of Philip Key’s son Francis. Another of Philip’s sons, John, had a great-granddaughter who married a man whose name was Fitzgerald; her grandson was Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (1896-1940), better known to us as F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose The Great Gatsby had just been published when Sims wrote his letter to Eileen in 1926. Perhaps Sims did not wish to draw his fifth cousin’s writings to the attention of his teenage daughter; or he may simply have been unaware of the connection.

As I suspect you are rather fond of practical jokes, I really should not encourage this taste by telling you of one which took place long ago and had a great effect on the destinies of the Key family; but I think I will take the risk, as it has some historical interest. Before the Revolution Philip Key, a grandson of your fifth great grandfather Philip Key, had finished his education and returned to Tudor Hall, his home in Maryland. There he fell very much in love with his second cousin Mary Key. She felt much the same way about him, and they were to be married. When everything was moving along in this pleasant way a British warship arrived at Annapolis with a good many of Philip’s English friends on board. They urged him to return with them to London, which I am sure his cousin Mary advised him not to do. At all events, he refused.

At last the time came for the ship to return to England and the festivities were closed with a great ball held on board the Man of War the night before sailing. Now, I am sorry to tell you, you cousin Philip drank a great many toasts with his friends the officers, for they had worked out a plan of taking him with them to London, and when the time came for the ship to draw anchor and put out to sea the following morning, Philip was sound asleep and did not come out of his slumbers until all vestige of land had disappeared and all sails were set in the direction of the English shore. In those days sailing vessels, and particularly warships, moved slowly, and it was months before Philip reached the other side and then returned to the shores of Maryland.

In the meantime there was no way of communicating with his cousin. She, of course, knowing nothing of the reason for his leaving, thought she had been brutally deserted, and to retaliate, as some girls will in cases like that, gave her affections to your third great grandfather Daniel Heath. They were married in 1768, and one of their children was your great great grandmother Susanna Heath, who married Matthias of Wye Island. When Philip returned to Annapolis, slowly but as fast as winds permitted, he found to his dismay that his fiancée was setting out on her wedding journey with Mr. Heath.

It is said he was heartbroken; but at all events, he consoled himself as time went on by marrying not only once but twice, and having thirteen children, and it was his great grandson who was Francis Scott Key. If you will pause here to reflect a few moments you will see that if the British officers had not kidnapped Philip he would not have married as he did and there would have been no Francis Scott Key. He would have married his cousin Mary Key and there would have been multitudes of little Keys who never came into existence; also Mary Key would not have married Daniel Heath, and I would not be here to trouble you with this very complicated account of your ancestors and their love affairs. Perhaps the practical joke in all of this may be said to have been upon the little Keys who never came into the world.

Alas, the genealogical details do not completely check out here. The great-grandfather of Francis Scott Key was the original Philip Key himself, not a grandson. Mary Key was only 16 when she married Daniel Heath in 1768, so the window of opportunity is short. If there is any truth to the story, it is probably about Philip Key (1750?-1820), grandson of the original Philip Key by his son John Key (1729-1755) and later a politician, lawyer and judge, who however is not a direct ancestor of anyone we have mentioned so far.

Before leaving the Keys I had better tell you how the name Sims forced its way into the family. Your third great aunt Rebecca Heath (d. 1812) , born In 1769 and daughter of Daniel Heath and Mary Key, married Joseph Sims (1760-1851), a great merchant of Philadelphia. Ships fron his wharves In Philadelphia sailed to all parts of the world, and if you ask your grandmother about him, she will almost certainly describe him as the “merchant prince” of Philadelphia. The only way I was ever enriched, however, through this connection was by the gift of a set of livery buttons bearing the Sims coat of arms and used by the men in his service. His descendants are your cousins, and one of them, Dr. Francis Sims (1823-1880), having been a friend of your grandparents and the family physician, and having introduced me to the world, I was given his name but no part of his estate. That is the sad story.

The story is a little sadder than that, in fact. Joseph and Rebecca Sims’ daughter Caroline Rebecca Heath Sims (1801-1829) married Robert B. Corbin (1796-1868) died in childbirth; their only surviving child, the future doctor Francis (1823-1890), was brought up by his maternal grandparents and took their surname.

You have now seen your lineage traced through the seven families – Bordleys, Dulanys, Lloyds, Chews, Heaths, Belts and Keys. I have even attached to this letter the full line of descent [not attached to our copy] so that when accused of being related to one or the other you cannot shield yourself behind ignorance. How scant has been the detail of their lives you may have noticed; you will appreciate how welcome would be a record kept by any one of them giving a picture of his own life or of the times in which he lived! In that is a suggestion for you.

No moral is intended to be painted by this account of your ancestors. It is natural to be interested in the elements of which we are compounded and perhaps a mild satisfaction may be felt in finding we are entitled to draw moderately of talent, intelligence and good breeding from the reservoir of our ancestors. The sediment of the reservoir I have not stirred – let it remain where it belongs.

If you find information and amusement in this letter I shall feel repaid. I know you do not need the warning given long ago by Dryden –

“Vain are their hopes who fancy to inherit
By trees of pedigree, or tame or merit;
Though plodding heralds through each branch may trace
Old captains and dictators of their race.”

My work being now done, I leave you to your own reflections.

Your devoted

Father

I hope this has been interesting and maybe even useful; I’m putting it online on 14 August 2025, 99 years to the day after Sims McGrath wrote to his daughter Eileen on 14 August 1926.