“You never could have such a drawing-room; it was brilliant beyond anything you can imagine; and though there was a great deal of extravagance, there was so much of Philadelphia taste in everything that it must be confessed the most delightful occasion of the kind ever known in this country.”
Some of the old names run down the Assembly list through all the years to our own time, as Chew, Shippen, M’Call, Hopkinson, McIlvaine, White, Barclay, Cadwalader, Coxe, Lardner, and many more, while others have quite disappeared from Philadelphia society. There are no more Hamiltons, Oswalds, Cliftons, Plumsteds, Allens, Swifts, Inglises, or Francises to be found on the lists of to-day. Some of these families are no longer represented in the male line, while others have married and settled abroad, notably the Binghams, Allens, Hamiltons, and Elliots. Into the social circles where they once held sway have come such Southern names as Randolph, Byrd, Page, Robinson, Carter, Hunter, and Neilson from Virginia, and Tilghman, Cheston, Murray, and many other well-known names from that Eastern Shore of Maryland famed for its good cheer, and for its hospitable Colonial mansions presided over by beautiful matrons.
FOOTNOTES:
[35] Evidently intended for Mrs. Mayoress, as Charles Willing was elected Mayor of Philadelphia in 1748.
[36] Mr. Richard Penn Lardner, a descendant of this Lynford Lardner, in 1878, owned the original list of the subscribers to the Assembly of 1749, and the manner in which this list and the rules for its government came into the possession of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania is in itself an interesting bit of local history. The rules were the property of Mr. Charles Riché Hildeburn, a direct descendant of John Swift. He offered to give them to the society if the old list should also be forthcoming. Mr. Lardner signified his willingness to donate the list, and the formal presentation was made by the late President of the Historical Society, the Hon. John William Wallace. Thus, after a separation of one hundred and thirty years, the old documents came together through the agency of descendants of three of the managers of the very Assembly to which they pertained.
[37] Chronicles of the Plumsted Family, by Eugene Devereux.
[38] Some of these old playing-cards, with invitations to the Assembly printed on the backs, are still in the possession of a descendant of the first Edward Shippen.
[39] This Mrs. Bingham was the mother of William Bingham, who married a daughter of Thomas Willing, whose wife, Anne McCall, may well be spoken of as “the beautiful mother of a beautiful race.”
[40] From manuscript letter in possession of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.