1797 PA Quaker Marriage Pine Meeting House Philadelphia Emmor Kimber Kimberton

Description: A large marriage certificate, folded into 1/8ths and measuring 26 x 17 inches when opened, dated May 3, 1797 between two Philadelphia Quakers, Emmor Kimber & Susanna Jackson who took their vows at the Pine Street meeting house that day--a Wednesday. The marriage vows are recited at the top, the groom and bride signed below them and 94 other Philadelphia Quakers signed their names in five columns. It is a vellum document (soft parchment paper) in excellent condition, save for a tiny area in the bottom right. This is a museum quality document. None of the signatures or text has significant fading. Here is the text: Whereas Emmor Kimber of the City of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania , Schoolmaster, son of Predy Kimber of the same place and Gertrude his wife, and Susanna Jackson, daughter of Isaac Jackson of the County of Chester in in Pennsylvania and Hannah his wife, having declared their intention of marriage with each other before several Monthly meetings of the people called Quakers held in Philadelphia aforesaid for the Southern District according to the good order used among them and having consent of parents their said proposals were allowed of by the said Meeting: Now these are to certify whom it may concern that for the full accomplishing their said intentions this third day of the fifth month in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and ninety seven. They the said Emmor Kimber and Susanna Jackson appeared in a public meeting of the said people held at their Meeting-house in Pine Street in Philadelphia aforesaid and the said Emmor Kimber taking the said Susanna Jackson by the hand did on this Solemn Occasion openly declare that he took her the said Susanna Jackson to be his wife, promising with Divine assistance to be unto her a loving and faithful husband until Death should separate them; And then in the same Assembly the said Susanna Jackson did in like manner declare that she took him the said Emmor Kimber to be her husband, promising with Divine assistance to be unto him a loving and faithful wife until Death should separate them. And moreover, they the said Emmor Kimber and Susanna Jackson (she according to the custom of marriage assume the name of her husband) did as a further confirmation thereof then and there these presents set their hands. And we whose names are hereunder also subscribed being present ant the solemnization of the said marriage and subscription. Emmor Kimber [Signature at the far right under the text shown above] Susanna Kimber [Signature at the far right under the text shown above] Then there are six columns of signatures. The far right column has all men—18 signatures. The second column has 18 signatures of men and women mixed together. The third column has 13 signatures of women. The fourth column has 17 signatures of women. The fifth column has 17 signatures of women, including three with “by desire” written after. The sixth column has 11 signatures of men and women mixed together. So this document has the signatures of 96 Philadelphia Quakers (including the groom and bride). Here is a history that I have put together of Emmor Kimber. And – no – the letter he wrote to Thomas Jefferson that I quote here is not included. It is at the University of Virginia Archives: Emmor was the son of Richard Predy and Gertrude (Griffith) Kimber and husband of Susannah Jackson. He was a Quaker. He built a Friends Meeting House on a corner of his property in 1802. He and several family members are buried in the small cemetery adjacent to the Meeting House. (In 1876, this Meeting House would become Centennial Lutheran Church.) The Village of Kimberton was named for him. Name: Emmor Kimber Birth Date: 11 May 1775 Death Date: 1 Sep 1850 Death Place: Kimberton, Chester County, Pennsylvania, United States of America Cemetery: Kimberton Friends Burial Ground Burial Place: Kimberton, Chester County, Pennsylvania, United States of America Emmor Kimber to Thomas Jefferson, 22 March 1816--From the UVA Archives Philadelphia 3 mo 22nd 1816 Esteemed friend Thomas Jefferson At a very great expense, and by the industry and labour of several years, I have at length produced a large and elegant Map of the United States—The draftsman employed to effect this was Samuel Lewis, and the engravers William and Samuel Harrison—A few copies of the first attempts at finishing them, have been deposited in the publick offices at Washington, and which I hope thou hast seen— I am now prepared to publish the Map, and my agent Solomon Humphreys, who is to supply subscribers with it, will leave this City in about two weeks, on a journey through the Southern States, who will have in charge a copy to offer for thy acceptance—What reception he may meet with from the publick, or to what extent I shall be remunerated for my labour, is to be proved—but I have beleived, if thou approves of the attempt to produce from the best information practicable, such an extensive Map, and was free to communicate thy approbation to me, by a letter that thou would be willing I should print annexed to the enclosed review, it would be of extensive benefit to me, and of great advantage to my agent in disposing of them from thy friend, Emmor Kimber----------------------------------------Emmor Kimber (1775–1850), educator, publisher, and Quaker minister, was a teacher in Philadelphia by 1799 and later wrote an arithmetic textbook. He established a printing and stationery partnership with Solomon White Conrad by 1806. Kimber opened a boarding school for girls by 1818 at French Creek farm in Chester County, Pennsylvania. In 1831 he received a patent for a “Carriage, locomotive, and rails adapted thereto.” Kimber’s varied philanthropic activities included providing aid to runaway slaves (Sidney A. Kimber, The Descendants of Richard Kimber [1894], 38; Emmor Kimber, Arithmetic Made Easy to Children, 2d ed. [Philadelphia, 1805]; Kimber & Conrad to TJ, 7 June 1809; James Robinson, Robinson’s Philadelphia Register and City Directory, for 1799 [Philadelphia, 1799]; Robinson, The Philadelphia Directory for 1806 [Philadelphia, 1806]; West Chester, Pa., Village Record, or Chester and Delaware Federalist, 14 Jan. 1818, 15 Nov. 1820; List of Patents, 488–9; Franklin Institute, Journal 8 [1831]: 22–3; Robert C. Smedley, History of the Underground Railroad [1883], 194; Philadelphia North American and United States Gazette, 2 Sept. 1850). ---------------------------------------- The Kimberton Village Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. Portions of the content on this web page were adapted from a copy of the original nomination document. ---------------------------------------- The Kimberton Village Historic District [Pennsylvania] is a full service 18th century village located off Route 113, Kimberton Village is home to the illustrious and historic Kimberton Waldorf School. The Kimberton Historic District includes sixty-two buildings and two structures along three eighteenth and nineteenth century roadways that helped to make the village a local education, market, and transportation center. The village is also locally significant for its namesake, Emmor Kimber, an enterprising educator who arrived here in 1817 and promptly established himself as the community's leading citizen and a prominent county figure. Kimberton's architecture reflects the village's two phases of growth. At the district's western end, around an early crossroads (Kimberton and Hare's Hill Roads), stand eighteenth and early nineteenth century stone buildings that are representative of the eighteenth century vernacular architecture of this part of Chester County. The opposite end of the district reflects the development of building lots around the post-Civil War railroad station. The regular plan and siting of houses in this section of the district are distinctive in comparison to other historic villages in northern Chester County. ---------------------------------------- The Kimberton Historic District includes sixty-two buildings (including intrusions) and two structures along three eighteenth and nineteenth century roadways that helped to make the village a local education, market, and transportation center. The village is also locally significant for its namesake, Emmor Kimber, an enterprising educator who arrived here in 1817 and promptly established himself as the community's leading citizen and a prominent county figure. Kimberton's architecture reflects the village's two phases of growth. At the district's western end, around an early crossroads (now Kimberton and Hare's Hill roads), stand eighteenth and early nineteenth century stone buildings that are representative of the eighteenth century vernacular architecture of this part of Chester County. The opposite end of the district reflects the development of building lots around the post-Civil War railroad station. The regular plan and siting of houses in this section of the district are distinctive in comparison to other historic villages in northern Chester County. Emmor Kimber's arrival in the unnamed village in 1817 proved significant. The Quaker entrepreneur acquired three of the crossroads properties, including the 1787 stone house with its later (before 1812) lateral addition. He added to it the next year, in 1818, a three-bay, thirty-foot-wide northern extension, and opened the twenty-room building as the French Creek Boarding School for Girls. Ever since the village's name has been associated with private school education. Although a Quaker by faith, Kimber opened his school to children of all denominations, and orphans or students from distant parts were admitted at any time without previous application. The curriculum evolved over the years to include reading, writing, English grammar, history, geography, arithmetic, astronomy, botany, chemistry, and sewing. He also offered, for an extra five-dollar fee, courses in drawing, oil and watercolor painting, French, Greek, and Latin. Unlike many schools of that era, Kimber's school had no petty rules of discipline or dress restrictions. Most schools at the time emphasized rote memory and strict discipline, often enforced with corporal punishment, but at Kimber's school, the Golden Rule governed behavior; hours were regular; methods were systematic, and within those limits personal freedom and curiosity were encouraged. Students were free to enjoy the gardens and groves surrounding the school, and botanical classes gathered rare plants near French Creek, some of which were catalogued by William Darlington in his 1826 Cestrica. Students swam in the nearby millrace, using the bath house that Kimber had built for them. As a model of progressive education for its time, the boarding school drew young scholars from a wide geographical area, as distant as the West Indies. The school closed in 1849 two years before Kimber's death. In 1852, Kimber's daughter, Abigail Kimber, sold the building, but it was later returned to academic use. Although the former boarding school is now a multiple-family residence, private education still flourishes at Kimberton Farm School, two-thirds of a mile to the north of the district. ---------------------------------------- Innovative educator though he may have been, Emmor Kimber was more than simply a Quaker schoolmaster. He was an energetic entrepreneur and the founding father of the village that would assume his name. In addition to the boarding school, Kimber initially owned the former Chrisman Mill, the inn, a shoemaker's shop, a tailor's shop, and a blacksmith shop. He rented the latter three operations to "men without families, and good workmen." (Village Record, 23 January 1824.) In addition he managed his own farm and limestone quarry and kiln and was a partner in a Philadelphia bookstore. He authored several books and dabbled in inventions obtaining a patent for an improvement of locomotive engines. Also, as a good Quaker, he worked for the abolition of slavery and served as an "agent" on the underground railroad. In a gesture of apparent religious conviction and civic responsibility, Kimber in December 1818 deeded land on a hillock southwest of the school for a Quaker meetinghouse. Built two years later, the simple gable-roof stone building became known as the Kimberton Friends Meeting. Kimber served as the meeting's clerk, a position most closely analogous to minister in other Protestant sects. (In 1876, the meetinghouse was acquired and altered by the Centennial Evangelical Lutheran Church, which it remains today.) By 1820, when the tenant house at the northeast corner of Kimber and Hare's Hill roads became the Boarding School Inn, Kimber converted the old Black Bear Tavern to a general merchandise store, which it remained into the mid-twentieth century. In the same year Kimber became the local postmaster, and since he owned virtually every important building at the crossroads, including the general store in which the post office was located, it is understandable why the village was officially named Kimberton. Kimber's acquisition of the mill and tavern, and his subsequent conversion of the tavern to a store, illustrates the central role of commerce in the village. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, taverns played important roles as way stations for farmers traveling to and from market and as local centers for social and business intercourse. The Black Bear Tavern at the northwest corner of Kimberton and Hare's Hill roads was no exception. The fact that Emmor Kimber did not alter it to a general store until after the Boarding School Inn (built before 1812, later known as the Kimberton Hotel and now the Kimberton County House) had opened on the opposite side of Hare's Hill Road indicated the need for such an institution in an agrarian village. By the second quarter of the nineteenth century, the economy had moved beyond the bartering stage to a market economy capable of providing profits for storekeepers like Kimber. The clientele were local farmers, many of whom also patronized the old Chrisman Mill on the opposite corner of Kimberton and Hare's Hill roads. Mills were central to pre-industrial agriculture; they processed grains into a marketable commodity. The Chrisman Mill dates from 1796, but other nearby mills predated it by at least two decades. Throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, Royal Spring, a spring-fed stream that runs through Kimberton, served at least three eighteenth century mills in the area. One stood next to a pond on Kimberton Road outside of the district's western boundary; another (now known as Prizer's Mill) stood on Mill Road outside of the district's northern boundary; the third was the Chrisman Mill. Another mill stood on Pickering Creek about three miles from the Kimberton and Hare's Hill roads intersection and one was sited along French Creek about a mile-and-a-half east of the intersection. The types and capacity of the latter two mills are not known, but because these five mills were the only mills within less than a day's drive from surrounding farms, they drew farmers to Kimberton and helped to create a market for the enterprising Kimber. The Chrisman Mill was especially well located. By standing at the foot of the rise at the district's southern end, it enjoyed a good fall of water for its wheel, and by sharing the intersection after 1820 with the boarding school, inn, and general store, and by being only a few hundred feet west of the still-extant blacksmith shop on Kimberton Road, it enabled clients to take care of other errands and needs while their grain was being milled. This market pattern of mill, store, and tavern serving fundamentally local needs was well established by 1820 and seems not to have changed much for the next half-century. ---------------------------------------- In addition to the crossroads tavern and the three mills on Royal Spring, Kimberton by 1824 had a blacksmith shop, a saddler and harness-maker, a shoemaker's shop, and a tailor's establishment to serve the farmer's needs. Taking further advantage of his location and apparently growing number of customers, Kimber also by 1824 was operating for fee a clover machine for separating clover seed from chaff. (It was not his invention; he was using it under patent rights from Thomas Burrall of Geneva, New York.) This diverse collection of shops and activities is testimony to the village's commercial activity after Kimber's arrival and indicates that the village's economy had moved beyond a barter and exchange economy. By 1833, even light manufacturing was introduced in the village when two local men purchased the right to make and use a newly patented threshing machine. As noted earlier, the arrival of the Pickering Valley Railroad in 1871 shifted economic activity to the district's eastern end and greatly expanded farmers' markets. The fertile farms surrounding Kimberton helped to make that village's station the busiest on the line. Kimberton was the only station staffed with an agent, and in 1882 business was so good that an assistant agent was assigned to it. By 1884, the Kimberton Station was handling nearly 9‑1/2 tons of freight a week, more than any other Pickering Valley station. Much of that freight was milk, which by the spring of 1895 rose to an average daily shipment of 2735 quarts, the largest quantity of any of the railroad's depots. The enterprises at the old crossroads seem not to have suffered, however. The general store continued in business as did the mill and hotel. The mill was put out of business in the twentieth century by larger, centralized, steam and electric-powered operations, not by a geographic shift in the village's economic activity. The old hotel continues today as a restaurant, one of its formerly major functions. Meanwhile commerce increased to provide business for the brick store at the railroad crossing as well as for the old general store at the crossroads. The very existence of other business concerns, in particular the milk receiving station and the coal chutes between the east side of Prizer Road and the railroad tracks, were tied directly to the railroad. Only remnants of the coal chutes remain, but the frame milk station, though vacant, still stands. Dairy farmers brought their milk to the milk receiving station, where it was tested for cream content, possibly pasteurized (by the end of the nineteenth century), and stored until the train arrived. The northern half of the building was an ice house which provided refrigeration for the milk. The ice was sent out from Phoenixville by train. Milk was the main commodity shipped from Kimberton and helped to make it the busiest station with the greatest volume of traffic on the line. The coal chutes were built shortly after the railroad's inauguration. There were two sets of chutes, one being on Prizer Road and operated in conjunction with the feed store (which is now the house beside the c.1960 grocery store) and the other set being behind the brick store. The first set was built by Dutton Madden, a speculator from central Pennsylvania, but which he sold in 1875. Twenty years later, A.E.Yeager, operator of the brick store, consolidated his chutes with those of Madden's successor, John Francis, and the combined set remained in use until shortly after World War II. Other businesses, such as the carriage works and window frame factory, simply exploited their locations near the new transportation center. Whereas farmers once went to the mill on occasion, after 1871, they went to the receiving station on a nearly daily basis, making the east end of the village a desirable business location. FREE DOMESTIC SHIPPING. Terms and Conditions: FREE United States of America Postal Service to anywhere in the United States. Uninsured International, including Canada, shipments are $300.00 (Registered Mail with special supplemental insurance rider obtained from a third-party insurance company). The United States Postal Service has an excellent record with my shipments. I have been a member of the American Philatelic Society since 1978 and have been selling on eBay for years. Virginia buyers must pay our Governor's 5.3% sales tax unless you email a PDF of your Virginia resale certificate immediately after your purchase. Ebay will probably take care of the tax situation. Buy with trust and confidence. I will work to make you happy. Thank you for taking the time to view my items and make sure to review the items in my eBay retail store.

Price: 4800 USD

Location: Richmond, Virginia

End Time: 2024-08-17T21:28:13.000Z

Shipping Cost: 0 USD