Elizabeth Haddon Estaugh

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF ELIZABETH HADDON

By Harriet 0. Redman Willits.

Elizabeth Haddon left no diary, so we too are obliged to be pioneers and to
blaze again the forest trails, this time through the pages of books, a few old
letters, note books and Meeting records, from which we piece together a story,
full of youth and romance and religious zeal.

Elizabeth's father, John Haddon, was a blacksmith, who extended his
trade to the making of anchors. The first five or six years of Elizabeth's life
were spent on Jacob Street in a place called Southwark, on the south bank of
the Thames, opposite London and near her father's shop.

Some of the story-and-a-half houses in that locality yet stand as they did
two hundred years ago, on partially reclaimed land, the roofs protected from
storm and time, by sturdy English tile and decorated with chimney pots. Three
little children, a boy and two girls, were sacrificed to the unhealthy locality in
which they lived. As his trade increased, John Haddon moved farther down
the River to Redriffe Parish into what was then almost open country, and here
Elizabeth's sister, Sarah, was born. A six-story grain mill, alive with modern
machinery, now occupies the spot where this later home stood and gives its name
to the street and its commercial tone to the spot from which once flowed kindly
English hospitality.

Horselydown Friends Meeting-house was within a half-mile of this new
home. John Haddon and his wife were married in this Meeting and here
Elizabeth worshipped until she left London for America. John Haddon lived
in the times of the persecution of Friends and suffered with others from the
tyranny of those in authority. The records of Horselydown Meeting give
many little glimpses of the struggles with the King's soldiers in carrying out his
orders against Dissenter's Meeting-houses, also some of the uses to which
meeting-houses were put. In one note, dated 1671, after the destruction of
the Meeting-house by the troops, we read: "Ordered that Will Shewen doe goe
to the artillery house and demand the timber and pay reasonable satisfaction
for the buying of it, or to let them have it ;" which displays wonderful forbear-
ance and forgiveness, according to our modern standards.

Another interesting record is in regard to the care of the Meeting-house
under date of 1672; "Ordered that Thomas Parker have the key of the Meeting-
house door, and that he clean the house, set the forms to rights, open and shut
the casements and windows from time to time, and that he have all the keys
and that if any of the neighborhood do come to have leave to dry their clothes
that one have it one day, a nother another, and not two in one day for fear of
incommancys," a curious word, which may be translated "inconveniences."

Childhood was not so treasured then as now; children were early initiated
into the rudiments of learning so that by the age of six Elizabeth had probably
begun her substantial education. She was also actively interested in her mother's

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charities, as well as in the tales her father had to tell of the ports his honest
anchors visited. For as she grew older, she went on modest little charitable
ventures of her own. On one occasion, so the story goes, she asked her mother
to let her have a party, and when the guests arrived, they were six tattered
youthful beggars of the most forlorn London type, who did full justice to the
cakes and fruit. When Elizabeth was about six years old, her father brought
home Friends to tea from the afternoon Meeting. One of them was a stranger,
William Penn, who told them wonderful tales of his new Colony in America
and of the green country town, Philadelphia. This impressed the little girl,
following, as it did, a discussion of the more sombre troubles the Friends were
having, and colored the rest of her childhood play until Indian dolls and moccasins
were laid aside for the more serious tasks her mature taste selected.

John Haddon was not one of the first to become interested in the new Colony
in America, but in 1698 he bought a plantation of five hundred acres in what was
termed "West Jersey" from a Friend named Willis, who, in turn, had purchased
it a few years before from William Penn. There is no record to show his motive
for the purchase, but from that time Elizabeth's absorbing purpose was the settle-
ment of a home in the new country. A few years before this exchange of good
English coin and sheepskin, a new proselyte to Quakerism, John Estaugh,
appeared at the yearly Meeting in London town, and attracted some attention
with his preaching. Afterward he was John Haddon's guest at dinner, and,
though Elizabeth, now about fourteen, was too young to appear at the table, they
must have talked together. There is no other record of their seeing one another
in England.

In the spring of 1701, Elizabeth's desire was gratified and she too sailed
down the Thames in one of the little two-masted ships used at that time, on her
long voyage to the land of her dreams. The voyage, after weeks on the water,
was safely accomplished, and she landed in Philadelphia, where some of the
settlers were still living in caves by the riverside. Here she visited some friends,
following this sojourn by a visit to other friends at Mountwell and Burlington.

She was about twenty when she arrived in this country to assume the care
of her father's possessions, --an almost perfect type of the English Quakeress
of that period, generously educated at school as well in her own home, where
she had been trained in domestic affairs and in the judicious bestowing of
charity and where she had intercourse with the best Friends of the time, "a
citizen in the making," prepared to take up the responsibilities and hardships of
her new life and to follow with delight the star of her chosen destiny. No one,
however respectfully he may pry into Elizabeth's motives, can help thinking
that her love for John Estaugh weighed equally in the balance with her desire to
carry Christianity to the Indians and succor to the new Colony. Her devotion
to him gives a touch of perpetual youth to her story.

After resting with her friends, she went to her new home on Cooper's Creek.

The following is a quotation from a manuscript loaned by one of Eliza-
beth Haddon's kinsmen of the present day:

"Almost opposite the place where William Penn had made his Peace Treaty
with the Indian kings, there emptied a large creek into the Delaware; the

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English named it Cooper's Creek, after William Cooper, the Quaker emigrant,
who owned three hundred acres at the mouth of the stream. This is the place
now called Cooper's Point. Up this long, winding Creek was the humble
little log house which had been refitted by her father's orders for the new-comer.
As the crow flies it was about five miles from the mouth of the Creek, but by
the Creek, the easiest way to travel in those days, it was nearly twice as far.
No wagon road reached this lonely home of hers, only an Indian trail along which
it was hard even to ride on horseback. It stood on high ground, some 150 yards
from the water, in a clearing of the forest of pine and oak that stretched away on
all sides." Her house and purse were both large and her hospitality soon became
famous and as her residence was on the way to Newton Meeting, it was a stopping
place for Friends from all parts of the country. Hither John Estaugh travelled
on his way from a religious visit with a certain John Richardson in Virginia.

Some modem chroniclers have it that John Estaugh was rather awkward
in his love-making; however, it is a tradition in the Gill family, one closely
associated by ties of blood with Elizabeth Haddon, that the young minister,
observing the prosperity of the Haddons in England, was depressed by the
comparative humbleness of his own fortune and hesitated to make any advances.
Fortunately for romance and for us he could not disguise his feeling for Elizabeth,
and she, surmising the cause of his halting courtship, with her habitual directness
made the actual proposal easy, when he arrived in this country. Perhaps for
a moment we may indulge in historical inaccuracy and quote from "The
Theologian's Tale" of Longfellow:--

Then Elizabeth said, though still with a certain reluctance,
As if impelled to reveal a secret she fain would have guarded,
"I will no longer conceal what is laid upon me to tell thee,
I have received from the Lord a charge to love thee, John Estaugh."

And John Estaugh made answer, surprised by the word she had spoken
"Pleasant to me are thy converse, thy ways, thy meekness and spirit,
Pleasant thy frankness of speech, and thy soul's immaculate whiteness,
Love without dissimulation a holy and inward adorning.
But I have yet no light to lead me, no voice to direct me.
When the Lord's work is done and the toil and the labor completed
He hath appointed to me, I will gather into the stillness
Of my own heart awhile and listen and wait for His guidance."

Then Elizabeth said, not troubled or wounded in spirit,
"So is it best, John Estaugh. We will not speak of it further.
It hath been laid upon me to tell thee this, for tomorrow
Thou art going away, across the sea and I know not
When I shall see thee more, but if the Lord hath decreed it
Thou wilt return again to seek me here and to find me."
And they rode onward in silence and entered the town with the others.

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They were married in her own home in the Tenth Month, 1702, in the pres-
ence of a Committee of Friends and a few guests, including some Indians whose
calmness matched the serenity of their Quaker brethren.

Soon after this John Estaugh became John Haddon's business agent in
this country, assuming the management of his property here, which had increased
by extensive purchases.

Elizabeth and her husband made three visits to England, for Elizabeth,
we gather, at times was homesick for London sounds and scenes and neither
pirates at sea nor land-company duties in New Jersey nor gentle admonitions
from her father, could dissuade her from making the perilous journey.¹

John Haddon and his wife never came to this country though their plans
to sail at one time developed so far that a "copper furnace" was made to
be taken across the seas as a protection from our winters.

As the country became more thickly settled, a new site for a home was chosen
and twelve years after their marriage a two-story brick house was built, within
the limits of the present borough of Haddonfield. It is thus described by a
person who resided there in the year 1830:--

"The front door opened into a large hall with a fireplace at one end orna-
mented with tile, on each side of which was a cupboard with glass doors. The
small parlor had a marble mantel and hearth and opened into the garden by a
glass door and another with Venetian blinds. An entry back of the hall had a
spiral staircase leading from it. At one end of this entry was a bedroom and the
other a kitchen, with a room back of it. In the cellar was a large fireplace and
dresser and a vault under the kitchen four or five steps deeper."

Fire destroyed this house in 1842. In the garden the yew trees brought
from England still remain, silent spectators of changing times and scenes.

John Estaugh had some knowledge of medicine and he and his wife were
famous for their skill in nursing and healing. He also travelled in the ministry
and wrote some tracts, one of which was published by Benjamin Franklin after
John Estaugh's death in 1742 in the Island of Tortola.

Their hospitality was unlimited, in connection with which Elizabeth's
cheerful disposition, discretion and charity were a noteworthy feature.

Having no children of their own, Elizabeth adopted as her heir, Ebenezer
Hopkins, a son of her sister, Sarah (Haddon) Hopkins. He is the Ancestor of
the present Hopkins family.² Elizabeth lived to be eighty-two years old, surviving
her husband twenty years.³ She retained to the last, control of her affairs, and
guided those dependent upon her by advice and assistance. John Estaugh died
while on a religious visit to the West Indies with John Cadwalader of Phila-
delphia.

No act in Elizabeth Estaugh's life displayed more of her business ability
than her will, in which is shown a masterly knowledge of her estate both real
and personal.

This is the framework of Elizabeth Haddon's life, from which poet and
historian have drawn inspiration and which they have adorned with the colors
of their fancy. Each investigator must be impressed with the determination
and wonderful perseverance of one who at an early age selected her path and

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never deviated from it. Few annals provide such an incentive to reasonable
men and women to do the simple things well, to meet difficulties, stand up
under responsibilities and to get the best results from their chosen task.

Year after year the cherished mahogany and china, associated with Eliza-
beth Haddon, appear to increase! We name our blue-eyed children with
English roses glowing in their cheeks, Elizabeth, but does her spirit go marching
on? Are we pioneers? Does her life give us the example to dare, to blaze new
trails and to push forward to the accomplishment of high tasks and lofty ideals?