My Genealogy Hound

THE FELL FAMILY. The Fells derive their name from the district of Furness Falls - the general name of Hugh Furnaces in England. They were the most ancient family in Furnaces. The Fells of Redman Hall had been known to have been there for nineteen generations. The family bear an ancient coat-of-arms.

Joseph Fell (1), the common ancestor in America, born August 19, 1668, at Longsland, Cumberland, England, died July, 1748, in Buckingham township, Bucks county, Pennsylvania. He was twice married, and was the son of John and Margaret Fell. His first wife was Bridget Willson, by whom four children were born. His second wife was Elizabeth Doyle, by whom seven children were born, including one named John.

John Fell (2), as above, was born May 7, 1712, in Buckingham, and died November 20, 1762. He was married in August, 1738, to Elizabeth Watson, who died March 12, 1812, in her ninety-fifth year. She was able to walk to meeting in 1809. She was a daughter of Dr. John Watson, of High Moor, Cumberland, England. A large Bible brought from England, printed in 1688, and bearing the inscription “Ellenor Watson, her Book. Anno Domini 1690,” descended to Elizabeth Watson Fell, and was willed by her to her son John Fell. In 1891 it was still in the hands of his grandchildren. John and Elizabeth (Watson) Fell lived near Doylestown, Warwick township, Bucks county, Pennsylvania, and had ten children, including one named John.

John Fell (3), descendant of the ancestor Joseph Fell, was born July 8, 1748, in Bucks county, Pennsylvania, died September 7, 1819, in New London township, Chester county, Pennsylvania. In 1775 he married Sarah Palmer, who died at New London, 1796. She was the daughter of Jonathan Palmer and wife Ann. Both are buried in Old West Grove graveyard. They first resided in Warwick township, Bucks county, Pennsylvania, but in March, 1792, they removed to Chester county, Pennsylvania, where they bought of Thomas Campbell the farm “Delight,” in New London township, containing 187 ¾ acres, for “50 pounds in gold and silver coin,” except a half acre given to St. John’s Episcopal church. When the sons married he settled them on portions of this land, where they lived and died, excepting Ezra, who was a carpenter and joiner, and made his home at what is now Ellicott City, Maryland. David, the youngest son, remained on the homestead, where he was born and died.

John and Sarah (Palmer) Fell had eleven children, of whom Nathan Fell was one.

Nathan Fell (4), son of John Fell, in direct line of descent from Joseph, the first Fell to settle in America, was born in Bucks county, Pennsylvania, April 5, 1760, and died in 1835, in Mercer county, Pennsylvania. He was married March 8, 1780, in Bucks county, Pennsylvania, to Ann Smith, daughter of John Smith, of Plumstead township, Bucks county, Pennsylvania. In 1786 they removed to Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, and in the early spring of 1800, with eleven children, they journeyed north to the then wilderness of Mercer county, which showed him to be of that brave, determined spirit whose desire for conquest has carried the Stars and Stripes from eastern to western oceans. For this trip sixteen pack horses were brought into use. In crossing Slippery Rock Creek, then a fearful and swollen torrent, these animals bore the burdens of freight and passengers and breasted the tide, effecting a safe passage. Cynthia Fell, then a child of but a few months old, was carried in the arms of her brother John, as the horse they rode had to swim. She lived to see that section become thickly settled. Nathan took up a tract of four hundred acres of land and built his log cabin in what is now Pymatuning township, near where finally stood the residence of Aaron Fell, his grandson. He added more land from time to time, finally owning two thousand acres. He was a jovial companion, and when he rode to Mercer for the purpose of attending court, his society was always much sought after by the legal fraternity. In his will he bequeathed to each child two hundred acres of land, excepting to his youngest son Jesse, to whom he left the homestead with four hundred acres, which included a dower to his daughter Anne, who was blind from childhood. In 1891 Aaron Fell, son of Jesse, son of Nathan Fell, still occupied the old place. Nathan and Ann (Smith) Fell were the parents of fourteen children, of whom George Fell was one.

George Fell (5), in direct line of descent from the original ancestor, Joseph Fell, was born September 7, 1783, in Bucks county, Pennsylvania, and died June 12, 1853. He served in the war of 1812, and was a justice of the peace eighteen years. In 1807 he married Rachel Campbell, who died in 1876. She was daughter of Jacob and Barbara (Miller) Campbell, pioneers in West Salem. He was a farmer. George Fell and wife were the parents of ten children, as follows:
1. Elizabeth, born September 12, 1808, married John B. Jones. 2. Jesse, born June 11, 1811, died 1827. 3. Nathan A., born September 6, 1813, married Almira A. Hull. 4. John R., born March 10, 1816, married Sarah Rathbun. 5. Andrew, born June 27, 1819, married Susan Follett. 6. George, born February 17, 1822, married Harriet Sponsaler. 7. Julia Ann, born September 2, 1824, died in 1827. 8. Rachel E., born January 6, 1827, married Samuel Endice. 9. Aylette R., born May 8, 1829, married Clarissa Follett. 10. Fannie Maria, born September 25, 1831, died in 1834.

John R. Fell (6), the fourth child in the above family of George and Rachel (Campbell) Fell, was born March 10, 1816, and died January 10, 1872, in Missouri. He was married December 2, 1836, to Sarah Rathbun, whose parents came from Connecticut. They resided in Fowler township, Trumbull county, Ohio, until 1864, when they removed to Wheeling, Missouri. They had ten children: 1. Charlotte Maria, born December 9, 1837, married Thomas J. Hawley. 2. Albinus R., born November 4, 1839, married Diana A. Rutledge. 3. Sarah, born September 10, 1841, married Charles Stewart. 4. Thomas Jefferson, born September 13, 1843, first married to Sarah Shifflett. 5. Alvia, born October 28, 1845, died in 1867 in Missouri. 6. James R., born March 11, 1848, died 1861, in Trumbull county, Ohio. 7. Malvina, born May 13, 1850, married L. E. Howe. 8. Jasper P., born March 8, 1853, married Elsie Johnson. 9. Arthur Watson, born October 1, 1854, died November, 1861, in Trumbull county, Ohio. 10. Allen B., born August 27, 1857, married Lena Springer.

Albinus R. Fell (7), son of John R. Fell, was born (as shown above) in 1839. He enlisted as a Union soldier in the Civil war, in December, 1861, being a member of Company D, Sixth Regiment Ohio Volunteers, serving his country three years. In 1862 he was promoted to quarter-master sergeant. In 1861 he married Diana A. Rutledge. In 1891 he was a merchant at Burg Hill, Trumbull county, Ohio.

Charlotte Maria (7), daughter of John R. Fell and wife, was born in 1837, married in 1858 to Thomas J. Hadley. They removed to Kansas, where they resided in 1891. At that date no children had been born to them.

Thomas Fell (2), son of Joseph, the American ancestor, born June 9, 1725, and married in February, 1750, Jane Kirk. They resided in Buckingham township, Bucks county, Pennsylvania. They had six children: 1. Jesse, born 1751, married Hannah Wilding. 2. Joseph, born August 4, 1752, first married Margaret Gaurley; secondly, Hannah Fell. 3. Samuel, born August 4, 1756; married Tamar Russell. 4. Sarah, born November 6, 1758; died 1838, unmarried. 5. Amos, born November 1, 1762, died September, 1825; married Elizabeth Jackson. 6. Abi, born December 18, 1770; married James Meredith.

Amos Fell (3), son of Thomas, as above given, a grandson of the ancestor, Joseph, was born November 1, 1762, in Buckingham township, and died September, 1825. He married Elizabeth Jackson, daughter of William Jackson, of Shrewsbury, New Jersey. Amos Fell was a surveyor, and sometimes taught school during the winter months. They lived in Buckingham, but in the autumn of 1785 removed to a six-hundred-acre farm he bought in Pittston, Luzerne county, Pennsylvania. Their children were: 1. Aaron, born 1785, died unmarried in 1814. 2. Mercy, born 1787, married Zenas Barnum. 3. William, born June 14, 1789, married Mary Gillingham. 4. Jacob, born 1791, first married Mary Ackley; secondly, married Eliza Johnson. 5. Jane, born October 24, 1793, married Wells Bennett. 6. Thomas Wright, born___, married Mahitable Searles. 7. Joseph, born 1803: he was a blacksmith, and went west in 1833, and was never heard of by the family afterwards.

William Fell (4), son of Amos, and great-grandson of the American ancestor, Joseph Fell, was born June 14, 1789, and died March 11, 1818. He married Mary Gillingham, born February 11, 1793, died July 5, 1867. She was the daughter of Joseph and Phebe (Brown) Gillingham. They resided in Mechanicsville, Bucks county, Pennsylvania, and had two children. In 1824 Mary Fell married Dr. John Wilson. William and Mary (Gillingham) Fell’s children were as follows: 1. Phebe Ann, born November 21, 1814, married Caleb Earl Wright. 2. Joseph Gillingham, born November 14, 1816, married Amanda Ruckman.

Joseph Gillingham Fell (5), son of William Fell, and great-great-grandson of Joseph, the American ancestor, was born November 14, 1816, and died October 26, 1878, in Philadelphia. January 22, 1845, he was married to Amanda Ruckman, born June 23, 1819, died February 9, 1900. He was educated at the Friends’ School of the Buckingham Meeting, and at the school of Samuel Gummere, in Burlington. At about the age of sixteen, being in doubtful health, he was sent to Hazelton, Luzerne county, Pennsylvania, where he joined the engineering corps of A. Pardee, then of the Hazelton Coal Company, in which Mr. Fell’s friends were interested. The firm of A. Pardee & Company, formed in 1840, is still doing business by the descendants of the original partners, A. Pardee and Joseph G. Fell. Joseph G. Fell spent the years of his life from 1845 to his death in 1878, in Philadelphia, a very active business factor, developing very large mining interests in both coal and iron, and in railroads which opened up new regions of the mineral wealth of the state. He was president of the Lehigh Valley Railway, and director in many other like institutions. During the Civil war he was president of the Union League, directing every energy to the maintenance of the Union. His love of art caused him to collect a choice gallery of modern pictures, and led to his association with the Academy of Fine Arts as its director. He was chosen as a member of the board of city trusts at its formation, as well as of the state constitutional convention in 1873. He was a man of highest integrity, well balanced judgment, extremely broad minded, and tender of heart.

The following resolutions were passed by the Union League of Philadelphia, October 28, 1878, with reference to his death:
UNION LEAGUE HOUSE,
Philadelphia, October 28, 1878.
At a special meeting of the Board of Directors of the Union League, held October 28, 1878, the following preamble and resolutions were unanimously adopted:

“Whereas. It has pleased Almighty God to release from his long sufferings our esteemed ex-President, J. Gillingham Fell, who was actively associated with the interests of the Union League from the time of its formation until prostrating disease deprived him of the power (but not the will) to lend us the aid of his clear intellect and his untiring energy; it is therefore

“Resolved, That by the death of J. Gillingham Fell, the Union League is deprived of the wise counsels of one of the chief pillars of the institution, of the precepts and the example of a man who amidst the darkest and most disheartening days of our national history which fell to the lot of this generation, stood always firm and unshaken in his faith as to the result, and bore the worst shocks of our ill-fortune with a serene fortitude that gave courage to the timid, reassurance to the wavering, and added strength to the strong; and who in the hour of our triumph was among the first to deprecate extreme measures, and to counsel forbearance and conciliation towards those who had been divided from us by the cruel estrangements of the sword.

“Resolved, That we recognize the value of the services rendered to us by J. Gillingham Fell during the time that he performed the duties of President of the Union League, as has been heretofore expressed by our members in the regret which followed his voluntary retirement from that office, to which his winning social qualities, his generous tolerance and his many manly virtues have lent a dignity which was gratefully acknowledged by his fellow members.

“Resolved, That we tender to the wife and children of our ex-President our most sincere sympathies at their irreparable loss, a loss for which there must be a solemn comfort even to them-in the memory of his noble and well spent life, in the respect and affection which accompanies the good man to his resting place, and which will survive in the grateful recollection of our members until the last of those who knew him fulfills, like him, the last act of man’s heritage on earth.

“Resolved. That in testimony of the grief which we feel at the loss of our ex-President, the League House shall be draped in mourning for thirty days, and that the Board of Directors and the members of the League in a body shall be present at the funeral services of the deceased.
“Resolved, That these resolutions be published, and that a copy of them be transmitted to the family of the late J. Gillingham Fell.”
By order of the Eoard of Directors.
SILAS W. PETTIT, Secretary.

Mr. and Mrs. J. Gillingham Fell were the parents of two children: Anna Mary Fell, and John Buckman Fell.

Anna Mary Fell was born February 20, 1848. She married Dr. Herbert Marshall Howe, son of Right Rev. Bishop Howe, of the Protestant Episcopal church, ordained about 1871, and served as rector of St. Luke’s church in Philadelphia for twenty-five years. Dr. Howe graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, and later engaged in operations in sugar and other enterprises, and is now the representative of the A. Pardee Company.

John Buckman Fell was born January 1, 1858. He married Sarah Rozet Drexel, of the old Drexel family of Philadelphia. One child, May, was born of this marriage. Alter the death of Mr. Fell, Mrs. Fell became the wife of Alexander Van Rensselaer, a member of the old family of that name in New York. He is largely interested in various important financial corporations, and is a prominent society and club man.