136 THE PASSENGER PIGEON IN PENNSYLVANIA 



The Bradford Star of recent date throws some 

 hght on this topic, in connection with the income petro- 

 leum is still yielding to the Bingham heirs. Quoting 

 the Public Ledger for the text, The Star says : 



Girard, who conducts an interesting column of gos- 

 sip and comment in the Public Ledger Daily, has 

 something to say of the Bingham estate which lies 

 upon the big level between here and the county seat 

 and which has enriched individuals and companies in 

 the past forty years with its great stores of petroleum. 



Girard says : ''William Bingham was one of Penn- 

 sylvania's early United States senators, and he mar- 

 ried a daughter of Thomas Willing. Here was a 

 combination of great wealth, civic and political leader- 

 ship and social prestige. 



''Bingham's daughter became the wife of Mr. Bar- 

 ing of England — the Lord Ashburton of treaty fame 

 — and in that way the celebrated family of London 

 bankers became large owners of land in northern and 

 northwestern Pennsylvania. 



Effingham B. Morris, who, with John G. Johnson, 

 is trustee of the William Bingham estate, tells me that 

 his decendants still own some land in Pennsvlvania. 

 The Barings were lucky enough to have thousands of 

 acres in the oil region, and Keystone state petroleum 

 was a tidy thing to own around 1890, when the Bar- 

 ing Brothers' failure shook the whole financial world. 



