HISTORY OF BUCKS COUNTY. 



^73 



respondence, and was a delegate to the 

 second convention and conferences, and 

 also, P^bruary 19, 1763, was appointed 

 a committee to audit accounts of Ben- 

 jamin Franklin. He died May 31, 1782. 

 The Pennsj'lvania Gazette of June 19, 

 1782, has the following obituary article: 



"On Friday, the 31st ult., departed 

 this life at Wrightstown, in the county 

 of Bucks, John Wilkinson, Esq., in the 

 seventy-first j-ear of his age, after a long 

 and painful illness, and on the Sunday 

 following his remains were interred in 

 the Friends' burying ground, the fun- 

 eral being attended by a very large con- 

 course of people of all denominations. 

 Mr. Wilkinson was a man of very repu- 

 table abilities and of a sound judgment, 

 scrupulously just in all of his transac- 

 tions, free from bigotry to religion or to 

 party, and a friend to merit whenever it 

 was found. As a companion, a friend, a 

 neighbor, a master, an husband, a father, 

 a guardian to the orphan and the wid- 

 ow, his life was amiable and exemplary. 

 He served his people m several import- 

 ant offices with fidelity and applause, 

 under the old constitutions as well as the 

 new. His conduct in the present Revo- 

 lution was such as entitled him to the 

 peculiar esteem of all the friends of this 

 country, but it drew on him the rage of 

 enthusiastic bigots. 



"He was born and educated among 

 the people called Quakers, and was a 

 member in full standing in the Wrights- 

 town Meeting. His life was an orna- 

 ment to the Society. 



"He mingled not in idle strife and 

 furious debates, but lived as became a 

 Christian, studying peace with all men. 



"His principles led him to believe that 

 defensive war was lawful. He was 

 strongly attracted to a republican form 

 of government and the liberties of the 

 people, and when Great Britain, by her 

 folly and wickedness, made it necessary 

 to oppose her measures from judgment 

 and principle he espoused the cause of 

 his country. He was unanimously chosen 

 a member of our convention, and after- 

 wards served in the Assembly with zeal 

 and integrity, becoming a freeman and 

 a Christian. 



"This unhappily aroused the resent- 

 ment of the Society with which he was 

 connected, so that one committee after 

 another were dealing with him and per- 

 secuting him to give a testimonial re- 

 nunciation of what they were pleased 

 to consider as errors of his political 

 life, though there was no rule or order 

 of the meeting which made his conduct 

 a crime. 



"This demand he rejected although 

 as tending to belie his own conscience, 

 but at length, worried with their impor- 

 tunities, weakened by the growing in- 

 firmities of age. and fondly hoping that, 

 his country might dispense with his serv- 

 ices, he consented to promise that he 



would hold no other appointments under 

 the constitution. 



"This seemed to be satisfactory for 

 a time, but, when Sir William Howe be- 

 gan his victorious march through Penn- 

 sylvania, a more pressing sense of duty 

 urged his brethren to renew their visit, 

 while his dear son lay dying in his 

 house, and to demand an immediate 

 and preemptory renunciation of his past 

 conduct. 



"Provoked by this indecent and unfeel- 

 ing application he gave them a decisive 

 answer, and preferred the honest dictates 

 of his conscience to his membership in 

 the meeting and was, for his patriotism 

 alone, formally expelled as unworthy of 

 Christian fellowship. 



"The testimony of the meeting against 

 him on this occasion was heretofore pub- 

 lished in this paper. We trust he is 

 now in those mansions where the wicked 

 cease from troubling and the weary are 

 at rest." 



Colonel Wilkinson was twice married. 

 By his first wife, Mary Lacy, married 

 3 mo. 21, 1740, who was a sister to 

 General John Lacey, he had five chil- 

 dren: Mary, born in 1741, married Steph- 

 en Twining; John, married Jane Chap- 

 man; Stephen, James and iCachel, all 

 died unmarried. By his second wife, Han- 

 nah Hughes, (born 3 mo. 7, 1742, mar- 

 ried 2 mo., 1770. died April 18, 1791), he 

 had four children : Martha, who married 

 a Bennett; Ann Lucy, married General 

 Samuel A. Smith; Hannah, who married 

 !May 22, 1796. Abner Reeder, and re- 

 moved to Trenton, and Colonel Elisha 

 Wilkinson. Hannah Hughes, the sec- 

 ond wife of Colonel John Wilkinson, 

 was a daughter of Professor Mathew 

 Hughes, Jr., (he was lieutenant-colonel 

 of the Associated Regiment' of Bucks 

 county, 1747-8) and Elizabeth Steven- 

 son, married March 17, 1733, the latter 

 being a daughter of Thomas Stevenson 

 and Sarah Jennings, and granddaughter 

 of Thomas Stevenson, of Newtown, Long 

 Island, and Elizabeth Lawrence, daugh- 

 ter of Colonel William Lawrence. 

 Sarah Jennings was a daughter 

 of Governor Samuel Jennings, of 

 New Jersey. Mathew Hughes, Sr., the 

 grandfather of Hannah Wilkinson, was 

 a very prominent man in Buckingham, 

 Bucks county, a member of assembly, 

 justice, etc. His wife was Elizabeth 

 (Biles) Beaks, daughter of William Biles, 

 provincial counsellor, and widow of 

 Stephenson Beaks, the record of whom is 

 noted elsewhere in this volume. 



The Wilkinsons now residing in Bucks 

 county are principally the descendants 

 of John and Jane (Chapman) Wilkinson, 

 who had children, John, Abraham. Elias 

 and Amos. John, the father of these 

 children, died in 1778, and on his death- 

 bed received from his father a deed for 

 one hundred and fifty acres of the old 

 homestead, that part of his grandfather's 



