My Genealogy Hound

ROBERT IREDELL, for many years editor and proprietor of the Norristown Herald and Free Press, and for nearly a quarter of a century the postmaster of Norristown, was born October 15, 1809, at the family homestead in Horsham township, Montgomery county, Pennsylvania.

The Iredells are one of the oldest families of eastern Pennsylvania. Thomas Iredell, the immigrant, arrived at Philadelphia the latter part of the year 1700 from Pardsay Cragg, Cumberland, England. He married Rebecca Williams, in the Friends’ meeting house, then at Second and Market streets, Philadelphia, 3d mo. 9, 1705. His son Robert, grandfather of Robert Iredell, the subject of this sketch, married Hannah Lukens, granddaughter of Jan Lucken, the immigrant, who with twelve other families came from Crefeld, Germany, on the ship “Concord,” arriving at Philadelphia on October 6, 1683, and settled at Germantown. Robert Iredell and Hannah Lukens were married 2d mo. 29, 1745. He was born 1st mo. 4, 1721, and died in 1779. She was born 8th mo. 21, 1727, and died in 1812.

Jonathan Iredell, father, married Hannah Kirk, 10th mo. 5, 1792. He was the son of Robert and Hannah (Lukens) Iredell, and was born 10th mo. 17, 1765, and died in 1850. His wife was born 9th mo. 25, 1767, and died in 1848.

Robert Iredell, subject of this sketch, was the youngest of eight sons of Jonathan and Hannah (Kirk) Iredell. They were: Charles S., born 1794, died 1867; George B., born in 1795, died in 1876; Joseph L., born in 1797, died in 1891; James W., born in 1799, died in 1887; Thomas, born in 1802, died in 1865; Seth, born in 1805, died in infancy; Jonathan born in 1806, died in 1864; Robert, born in 1809, died October 24, 1901.

The following is the certificate given by his meeting in England to Thomas Iredell, the immigrant, on his removal to Philadelphia:

“From our Monthly Meeting upon Pardsay Cragg, in Cumberland, ye 27th of 6th month, 1700, to Friends in Pennsilvania and other parts of America. Dear Friends and Brethren-Ye tender salutations of our dearest love of truth always continues and reaches forth to you. The account we give you is in behalf of a young man, ye bearer hereof, Thomas Iredell, who this day has laid before us ye transporting of himself into Pennsilvania, requesting our certificate along with him.

“We therefore certifie to all where he may come that he has of late years come frequently among Friends. His carriage appears to be sober and truthlike, those who know him best give no other account but well. He comes with consent of his mother, though no Friend, and inquiry hath been made as to his clearness in relation to marriage, and nothing appears to ye contrary. We need not further enlarge, but subscribe ourselves your friends and brethren in behalf of the aforesaid meeting.

“Tho. Tiffin, John Wilson, John Burnyeat, William Dixon, John Nolson, James Dickinson, Josias Ritson, Tho. Watson, William Bonch.”

Robert Iredell, the subject of this sketch, was educated in Horsham township, and went to Norristown in 1827. He was apprenticed to David Sower, Jr., to learn the printing trade. Four years later he purchased the Norristown Free Press, and six years afterwards he consolidated it with the Norristown Herald, founded by David Sower in 1799, which he bought from John Hodgson. He was the editor of the paper for twenty-seven years. In 1835 he was appointed Recorder of Deeds. In 1864 he sold the Herald to Morgan R. Wills and his son, Robert Iredell, Jr., the plant later becoming the sole property of Mr. Wills, and so continuing to the present time. When Robert Iredell became a citizen of Norristown in 1827, it was a mere village. The first railroad along the Schuylkill Valley was not completed until several years later. There were three other young men similarly employed when he was learning his trade, who afterwards became men of prominence as well as himself. They were Samuel D. Patterson and William H. Powell, at the Register office, and Philip R. Freas, who was a fellow apprentice with him at the Herald office. Mr. Freas became in 1830 the founder of the Germantown Telegraph, long an influential journal. The Free Press which Robert Iredell purchased soon after coming of age and afterwards merged with the Herald, when he bought it of John Hodgson in 1837, had been founded by Henry S. Bell, as an anti-Masonic organ. Robert Iredell conducted one of the best Whig journals in Pennsylvania, having as his associates in the management of the paper William Butler, of West Chester, afterwards Judge Butler, of the United States District Court, who purchased a half-interest in the Herald in 1843, and remained eighteen months, having in the meantime entered the legal profession, and Loyd Jones, Robert Iredell’s brother-in-law, not only a vigorous writer but a reliable business assistant. Jones retired from the Herald in 1862, and took a position in the provost marshal’s office, dying in 1870.

Robert Iredell, in addition to his journalistic achievements, was very actively interested in politics. In 1848 he was a delegate from Montgomery county to the Whig national convention in Philadelphia which nominated Zachary Taylor for president, and there met Abraham Lincoln, John Sherman and Schuyler Colfax, each a delegate from his congressional district. Sherman and Colfax were elected secretaries of the convention. Sherman impressed him favorably, being young, intelligent and full of force, and occupying a prominent position in the convention although it was his first experience. He was also pleased with Lincoln, who was a conspicuous character because of his height, standing head and shoulders above most of the members of the convention. Robert Iredell met these three men very frequently later. Lincoln, as president, named him as postmaster of Norristown, a position which he held for twenty-two years continuously, except that he was out of office during the Andrew Johnson administration, his term expiring soon after Grover Cleveland became president. As post-master he was a model official, courteous, obliging, and attentive to the interests of the public. Robert Iredell voted seventeen times for president of the United States, and never missed an important election of any kind-local, state or national. He was one of the first editors in the state of Pennsylvania to place the name of John C. Fremont, the first Republican nominee for the presidency, in 1856, at the head of his paper.

Robert Iredell, subject of this sketch, married, 10th mo. 18, 1832, Teressa Jones, who was born 1st mo. 23, 1813, and died 6th mo. 12, 1868. The Jones family are of Welsh descent, and were long resident in Lower Merion township, Montgomery county, Pennsylvania. Teressa (Jones) Iredell, wife of Robert, was the daughter of Charles and Phebe (Jones) Jones. Her father was the son of John Jones, and her mother the daughter of Lloyd (born 8th mo. 30, 1765, died 9th mo. 13, 1857, at the age of ninety-two years) and Esther (Tunis) Jones. The parents of Lloyd Jones were Paul (born 1737, died 1821) and Phebe (Roberts) Jones. Phebe Roberts was the daughter of John and Susanna Roberts. The parents of Paul Jones were Gerrard (1705-1765) and Sarah (Lloyd) Jones, (first wife) born 1703, died 1739. Going back another generation Mrs. Iredell’s ancestors were Robert and Ellen (Jones) Jones. Robert Jones was the second son of John ap Thomas and Katherine Robert, whose children took the name John or Jones. The father of John ap Thomas was Thomas ap Hugh. Esther Tunis, grandmother of Mrs. Robert Iredell, was a descendant of Dr. Thomas Wynne, the first speaker of the Pennsylvania assembly, who came in the “Welcome,” with William Penn. The Rees, Humphrey, Warner, and other prominent families of Lower Merion were included in the ancestral line of Mrs. Iredell. (For further particulars of the Jones family see “Merion in the Welsh Tract.”)

The children of Robert and Teressa Iredell: Jonathan, born 12th mo. 28, 1833, died 9th mo. 14, 1834; Charles Jones, born 10th mo. 22, 1835, died 8th mo. 13, 1862; James Wilkins Iredell Jr., born 6th mo. 17, 1841, has been long a resident of Cincinnati, Ohio, where he is the general manager of the Penn Mutual Life Insurance Company, he enlisted in June, 1861, in the Fifty-first Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers and continued throughout the war; Robert, Jr., born 3d mo. 17, 1844, died 10th mo. 22, 1893, was the publisher of the Lehigh Register and Allentown Chronicle of Allentown, Pennsylvania, the last named a daily; William Corson, born 2d mo. 6, 1838, died 8th mo. 3, 1839; Phebe J., born 7th mo. 22, 1847, died 8th mo. 28, 1888.

Charles J. Iredell learned the trade of printing in the Herald office, and entered the Fourth Regiment on the breaking out of the Rebellion. The three month’s term of enlistment of the men expired prior to the battle of Bull Run, but Charles J. Iredell was one of four members of the organization who remained and participated in the fight. Subsequently he reenlisted in Colonel John Frederic Hartranft’s regiment, the Fifty-first, receiving the appointment of sergeant-major. He was, however, destined to a tragic fate, being one of seventy-three men, most of them soldiers, who were drowned while on their way to Fredericksburg on the steamer “West Point,” when it was sunk in a collision with the steamer “Peabody” in the Potomac river.

James W. Iredell, Jr., married Virginia E, Rust, October 6, 1868. Their children: Teressa J., married, April 10, 1901, John Omwake; Frank Rust, Virginia Rust; Charles Jones married, November 20, 1900, Adelaide Monfort.

Robert Iredell, Jr., (deceased) married, June 17, 1869, Matilda Von Tagen. Their children: Florence married November 20, 1895, Robert James Berger, and has one child, Robert Iredell Berger; Robert Iredell, 3d, deceased; James Wilkins Iredell, 4th, deceased; Lloyd Jones Iredell, Rodney Rogers Iredell; Edmund L., married, October 3, 1894, Bertha Effie Black and has one daughter, Virginia, born September 15, 1896.

Robert Iredell, subject of this sketch, belonged to a long-lived race. The ages of his parents and grandparents at the time of their death six persons in all, aggregated 496 years. Few men in the community in which he spent his whole adult life were so much respected as Robert Iredell. Of a kindly, gentle disposition, he was affable and courteous to all. He was, however, dignified in his bearing, and somewhat reserved in his manners, except with his intimate friends. He lived to see the hundredth anniversary of the Herald celebrated in 1899, and was able to contribute at that time a column of reminiscences of his own, some of them dating back nearly three-quarters of a century. The latter part of his life was spent in retirement, and during the last few years he was a resident of the Friends’ Boarding Home at Swede and Powell streets, Norristown, where he died 10th mo. 24, 1904, retaining his faculties remarkably to the time of his last illness, and taking much interest in passing events. He was ninety-five years and nine days old at the time of his death. His funeral took place on the 27th, and was largely attended. Several floral tributes were laid upon his coffin in the parlor of the Home, from the Norris Hose Company, of which he was a member, from the Herald, and from relatives. Mary Singley, Ellwood Roberts and others spoke feelingly of the life and character of the deceased, of his uniform kindness and gentleness, of his long life of usefulness, and of his interest in the welfare of those around him. The interment was in the burial ground of Friends at Plymouth Meeting.

Robert Iredell was a lifelong member of the Society of Friends. His immigrant ancestor, Thomas Iredell, was the first of the family who was a Friend, his father being Robert Iredell, of Rigg Bank, England, whose wife was Ellinore Jackson. According to the record, the son, Thomas Iredell, the immigrant, was baptized in 1676, corroborating the certificate in the statement that his mother was “no Friend.”

In 1902, when James W. Iredell, Jr., son of Robert Iredell, the subject of this sketch, was in England, he visited the old Iredell homestead at Loweswater, in Cumberland county, which is in the possession of John Iredell, teller of the bank at Cockermouth, in that vicinity. He is a lineal descendant of the ancestors of the American Iredells. The old mansion still forms part of his residence, being over three hundred years old. John Burnyeat, a minister of the Society of Friends, who was one of the signers of the above certificate, married an Iredell. He visited America several years prior to the coming of William Penn, in company with George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends.