Elizabeth Haddon

Elizabeth Haddon (May 25, 1680 – March 30, 1762) was an American pioneer. She was the founder of Haddon Township and Haddonfield, New Jersey.

Early years

Elizabeth Haddon was born in Southwark, London, England, May 25, 1680. Her Quaker father, John Haddon, bought a 500-acre (2 km2) tract of land in Gloucester County in the English colony of West Jersey to escape religious persecution. However, poor health kept him from settling there.[1]

Career
Title page illustration for an 1864 edition of Tales of a Wayside Inn

Haddon, a single woman, set sail from Southwark to the New World in 1701 without her family. She married John Estaugh (1676–1742), a Quaker minister, on the banks of the Cooper's Creek, Newton Township, on December 1, 1702.[2][3][4]

Their courtship was described, fancifully, by Lydia Maria Child in "The Youthful Emigrant. A True Story of the Early Settlement of New Jersey," first published on May 21, 1845 in the New-York Daily Tribune. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow drew on Child's account in writing "Elizabeth," a poem in the third volume of his Tales of a Wayside Inn.[5]

Haddon and John had no children, but they brought her sister's son, Ebenezer Hopkins, to America from Southwark when he was about five, and raised him as their son and heir. Ebenezer was the son of Benjamin and Sarah (Haddon) Hopkins,[6] and the grandson of William and Katheryn Hopkins. Ebenezer was the progenitor of the Hopkins family of Haddonfield, New Jersey.[7]

In 1713, John and Elizabeth built a three-story brick mansion called New Haddonfield Plantation, where Haddon managed the family property and her husband tended to his missionary journeys; the Brew House she built in 1713 still stands in the backyard.[8] Although the first recorded commercial female brewer in the Colonies was Mary Lisle, who inherited her father's Philadelphia brewpub in 1734, there is reason to believe that across the river in South Jersey, Haddon was running a more-than-average homebrew operation.[9]

Elizabeth died at her Haddonfield home at the age of 82 on March 30, 1762. She was buried in an unmarked grave in the Burial Ground of the Haddonfield Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).[3]

References
  1. Ingham, John N. (1983). Biographical Dictionary of American Business Leaders, p. 351. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0-313-23907-X.
  2. The Genealogical Magazine of New Jersey, Vol III, No 1, July 1927. Records of Newton and Haddonfield Meetings, Marriages, (married 1da 10mo 1702)
  3. Burstyn, Joan (1997). Past and Promise Lives of New Jersey Women. Metuchen NJ: Syracuse University Press. p. 22. ISBN 0-8156-0418-1.
  4. Marriage Certificate of John Estaugh and Elizabeth Haddon, 1702
  5. Lurie, Maxine N., and Mappen, Marc (eds.) (2004). Encyclopedia of New Jersey, p. 342. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 0-8135-3325-2.
  6. FHL #0811790 Southwark MM Births 1648–1776, p. 225, (Family History Library, Salt Lake City, UT).
  7. For further information about the Hopkinses, see: A Hopkins Family History. Archived 2008-07-04 at the Wayback Machine
  8. "Elizabeth Haddon". History of American Women. 2008-08-04. Retrieved 2020-09-21.
  9. "Was Elizabeth Haddon New Jersey's First Female Brewer?". New Jersey Monthly. 2019-03-25. Retrieved 2020-09-21.

Further reading
  • Past and Promise Lives of New Jersey Women. The Women's Project of New Jersey Inc. 1997, page 21. Syracuse University Press.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.