Madeira, Quakerism, and Rebellion: Reviving Henry Hill

Abstract

Madeira, Quakerism, and Rebellion: Reviving Henry Hill David W. Maxey* Today we know it as the Physick House. The elegant brick structure located in Philadelphia onthe east side ofFourth Street, between Spruce and Pine, bears that label in eponymous recognition of its most famous occupant , Philip Syng Physick, the father ofAmerican surgery, who lived there from 1815 to his death in 1837. As an added signal for identification purposes, Dr. Physick's patronymic has a felicitous ring, for where else would one have gone in the early nineteenth century to consult the city's most renowned physician if not to the Physick House? Yet, when Dr. Physick took occupancy, the house was thirty years old. Therefore, it was nothis decision topurchase in 1 782, before the Revolution had officially ended, a home site on the perimeter ofsettled Philadelphia, in a block previously designated for use as an almshouse to serve the city's indigent, sick, and insane. Nor can he receive credit for anticipating the shift in style reflected in aremarkable free-standing example ofFederal architecture , clearly distinguishable from its Georgian neighbors. Ofgreaterheight, having taller, thinly mullioned windows, a less ornate exterior, and a more spacious overall design, this signature building fittingly inaugurated the new era of American independence.1 But whose signature was it? To answer that question will require us to revive the Physick House's first owner, and in doing so, to place him in a Quaker context, to measure distance and ambition that caused him to drift away from his birthright religious affiliation, and to trace an intricate network offamily, social, and business relations that lend particular texture to the life ofa prominent Philadelphian at the end ofthe eighteenth century. Viewed in this light, the house he eventually built may be seen as symbolizing the economic, religious, and political forces that converged (and sometimes competed) to shape individual and collective identity in the formative national period. As this study will attempt to illustrate among the members ofa numerous family whose Quaker roots ran deep, Friends were by no means insulated from these influences.2 Henry Hill was born on September 18, 1732, just south of Annapolis, Maryland, the second son ofa physician Richard Hill and his wife, Deborah Moore Hill. Dr. Richard Hill was the son of Henry and Mary Hill and the grandson of Richard Hill, a sea captain, who arrived in Maryland in 1673. Possessing impressive Quaker credentials, Henry Hill's parents married after *David W. Maxey is an independent scholar who has made periodic contributions to historyjournals on a variety ofsubjects. He is an emeritus member ofthe boards ofthe Historical Society ofPennsylvania and the Library Company ofPhiladelphia. 48Quaker History obtaining, in the waning months of 1720, the necessary approvals from the West River and Clifts Monthly Meetings on Maryland's Western Shore.3 The Hills' Quaker pedigree was enhanced by multiple close connections with Thomas Lloyd and his offspring; among other offices that Thomas Lloyd held during the cradle years of Pennsylvania, he was repeatedly president ofthe Provincial Council. Dr. Hill's uncle, another Richard Hill, married Thomas Lloyd's widowed oldest daughter, Hannah. Henry Hill's maternal grandmother was Thomas Lloyd's youngest daughter, Deborah. Richard Moore, Henry Hill's uncle, married Margaret Preston, the daughter ofRachel Lloyd Preston, who was still another daughter ofThomas Lloyd. In Henry Hill's generation the Thomas Lloyd bloodline became potentially even more concentrated (or, depending on how one regards such alliances, attenuated) when two ofHenry's sisters married their first cousins, the sons of Margaret and Richard Moore.4 Where Henry Hill's father got his training as a physician and how effective he was in his chosen profession we simply do not know. What we do know is that he had a second occupation, that ofa shipping merchant, in which he came close to losing his shirt. After eighteen years ofmarriage and fathering eleven children (two ofwhom died in infancy), he left his home in West River, Maryland, in 1 739 and, with his wife and two oftheir daughters, sought refuge from his creditors in a distant spot. As a nineteenth century family memoir put it, "[b]y losses at sea, by bad debts...