A Penn-Gaskell Hall Marriage of 1852 Addendum to the Family of Penn

A Penn-Gaskell Hall Marriage of 1852 Addendum to the Family of Penn FRANCIS JAMES DALLETT, F.G.S.P., F.A.S.G. The Penn-Gaskell family of Philadelphia had a parochial connection with St. Stephen's Protestant Episcopal Church in that city in the nineteenth century which was more extensive than has been realized by genealogists of the William Penn posterity. The marriage of one member of the family at St. Stephen's in 1845 was mentioned by Hannah Benner Roach in her "The Penn-Gaskell Family, Addenda to the Family of Penn," PGM XXV, 2 (1967), 97-119, an article to which the present writer was a major contributor. The union of Louisa Penn-Gaskell (one of the ten children of Peter PennGaskell, Jr., and his wife Louisa Adelaide Heath) to William Gerald Fitzgerald, of New York, 15 May 1845,, was, however, but one of six family weddings at St. Stephen's. Louisa's sisters, Elizabeth, Mary, Jennie (Jane) and Emily also married in the church, as recorded in the registers? Yet another family wedding took place at St. Stephen's. Of more interest than the others because it introduces a formerly unknown bride to the family history, this previously unnoticed ceremony was that which on 28 August 1852 united the PennGaskell sisters' first cousin Peter Penn-Gaskell Hall with Adelaide Gougenheim, as the latter name is spelled in the record' Thus the "first" and "second" wives of Peter Penn-Gaskell Hall (1830-1905), the sisters Annie M. Mixsell and Amelia Mixsell, appear to have been actually his second and third wives. Who was Adelaide Gougenheim? No notice of her wedding appeared in the Philadelphia newspapers.* The Philadelphia Board of Health's register of deaths in Philadelphia prior to 1860 does not include an Adelaide Hall. She was not interred in the family plot in the Lower Merion Baptist Churchyard. Were the Halls divorced and the name of the first wife dropped from family records? Unfortunately, little is known of Peter Hall's movements in his younger years. At the time of the 1852 marriage, Hall was twenty-two years old, and his brief career at Princeton long behind him. He had entered the College of New Jersey as a Sophomore 13 August 1846, joined the Cliosophic Society that year, but left Princeton in March 1847.5 Peter Penn-Gaskell Hall is not listed as a householder in the Philadelphia directories of this period and, except for the knowledge that he read law during part of 51 52 The Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine it, details of his life and career are obscure until his admission to the Philadelphia bar 4 November 1858.6 The Philadelphia Directory for 1852 lists no one of the name Gougenheim. One Gugenheim (later spelled Guggenheim), "trader," appears., Although it is possible that Peter Penn-Gaskell Hall chose his first wife from a modest milieu and married her in his own church, it is also probable that Adelaide Gougenheim belonged to another family whose surname was, correctly, Gougenheim, as the rector of St. Stephen's appears to have been accurate speller of the names he entered in his register. NOTES Roach, op. cit., 107. Further details of the family appear in a second article by Mrs. Roach, -PennGasket Halls of the Twentieth Century," PGM, XXV, 3 (1968), 174-182. Record of St. Stephen's Church, Philadelphia, transcribed copy, Collections of the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, Ph2OE. See also Index to Parish Register, St. Stephen's, by Thos. H. Montgomery, September 1880, 58, also in the Society's Collections, Ph28.1E. 3 Record, ibid., 83; Index, ibid., 47. Search was made in The Public Ledger, The Evening Bulletin and The North American. Non-graduate student tile, Princeton University Archives. John Hill Martin, Martin's Bench and Bar of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1883), 274. Simon Guggenheim lived in Culvert Street, above 4th, a small thoroughfare which ran from 3rd Street to Old York Road, north of Beaver Street. This man may have been a brother of Meyer Guggenheim who emigrated from Langnau, Switzerland, in 1848, and settled in Roxborough Township (Gatenby Williams, William Guggenheim (New York, 1934), 14). There was no daughter Adelaide in the family of Meyer; Simon arrived too late to be included in the 1850 census. Deaths of other persons of the name, but always spelled Guggenheim, are found in the Death Records of the Philadelphia Board of Health, GSP Collections Ph29/07 and 38. Back Issues of the Magazine The Society renews its appeal for the donation of back issues of the Magazine, to help meet the continuing needs of institutions, libraries and scholars to fill gaps in their collections. Copies of the first twenty volumes are especially desired. The Society will gladly pay postage in excess of $1.00 for such donations, or, if more convenient, arrange for pick up. All contributions will be acknowledged by letter, with an indication of estimated value for income tax purposes. For further information, please get in touch with the Society Office.