Elizabeth Freeman

A census was taken, in the years 1771 & 1772, in the British Provinces of America, and deposited, after the Revolution, as public archives, at Washington; but their room becoming much wanted, those of each Province were delivered to the Members of Congress, to cull what they chose, preparatory to a burning of all the rest. General Mahlon Dickinson, then a member from New-Jersey, selected some from the County of Morris, and sent me, yesterday, a copy, verbatim, of one entry, as follows:
“ Widow Elizabeth Lindsley, mother of Colonel
“ Jacob Ford (Sn) was born in the city of Axford,
“in old England; came into Philadelphia, when
“ there was but one house in it, and into this
“ Province when she was but one year and a
“ half old-deceased April 21st, 1772, aged 91
“ years and one month.”
I always understood, in the family, by tradition from her (whose short stature and slender, bent person I clearly recall, having lived in the same house, with her and with my parents, in my grandfather’s family, at her death and before it) that her Father fled from England when there was a universal dread of returning Popery and persecution, three years before the death of Charles the Second, A. D., 1682, and two years before the accession of James the Second, in 1684 ; that, while landing his goods at Philadelphia, he fell from a plank, into the Delaware-river, and was drowned: between the ship and the shore, leaving a family of young children in the wilderness; that she had several children by her first husband, whose name was Ford, but none by her second husband, whose name was Lindley, at whose death she was taken into the family of her son, Colonel Jacob Ford, Senior, and treated with filial tenderness, the remaining years of her life, which were many.
I am in the eightyfifth year (since January last) of my age being born in 1765—and was seven years old at her death.²