Hannons & Peters

M.E.O. tells the history of her mother's side of the family. She describes a shipwreck, a romance and a wedding in Philadelphia during the Revolutionary War.

Mother said once that Great Grandmother had told her that the Friends (as she always called the Quakers) were more particular in regard to the ancestry on the maternal side. This great grandmother was Hannah Flower, and she lived to be eighty-six years old, passing from earth in December, 1850. I was then ten years old. I knew the maiden name of every grandmother once, back to the wife of William Clayton, but have forgotten it now. I remember only my mother, Eleonore Dorothea Peters, her mother, Anna Edwards Hannon, and her mother Hannah Flower.

Hannah Flower's ancestors were the Claytons and the Flowers. William Clayton, who was a member of the "Council of Five" selected by William Penn to govern the colony, was the second son of the Clayton Family. In Burke's Peerage his name is given, followed by the words, in parenthesis, "No Record," thus confirming what Great Grandmother said, that he was disinherited by his father on account of his "religious opinions" when he joined his friend William Penn's Colony of Quakers, and came to Philadelphia. William Clayton settled near Marcus Hook, and Morton has now an old Deed of Land near Marcus Hook.

Celery glasses The Flowers, like the Claytons, came from England with the Colony planted in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, and in the northern county of Delaware, by William Penn. Great Grandmother Hannah Flower was the daughter of Thomas Flower. In Great Grandmother's time, her brother took ship for England to get a large amount of money belonging to the Flower Family in the Bank of England. The ship went down and Mr. Flower and a sailor managed to pick up a small row boat as they were washed off. They drifted so long that they had given up all hope and each said afterwards that if one had died the other would have eaten the deceased one. Finally they were picked up, the only ones saved, but Great Grandmother's brother never got over the terrible experience, and said that all the money in the Bank of England could not tempt him to go to sea again!

Great Grandmother was married in or about 1779, in Philadelphia, at the time of the Revolutionary War and came to live in Petersburg. I am even uncertain about the first name of my great grandfather Hannon, though it may be still legible on his tombstone near the old Blandford Church. Great Grandmother's husband was from Cecil County, Maryland, and was a partner of a Mr. Ellicott, whose mills were at Ellicott City, Maryland.

Great Grandmother's eldest daughter, Mrs. Sarah Flowers Gwynne Simmons, nee Hannon, had two children, a little boy and a little girl who died when she was quite young. I remember having several very beautiful pieces of pearl jewelry, which were given me by her Mother, our Great Aunt Mrs. Simmons. But I lost them all! Aunt Simmons' only son died in Mississippi and his mother soon followed him, between 1842 and 1844.

Mother's Uncle Richard Hannon, who was a very good man in many ways, and an honest-minded and courteous gentleman, was however careless in business matters. His mother, my great grandmother, who lived until I was ten years old, and whom I well remember, was an heiress, and I have heard older members of the family say it was a frequent question in the family: "Where is Richard?" "Gone to Philadelphia." "What! To sell another brick house?" Well, before all the brick houses were sold, the handsome young man had married into one of the very old families of Virginia, an heiress with considerable property, and in course of time, that was gone, too.

As I love romance, I must tell about some of the visits to Philadelphia. There was a Mrs. Burn, a widow with a very lovely daughter Henrietta. Henrietta was young, an only child, and her mother a widow. There was no objection to the engagement, but Mrs. Burn said, "Of course, Richard, you will come on to Philadelphia to live." But Uncle Hannon would not agree. Mrs. Burn carried her point and nothing that the young man could say would cause the mother to relent. The girl obeyed.

Uncle Hannon came home and became engaged to Miss Eliza Wilkinson, a very good woman and an heiress, but by no means a beauty. Soon afterwards, Uncle Hannon went again to Philadelphia and went to see the Burns Family. He told Henrietta of his engagement, and just before he said good-bye, asked her to sing some of the old songs he used to love to hear. She played well and had a lovely voice. She agreed, and a little later her mother came in, and (as Uncle Hannon told Mother) "found us both in tears." The mother then relented! She said, "I was wrong, Richard. I wanted to keep my daughter, but I would have broken two hearts. I will oppose the marriage no more!" A terrible moment, was it not! In January 1810, Uncle Hannon married Miss Wilkinson.

In the eighteen fifties, Uncle Hannon (who had been for some years a widower) went to see "the kinfolks" in Philadelphia. He knew that Henrietta had married but, as he told Mother after his return, "I visited a good many of the relatives, then decided to see Henrietta but did not know if she was a wife or a widow. I found her Mrs. Odenheimer, with two grown-up sons, and Mr. O. very much alive."

My Grandfather Frederick David Philip Peters was an educated man, a graduate of Heidelburg University, and a man of means when the two Peters family brothers came to Baltimore (where they had relatives). Henry Frederick Diedrich Peters was Mother's "Uncle Henry." They may have come on a visit only, but the brothers came down to Richmond on a visit, and my grandfather met the beautiful Miss Anna Edwards Hannon of Petersburg.

My Great Uncle Henry met some North Carolinians in Richmond, who persuaded him to go to Halifax County, North Carolina, which he did and opened a large store. His business prospered wonderfully, and he bought cotton lands, so that about the early 1820s he was called a very wealthy man. As far back as 1830, or even earlier, he had a large sugar plantation on the Swannee River in Florida. It was thought that that portion of the state was too far from the peninsula and the everglades to be subject to Indian raids, so in what was then called Levy County large sugar houses were built and (as I well remember hearing) machinery costing $40,000 was installed.

Mr. Peters' partner, a young Scotchman who had been Mr. Peters' clerk in North Carolina, after some years reported the death of Mother's Uncle Henry. Mr. Peters (a bachelor) had no heirs except the children of his (by then deceased) brother, Mr. Frederick D.P. Peters of Petersburg, Virginia. Uncle Hannon, who had taken charge of the children of his brother-in-law, wrote asking for a settlement of their uncle's estate. Mr. Watson's answer was that, "By the laws of Florida, he was not required" to do anything towards settling the estate until the youngest heir was twenty-one.

My uncle, on arriving at that age about 1845 or 1846, came to Florida and saw this partner at his winter home at Picolata, on the St. John's. He was received very cordially, and handsomely entertained, but told that his host was a bankrupt (and living on the bounty of his wife!), but that there was a large claim against the government, as the plantation was destroyed in a raid by the Seminole Indians. The clerk said that Mr. Peters' heirs would get a large share of the claim, and also that with such claims, "the older the better." Next

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