The little eight-sided schoolhouse by the roadside, toward Mahlon Williamson's farm, did not hold Isaiah for long. He soon outgrew it. In keeping with the family tradition for education, his parents made the sacrifice of putting him in the excellent Friends' School at Fallsington, a pay school for more advanced teaching. But before and after school Isaiah was a helper on the farm. He was then about twelve years old and walked daily the eight miles to and from school, lucky enough sometimes to catch a ride on the way. Most likely Peter and John, his brothers, were there also; and the Vansant children, cousins on his mother's side, from another part of the county. There were boys of the Baldison family, too, of whom John, the eldest, was Isaiah's intimate friend. And among the boys and girls of other families, there was one girl in particular, the daughter of Harvey Gillingham, storekeeper at Fallsington, of whom more will be said further on.
Isaiah's cousins, the Vansant children, would be his daily schoolmates and playmates; they were of good, solid Dutch stock, which was also Isaiah's inheritance on his mother's side. She was descended from Gerrit Vansant, who came to this country in 1651, as he testified in taking the oath of allegiance at New Utrecht, Long Island, in September, 1687. The records of the Dutch Reformed Church at that place note the baptism of several of Gerrit's children. Gerrit and his son, Jacobus, purchased land on Neshaminy Creek, each having about one hundred and fifty acres, the deeds being dated and recorded in December, 1698; and there they finally settled. Charity Vansant, of the fourth generation from Gerrit, was born in Bensalem Township, just at the close of the Revolutionary War, November 16, 1781. She was a woman of sympathetic nature and was Isaiah's confidant, having much influence over his early life.
At the time Isaiah attended the Orthodox Friends' School, the Hicksite split had not occurred, and of course the Hicksite meeting house—adjoining the Orthodox meeting house at Fallsington to this day—had not been built. The schoolhouse attached to the original meeting house of the Friends was built about the middle of the eighteenth century.
In the early part of the nineteenth century, about 1815, Jonathan Palmer was the principal teacher of this school, a man said to have been uncommonly well-educated for that day. He was supported partly by the Friends' Meeting, and partly by the farmers who sent their children to be educated.
The sessions of the school were held six days in the week—in the morning from eight to twelve, and in the afternoon from one to five o'clock, except in winter, when they closed an hour earlier. During the eleventh and first months (November and January), the girls were kept at home at work, to make room for the boys at school; in the fourth and fifth months (April and May) the boys were obliged to stay home in order to give the girls a chance; and during the seventh and eighth months (July and August) there were no school sessions because all the boys and girls were needed in the farm work.
In this school, among other studies, Jonathan Palmer taught English, French, Latin and mathematics—including geometry, trigonometry and surveying.
Of the Baldison boys in the school at this time, John—a year older than Isaiah, and his special comrade—was fond of mathematics, and gave particular attention to surveying; his brothers made a specialty of French. Isaiah, also, had his predilections; while he took the general course right through, his favorite studies seem to have been mathematics in various forms, surveying, and French—the latter being kept up in later years after he went to Philadelphia, where he took private lessons from a good French teacher. Isaiah is spoken of as having been "a bright student" while in the Friends' School. It may be assumed that his lively and fun-loving spirit would enter into the sports and pastimes and good-natured joking that every wholesome schoolboy shares. But that he was faithful to his work and was really interested in his studies may be safely inferred not only from his lifelong characteristics, but from the fact that he continued them by taking private lessons from Palmer after leaving school and while he was a clerk.
Presumably three years at the Fallsington School carried our diligent, conscientious lad as far as his teachers could. He was now between fifteen and sixteen years old, and on the question of whether he should become a farmer or not, his parents no doubt had much to say. Any such boy who makes a confidant of his mother, as he did, and who had been brought up as members of the Society of Friends train their children, would not make a decision except with his parents' consent and approval.
The fact that Isaiah's brothers were well grown and able helpers on the farm made it possible for him to choose some other employment. More than that, the brisk, bright, energetic lad, careful, accurate and trustworthy in all his habits, who took the lead in doing the store errands, showed a developing aptitude for business, though not in an extraordinary manner. He was simply a prompt, painstaking, dependable, industrious fellow with good sense and right principles, with a greater liking for a store than the farm.
Naturally, he thought of the store at Fallsington, where his family dealt and where he was known. He applied there for a position. The storekeeper, Harvey Gillingham, was willing to take him as an apprentice. In those days, the system of apprenticing was the rule everywhere and, so far as is known, young Williamson became an indentured apprentice for a term of six or seven years.
Every one that knew Williamson intimately, knows that up to his death, he earnestly maintained that the best thing that happened to him when he was young was his apprenticeship to Harvey Gillingham. In those days, the apprentice was obliged to live with his employer, and received beside his board, lodging, and clothes, not more than fifty dollars the first year, with increases of wages each year. Beside the little store in the village of five hundred inhabitants, Gillingham had a grist mill near the store and later a lumber yard.
These conveniences for the farmers to get grocery and drygoods supplies, and to turn into flour their wheat, and supply building materials, made the Gillingham Store "at the Corners" a centre not only for the village but all the surrounding townships. It supplied everything for the farm and the household, stoves, agricultural implements, hardware, clothing for women, men and boys.
The farmers brought in their poultry, eggs and butter, their pork, potatoes and apples, their wheat and oats, and traded them for harrows and harness, muslin and silk, soap and tobacco, powder and shot.
Gillingham's supplies came from Philadelphia, and thither he hauled the accumulated produce and sold it to the country produce dealers there for cash. Generally the wagons were driven to Morrisville or Bristol, where the miscellaneous cargo was transferred to a sailboat and carried to Philadelphia.
Gillingham's business was considerable, as shown by his books. One winter, for example, nineteen hogsheads of sugar were brought up to him from Philadelphia, with other goods in proportion.[1]
Young Williamson threw himself, with heart and soul, into this whirl of country trading life, and everything goes to show that in Mr. Gillingham he had a splendid teacher and that he was an apt, enthusiastic scholar. The boy soon did a man's work, was never tired, never absent, never idle and, of course, earned and received more wages.
At the store he was known not as a dandy, but as a fine, attentive lad. His quick, manly ways pleased the far-seeing, solid Broadbrims. They recognized merit, integrity and industry in him, and their wives found him alert and polite as he rushed out to help them down from the farm carriage, to tie their horses, and to carry in their bundles. They appreciated his bright ways and bright words, knowing all the while that there were deeper depths of his nature, reserve forces, aptness and comprehension even in those formative days of young manhood.
It is wonderful how the memory of personality, of courtesy, of willingness to oblige, remains through the years, and comes down from one generation to another. Isaiah Williamson was working in the Gillingham Store eighty years ago, and yet Mrs. Rose Parsons Case, of Morrisville, remembers her mother speaking of Isaiah V. Williamson with admiration. Probably that mother went to the store in her early married days, and yet she talked to her daughter so enthusiastically about the Philadelphia philanthropist in his storekeeping days that Mrs. Case was able recently to quote her mother as having said: "He was a young man of sterling worth, prompt and deft in waiting upon customers, respectful and polite to all, an admirable clerk, as much interested in the business pertaining to the store as was Mr. Gillingham, the proprietor."
The lessons of Quaker thrift and industry, of conservatism and economy, which Isaiah had been taught at home by his wise and cautious parents, became advancing studies in those seven memorable years spent in Gillingham's store and home. He would hitch up a wagon and drive around the country to pick up all sorts of country produce. In this way, he learned how to make a good trade. Twice a year the stock of the store had to be replenished in Philadelphia, and he was occasionally sent there to make purchases to replace goods sold out.
Isaiah's fairness, good temper, straightforwardness and absolute trustworthiness, and withal an inherited modesty, made him popular and a general favorite with every one coming into contact with him. Recognized by Mr. Gillingham and his customers to be important and useful, young Williamson never assumed any sense of it and was the same unconceited chap that he was the first day he came into the store.
He spent his Sundays with his parents, and with them and his brothers and sisters attended the Friends' Meeting. The years sped on happily and prosperously, as the young fellow grew in wisdom and ability for business life.
Living in Mr. Gillingham's family, he was regarded almost as a son and the brother of the Gillingham children. But for the daughter, who was a schoolmate of earlier years, there came gradually into Williamson's heart a deeper affection than brotherly friendship. It is not now known how long they had loved each other, what recognition of their affection there may have been on the part of their families, or even whether there was an engagement to marry. Mary died of consumption while yet a young woman. Isaiah's life was powerfully affected by the loss of his companion. He became restless, troubled, and anxious for a change of scene. This sorrow was always regarded at Fallsington as the chief reason of his going to Philadelphia when he had completed his apprenticeship.
Having always lived in and near Fallsington, knowing everybody and by everybody known, it was not without a struggle that the young fellow turned away to seek his fortune in Philadelphia, which even then was a large city. His few trips for duplicating purchases of Gillingham, who did his own buying, had not left much opportunity for his clerk to become known. Williamson entered the city without a friend save his cousin, Peter Williamson, living on Pine Street, between Eighth and Ninth, opposite the Pennsylvania Hospital.
From his boyhood, he was never much of a talker, but he did a lot of thinking; and seeing that he had quarried everything of knowledge and experience that he could get at the Four Corners store, the only widening avenue of progress open to him was the road to the city, and thither he must go and find his way for himself. The law of growth in the very ground under his feet, as he walked over the fields around his home, was working in the young man's soul. He could not sit down and fold his hands, and let it die out, nor could he stifle it by allowing the thorns and thistles of procrastination and cowardice to spring up to delay him, in spite of efforts of kindly friends advising to the contrary.
From childhood his mother and father taught him to be saving of everything, of clothes and shoes, as well as of the small sums of money that he earned as a boy and that they gave him from time to time.
It was under the home roof that he learned how to be careful in his expenditures, and as a little boy at home as well as a bigger boy apprenticed in a store, that he taught himself how to save. The experience and lessons of these early years were often referred to when he was a prosperous man. He used to say that before spending money it was worth while for any one to think seriously of the lot of things he could do without.
Little by little the savings of childhood, together with what was laid aside of the earnings of the seven years' apprenticeship, amounted to two thousand dollars. This is what he had to carry to the city to build his future with. It was not much money. In fact, it was less than a dollar a day for the seven years of clerking. But it included all the earlier savings. Two thousand dollars! The cornerstone of the future millionaire's life. One would say that this capital was necessary in order to accomplish what Isaiah Williamson accomplished. But the face value of the bank bills and gold was by no means the principal part of the capital gathered together for the investment in his future in the city. Isaiah had:
A good birthright in the family name.
The good name he had earned for himself as a school boy.
A fairly good education.
A well-earned reputation during the fulfillment of his apprenticeship.
Honesty, truthfulness, industry, energy, and good habits, of which the people of Fallsington approved and to which they could bear witness.
A training in storekeeping.
The knowledge that he could earn money and save it if he wanted to.
These seven qualities far outweighed his savings that were to be added to his qualifications as a city business man. Had he lacked any one of these assets of character and experience, and had he disposed of ten times as much money, his equipment would have been far less likely to bring him success. This is only mildly stating the facts.
- ↑ A visit to Fallsington in 1927, nearly twenty years after this MS was written, and more than a hundred years after Isaiah Williamson worked there, reveals a very small place, with virtually no business. Fallsington is not far from the thriving cities of Trenton and Bristol. But it is off the railroad and Wheat Sheaf Station on the main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad, which used to serve it, and where trains still stopped in John Wanamaker's day, has now been given up. Fallsington, although only a few hundred yards distant, is not on the Lincoln Highway, and could easily be missed by motorists passing on the Philadelphia-New York road. But in the days of Isaiah Williamson's clerking, roads were few and difficult, and farmers depended on the local store not only as their market for supplies but as their middleman to dispose of what they raised. It is interesting to remember that less than fifteen years before Williamson went to clerk in the Gillingham Store, Fallsington was seriously considered as the site of the national capital, and came very nearly being chosen for that great destiny.