Page:History of the University of Pennsylvania - Montgomery (1900).djvu/77

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History of the University of Pennsylvania.
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his extensive property to the children of his sister Mary, who married Captain James Oswald, namely, Elizabeth who married Chief Justice Chew as his second wife, and Margaret who married Frederick Smythe, Chief Justice of New Jersey. Another sister of Joseph Turner married John Sims a merchant in Jamaica, and was the mother of Joseph and Buckridge Sims, eminent merchants of Philadelphia. There was a brother Peter, whose possessions in the Northern Liberties gave rise to the name of Turner's Lane when that road was opened, but it is now no more, the rectangular streets of modern municipal geography obliterating all traces of it.

Mr. Turner's presence in the meetings of the Trustees was very constant up to 1762, when for some years long intervals occurred between his attendances, and the last time his name is entered as being present was on 23 July, 1769, the condition of his health forbidding him to continue his attendance. This continued for another ten years when on 22 June, 1779, he wrote to the Trustees, "My advanced age and bodily infirmities not permitting my attendance as one of the Trustees of the College, Academy and charitable Schools of Philada., I think it my duty to resign a trust which I am no longer able to execute. " This was accepted at a meeting on that day, and at the meeting on 28 June, Mr. George Clymer, the Signer, was elected in his place, but the abrogation of the charter before the end of that year gave him a very brief Trust.

Benjamin Franklin, "who first projected the liberal plan of the institution over which we have the honor to preside, " as the Provost, Vice Provost and Professors addressed him 16 September, 1785 on his final return home from his manifold foreign duties, finds a place at this point in the list of the original Trustees. While a sketch is here attempted of the lives and actions, personal or professional or political, of his associates, but a brief one should be attempted in this place of the man whose Autobiography has to this day remained unapproached in style or instruction by any who have attempted his Biography. Nor is it needed to record in these pages in any detail the doings and