It is at least evident that the several-times-great-grandfather Duncan not only had an ideal as to child-teaching and child-training, and wanted it realized, but that he was an American pioneer in that field as well as in others and that his idea remained with the successive generations.
William, the eldest of Duncan's children, inherited the greater part of the father's land by will; and dying at the age of forty-two, left it to his widow and several children. His wife was Elizabeth, daughter of Jan Claessen. William's death occurred on Christmas Day, 1721, and he was buried in the cemetery of Gloria Dei Church ("Old Swedes"), Philadelphia. William's son, Peter, was born before there was any record of births. But we know that he married Leah Le Niser on January 19, 1731, and that when he died in 1760 he left his property in Bensalem Township to his elder son, Jacob. The younger son, Peter, who bore his father's name, was born on January 17, 1735, and moved to Falls Township in 1764, when he married Sarah Sotcher, granddaughter of William Penn's steward at Pennsbury. During the Revolutionary War he
