Bucks County PA Archives Biographies.....Trego, Thomas W.
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Joe Patterson, Patricia Bastik & Susan Walters Dec 2009

Source: History of Bucks County, Pennsylvania; edited by 
J.H. Battle; A. Warner & Co.; 1887
Doylestown M-Z


THOMAS W. TREGO retired, P.O. Doylestown, was born in 
Buckingham township, Bucks county, May 13, 1816, and is a 
son of Jacob and Letitia (Smith) Trego, both natives of this 
county and of French descent.  The ancestors, being 
Protestants, left France in consequence of religious 
persecution about 1685, and afterwards settled in Chester 
county, Pa., where the earliest official record of the name 
is under date of 1690.  John Trego, the progenitor of the 
Bucks county Tregos, and great-grandfather of the subject of 
this sketch, came from Chester county to Bucks county about 
the year 1722, a minor, and settled in Wrightstown township. 
 The grandfather, William, was a farmer and occupied the old 
homestead until near his death in 1827.  He had eleven 
children:  Thomas, Mahlon, Joseph, William, John, Mary, 
Jacob, Jesse, Hannah, Rebecca and a second Mary.  Our 
subject's father, Jacob, was a farmer, and after his 
marriage occupied a part of the old homestead farm for some 
years, when he purchased a farm in Buckingham township, 
where he lived until 1846.  In that year he removed to 
Mercer county, Illinois, where he remained until 1862, when 
he returned to Bucks county, and during the last five years 
of his life made his home with his son Thomas.  He died in 
1870 in his 90th year.  He was the father of eleven 
children:  Smith, deceased; Howard, killed by a cyclone in 
Illinois in 1844; Allen, residing in Iowa; Curtis, deceased; 
Henry, residing in California; Elinor, deceased; Thomas, 
Rebecca, residing in Philadelphia; Elias, deceased; Joseph, 
residing in Kansas, and Yardley, residing in Iowa.  Our 
subject lived with his father on the farm until about 19 
years of age, when he went to Philadelphia, where he was in 
school over a year.  He then became a clerk in the wholesale 
dry goods house of Wood, Abbott & Co.   A year later he 
engaged as a clerk in the store at Wrightstown meeting 
house, where he remained two years, when, in the spring of 
1840, he went in company with three brothers to Mercer 
county, Illinois.  In 1841 he was engaged in the government 
survey of the lands ceded to the government at the close of 
the Black Hawk war.  In the autumn of that year he returned 
to Bucks county, where he remained until the spring of 1846, 
engaged most of the time in teaching, when, with all the 
remaining members of his father's family, he returned to 
Illinois.  Two years were then spent in opening and 
improving a farm.  In the spring of 1848 he engaged as clerk 
on the steamboat "Fortune," plying between Galena and St. 
Louis and served two seasons, going thence into the 
wholesale store of the steamer's owner in Galena.  The 
following summer he was sent to manage a store and smelting 
furnace at Mineral Point, Wisconsin, and remained there 
until the spring of 1853, when, in company with J. W. 
Woodruff, he opened an iron and hardware store in Galena, 
and remained there until 1860.  He then removed with his 
family to Chicago and engaged in the lumber trade until 
1864, when he returned here and purchased a farm in 
Doylestown township, which he sold in 1875.  In 1881 he 
removed to Chicago.  In 1884 he came back to Doylestown and 
built the house in which he now resides.  He was married 
August 21, 1851, to Elizabeth Betts, daughter of Thomas 
Betts, of Upper Makefield township, Bucks county, by whom he 
has five children:  Nellie, wife of H. H. Gilkyson; Walter, 
who resides in Chicago; Joseph, in San Francisco; Edward, in 
Kansas, and Mary Sydney.  Mr. Trego is a member of the 
Society of Friends, as were also most of his ancestors on 
both sides.