BIO: Judge Daniel RHOADS, Centre County, Pennsylvania

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Commemorative Biographical Record of Central Pennsylvania: Including the 
Counties of Centre, Clearfield, Jefferson and Clarion: Containing Biographical 
Sketches of Prominent and Representative Citizens, Etc. 
Chicago: J. H. Beers, 1898.
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COMMEMORATIVE BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD, page 40-41

JUDGE DANIEL RHOADS. On one of the elevated points adjacent to the mountain town 
of Bellefonte, Centre county, is the little burying ground of the Society of 
Friends, in which rest the remains of "one of the grandest characters that ever 
lived anywhere," those of Daniel Rhoads, whose grave is marked by a plain 
granite slab, on which is the simple inscription:
  " Daniel Rhoads, born 9th month, 25th, 1821,
  Died 3d month, 11th, 1893."
Encircling the inscription and climbing about the stone are sprigs of ivy, while 
the family lot is a plain grassy sward under the shadow of one of Nature's 
grandest forest trees; the picture presented, suggested, as we stood by the 
grave, the thought of how like the life and taste of him who rested there.
  The Rhoads family is a most historical and interesting one in both this and 
the Mother country. For upward of two hundred years the family have lived in 
Philadelphia, the old homestead now at Haddington, in the 28th ward, being still 
in the possession of the family, occupied by the eighth generation. The 
progenitor of the family here in America was John Rhoads (1), who came over from 
Derbyshire, England, in 1687. However, previous to this two of his sons-John (2) 
and Adam-had preceded him a number of years, being contemporaries with William 
Penn. John (1) was the son of Sir Francis Rodes II, whose grandfather, the first 
Sir Francis, built, in 1583, Barlborough Hall, in Derbyshire, England, the 
palatial, castle-like home of the family. Barlborough Hall is situated in the 
parish of the same name in Derbyshire. The village of Barlborough is on the 
estate which is on the verge of the county southeast of Sheffield and northeast 
of Chesterfield. James P. Pilkington, in " Present State of Derbyshire," 1789, 
writes:
  Barlborough Hall is a handsome mansion of the age of Elizabeth; the inside has 
been modernized, but the principal front retains its original appearance [still 
the same in 1884], having projecting bows terminating in octagon embattled 
turrets and large transom windows With very small panes set in lead. In the 
space between the first and second stories in the fronts of the octagonal 
turrets are busts of Sir Francis Rodes and his wife in bas-relief.
  Anna V. Bailey, a cousin of Daniel Rhoads, who visited Barlborough Hall in 
1884, thus alluded to the place:
  The grounds are very picturesque, noble trees scattered profusely, and groves 
in the distance The house is approached by beautiful avenues of limes or 
lindens, a quarter of mile in length, very ancient and grand-looking trees. The 
DeRodes

41  COMMEMORATIVE BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD

arms are over the great front door, and the forearm with the oak branch and 
clusters of acorns beautifully carved in several places around the house.  The 
drawing room, a very spacious square room, filled with paintings, busts, 
portraits, etc., contains a very magnificent stone chimney-piece, originally in 
"the great chamber;" it is enriched with fluted, Doric pillars supporting 
statues of Justice and Religion, and coats of arms and various articles in bas-
relief.  In this room is an immense stained-glass window, very rich in color and 
design, divided in small, octagonal panes, each pane containing the name and 
crest of the different families with whom the Rodes had intermarried.  There are 
hundred of old miniatures done on ivory, very antique, a magnificent collection 
of old china, said to be the finest in Derbyshire, contained in beautifully 
inlaid antique cabinets, also very richly inlaid tables.  The furniture of this 
room is covered with very old Gobelin tapestry, of mythological subjects, and 
the curtains are of rich, wine-colored velvet, with strips of tapestry down the 
fronts.  The buff coat and sword of Sir Francis Rodes, worn in the time of 
Charles I, are preserved in this house.  They are engraved in Groses' Ancient 
Armor, Plate XXXIX, as are also the armor, breast-plates, helmets, gauntlets, 
sword-proof coats of heavy chamois skin, lances, spears, swords, etc., contained 
in the great hall.
    Washington Irving writes:
    I had been passing a merry Christmas in the good old style at Barlboro Hall, 
a venerable family mansion in Derbyshire, and set off to finish the holidays 
with the hospitable proprietor of Newstead Abbey.  A drive of seventeen miles 
through a pleasant country, part of it the storied region of Sherwood Forest, 
brought me to the gate of Newstead Park.  During my recent sojourn at Barlboro 
Hall, on the skirts of Derbyshire and Yorkshire, I had witnessed many of the 
rustic festivities peculiar to that joyous season, which have rashly been 
pronounced obsolete by those who draw their experience merely from city life.  I 
had seen the great Yule log put on the fire on Christmas Eve, and the wassail 
bowl sent round brimming with its spicy beverage.  I had heard carols beneath my 
window by the choristers of the neighboring village, who went their rounds about 
the ancient hall at midnight, according to immemorial custom.  We had mummers 
and mimers, too, with the story of St. George and the Dragon, and other ballads 
and traditional dialogues, together with the famous old interlude of the Hobby 
Horse, all represented in the ante-chamber and servants' hall by rustics who 
inherited the custom and the poetry from preceding generations.
   Sir Francis Rodes, the builder of the Hall, was of the eleventh generation 
from Gerard DeRodes, who lived during the reigns of Henry II, Richard I, John, 
and Henry III, from all of whom he received great favors.  Gerald DeRodes was 
one of the greater barons, the capital seat of whose barony was Horn Castle in 
Lincolnshire.  It would appear from the following quotation from old ballads 
that this family had at one time a seat either in Scotland, or nearer the border 
than Horn Castle, Lincolnshire-"The House of the Rodes on the Hill:"
	"The Gordon then his bugle blew,
	     And said, 'Awa, awa,'
	This house of the Rodes is a in a flame:
	     I haud it's time to g'a."
   Gerard DeRodes would have been one of the signers of the Magna Charta but for 
his absence as an ambassador to foreign ports, whither he had been sent by King 
John, March 29, in the ninth year of his reign, 1208.  Burke says Gerard DeRodes 
was one of the noble Armagnac family of the ancient French nobility.  The family 
at Bellefonte have a record of their lineal descent from generation to 
generation from Gerard DeRodes along the line of which are interesting and 
historical characters prominent for their ability and interesting from their 
nearness to royalty.  Pictures of Barlborough Hall, of the old Philadelphia 
homestead, with those of some of their occupants, together with family treasures 
of "ye olden times" grace their home.  The orthography of the name has undergone 
a number of changes.
   One Samuel Rhoads of the family was mayor of Philadelphia about the year 
1765, and presided as vice-president over the deliberations of the American 
Philosophical Society during the absence of the president, Benjamin Franklin, at 
the court of France.  Another ancestor of whom Daniel Rhoads was a lineal 
descendant was John Blunston a minister of the Society of Friends, who came from 
Derbyshire, England, in 1682, and settled at Darby, near Philadelphia, he being 
"An Original Purchaser" of fifteen hundred acres of land, comprising several 
tracts of various sizes situated mostly, if not entirely, within the limits of 
the present Delaware county, Penn.  He was a member of the first Provincial 
Assembly of Pennsylvania, and one of the committee appointed to receive William 
Penn on January 12, 1683.  He was several times Speaker of the Assembly, being a 
member for thirteen years.  He was also one of the justices of the Court, and in 
1690 a member of the Council of State.  He frequently acted as attorney for 
persons residing in England who held lands in this country.  For the years 1701-
'02-'03-'04 and '05, he was again a member of the Governor's Council.  William 
H. Egle, in his "History of Pennsylvania," in speaking of him says: "he was 
regarded as a person of great ability and probity."
   The father of Daniel Rhoads was Joseph Rhoads, who was the son of Adam and 
Sarah (Jeanes) Rhoads.  Joseph Rhoads was born at "the old homestead" 5th Mo. 2, 
1779.  On 1st mo. 16, 1806, at Friends Meeting House, Radnor, Penn., he married 
Naomi Thomas, daughter of Abel and Zillah (Walker) Thomas.  Joseph Rhoads was a 
leading member of the Society of Friends, and was active in the anti-slavery 
cause, being president of the Delaware County Anti-Slavery Society, and was 
always willing to give work and shelter to any who appealed to him as having 
escaped from bondage.  His home was a station on the "underground railway."  His 
son, Daniel, in his younger days, frequently conducted fugitive slaves to the 
next station, twenty-five miles farther north.  He was also one of the earliest 
in the temperance movement, and a pioneer in abolishing whiskey from the harvest 
fields.  He died August 28, 1852, and his wife, Naomi, died August 9, 1842.  
Both are interred in the Friends graveyard, at Darby, which piece of ground was 
given to the Society by the John Blunston mentioned above, great-great-
grandfather of Joseph Rhoads.  Naomi Thomas, the mother of Daniel Rhoads, was 
born 10th mo. 23, 1783.  She was of ancient Welsh and English ancestry, the 
progenitors of the various branches of her family, being Friends, were among the 
first settlers of Chester Valley and of Radnor, which were of the earliest of 
Pennsylvania settlements.  They came from Wales and England in the years 1683-84 
and 1687.  Her great-grandfather, Isaac Walker, owned the historic Valley Forge 
property, which included the ground on which Washington's Headquarters now 
stand, and considerable of the encampment site.  Gen. Anthony Wayne was a 
kinsman of hers.  Both he and Gen. LaFayette were frequent visitors to her 
grandfather's house, and it is said that her aunt, "The Little Naomi," as a 
little girl was a 'special favorite' of the gallant young Frenchman.  Naomi 
(Thomas) Rhoads, like her husband, was an active and consistent member of the 
Friends Society.  She was a devoted wife and mother and one of the most 
exemplary of women, possessed of great strength of character and rare 
intelligence, and of the sweetest disposition.
   The family of Rhoads have for generations been stanch adherents to the 
principles of the Society of Friends.  A number of the name suffered repeated 
persecutions in the Mother country for conscience sake, and it was doubtless the 
hope of enjoying religious liberty which led John Rhoads and his sons to leave 
their Derbyshire homes and seek the wilderness of Pennsylvania.
   Daniel Rhoads early in life was sent to a Friends boarding school at 
Burlington, N.J.  Later he attended the schools at Philadelphia, receiving a 
liberal education.  At the time of his birth, which happened in the old 
homestead referred to, the latter was "out in the country"; the Judge used to 
remark that:  "I was born and raised in Philadelphia, although no one knew it at 
the time, nor was it dreamed of then that the old Quaker City would in time 
stretch to the extent it is to-day."  In 1850 John K. Smith, uncle of the wife 
of Daniel Rhoads, of Trenton, N.J., bought in the neighborhood of ten thousand 
acres of the Levy lands, and on Miles run, some three miles south of the river 
in Burnside township, Centre county, Penn., built a large sawmill of the 
capacity of six million feet yearly, equipped with two circular saws; the firm 
operating here in 1853 was Smith, Taylor & Smith.  That year Mr. Rhoads came 
from Philadelphia to engage in the lumbering business with them, buying the 
interest of Mr. Taylor, the firm becoming Smith, Rhoads & Smith, with Mr. Rhoads 
as manager.  The business was one of considerable scope, and employed many men 
in cutting timer, and in sawing and shipping timer.  For four or five years the 
firm was most successful in the extensive operations, cutting and shipping about 
three million feet annually, until in 1858, when their mill-the "Sterling"-was 
destroyed by fire.  In the latter year Mr. Rhoads returned to his native city to 
take charge of the Market street horse-car line.  In 1860 he accepted the 
superintendency of the Bellefonte & Snow Shoe railroad, a position he held with 
honor and credit for twenty-one years until the road was sold to the 
Pennsylvania Company on March 17, 1881.  In the meantime the firm continued to 
operate at Burnside, and until 1876 manufactured considerable square timber and 
sawed lumber, later the business being confined to nothing but square timber.  
After retiring from the railroad office Mr. Rhoads, with Richard Downing, Wistar 
Morris and other Philadelphia stockholders, formed a company known as the 
Dunkirk Ore Association, purchased the James Love farm at Loveville, Centre 
county, and went into the business (Mr. Rhoads being engaged at the same time in 
mercantile business at that point) of mining and shipping ore.  In addition to 
his own large business interests he had shared for twenty-six years the 
responsibility and care of the William A. Thomas estate, of which he was sole 
trustee after the death of Mr. John Irwin, and so well was the trust kept that 
the property more than tripled itself.
   On the death of Associate Judge Smith of Centre county, in the spring of 
1887, Mr. Rhoads was appointed by Gov. Beaver to fill out the un-expired term.  
In this capacity he showed such good judgment and honest purpose that in the 
same fall he was nominated, much against his own wishes, and elected to the 
Bench by a large majority, notwithstanding the fact that the county was strongly 
Democratic, and he was an ardent Republican.  He loved his party and believed in 
its principles, but he was a Republican from honest convictions and not for 
expediency's sake, for he never sought an office, and was very loath to accept 
the one that sought him.  As a judge he gave general satisfaction, and was often 
appealed to for advice by the president judge, who had the greatest respect for 
his sound judgment.  Editor Meek of the Democratic Watchman, said:  
   Of all the eulogies uttered this week in the praise, he would undoubtedly 
value the most highly that spoken by his friend, Rev. Dr. Monroe, at the simple 
funeral services Tuesday morning:  "He was a good man."  Judge Rhoads was a good 
man-good without the narrowness of an over-zealous fanatic; but good in the 
fullest sense of the term-in his love for God and his fellow-men, in his 
devotion to truth, in his sense of honor, in the purity and nobility of his 
life, in the fine courtesy of his manner, and the unfailing kindness of his 
heart.  Although towering away above the average man mentally and physically, 
and of an independent temperament, he was so gentle, so kind, and so unassuming 
that the inspiration of his example will live and his name remain honored as one 
of our best and noblest citizens long after the records of the many more 
ambitious and conspicuous have faded from the memory of men.
   Another of the home papers referred to him:
   Judge Rhoads as an employer of labor, while superintendent of the Snow Shoe 
railroad, became well acquainted with the laboring men in that section of the 
country, and of him they always spoke in the highest terms.  Kind, generous to 
his men, he was always held in the highest esteem by his fellowmen.  Among the 
poor he will be greatly missed, his missions of charity were more numerous and 
of larger extent than the public ever knew; more than one humble home was been 
warmed and cheered, and the hungry mouths of little ones made to rejoice by his 
timely gifts of fuel and food, from purely charitable motives.  Tender-hearted 
as a child, he was still as firm as rock when grave situations arose and 
principles of right were involved.  Judge Rhoads was an ideal man in many 
respects, and while the vital spark has flown, we can still study with 
instruction the record of that noble life just closed.
   The Public Ledger of Philadelphia said:
   Judge Rhoads was held in high esteem not only on account of his well-known 
character for integrity and trust-worthiness, but also by reason of the 
sweetness and gentleness of his disposition, combined with great firmness and 
strength.
   On April 25, 1861, Mr. Rhoads was married to Miss Maria Dick Smith, and from 
that time until his death he was a resident of Bellefonte.  Their children are:  
Edward Keasbey, Joseph James, Francis Sinnickson and Rebecca Naomi.  The eldest 
child, Samuel Jeanes, died in infancy.
   Mrs. Rhoads is of an historic family, of Revolutionary stock, and of an 
ancestry that formed a part of the Colonies upward of 200 years ago.  Her 
paternal ancestor Smith acquired from King Charles II, of England, a grand of 
land at Salem, N.J. in 1662, and about that year came over from England and 
located thereon.  The original parchment on which this grant was written is now 
in the possession of Mrs. Rhoads.  Her grandfather, John Smith, was a captain in 
command of a New Jersey troop in the war of the Revolution, and her grandfather 
on her mother's side, Andrew Sinnickson, served as colonel of a New Jersey 
regiment in that war.  The Sinnicksons were of Swedish descent, being among the 
first settlers of New Jersey.  Many of Mrs. Rhoads ancestors held positions of 
responsibility and trust during the Colonial period.  Her father, Edward Smith, 
was a native of Salem, N.J., born in 1797; he was liberally educated, and by 
profession was a civil engineer.  In early manhood he represented the people of 
his locality in the General Assembly of New Jersey.
   In 1833 he removed to the West, locating at Mt. Carmel, Ill.  Such were his 
attainments and popularity that his services were sought by the citizens of his 
adopted State, and he was elected a member of the Legislature, and had the honor 
of serving in that body with the afterward President Lincoln.  He soon rose in 
the ranks of his profession, and at his death in 1839, was chief engineer in 
charge of all internal public improvements of the State of Illinois.  He was a 
man of great force of character and ability, but died before attaining the 
prominence his ability would have commanded had his life been spared.  Mrs. 
Rhoads was born at Mr. Carmel, Ill., in 1839.
   The Rhoads homestead at Bellefonte is just such a one as the reader of the 
family history would picture.  The house and surroundings suggest the poetical; 
sitting on an eminent point well studded with trees and bowers, it reaches out 
to a commanding view of the picturesque country of the beautiful "mountain 
town."