Chester County PA Archives Bios.....Bingaman, Levi
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Diana Quinones (audianaq@msn.com), April 2006

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LEVI BINGAMAN was born Oct. 21, 1824, in Coventry township opposite the house in which he 
now resides. His father kept the "Rising Sun Inn," an ancient hostelry of Coventry, dating 
back to or beyond the Revolution. Frederick (John’s father) also kept the same inn, and the 
buildings are now occupied by Levi, their son and grandson. John kept the inn until Sept. 11, 
1817, when, being converted at meeting, he cut down his sign and quit keeping public-house. 
Levi was raised on the farm until his fifteenth year, and attended the summer schools. He 
then clerked in Robert Ralston’s store in West Vincent for eight years, after which he was 
in the mercantile trade for twelve years where he now lives. He was married, Jan. 24, 1850, 
to Mary Ann, daughter of Henry and Margaret (Sheneman) Mosteller, of West Vincent. She was 
of a family of eight sons and three daughters, all living and all married but two. Levi and 
his wife have had ten children, of whom three are living,— Howard, Samuel, and Levi Arthur. 
After selling out his store at home, Levi was in the iron business in Jersey City for two 
years, until the breaking out of the war. He then returned home and operated for two years 
the Coventry Forge, and since then has been working his farm of one hundred and ninety acres. 
He was a school director a long time, and has been for eleven years an agent, surveyor, and 
receiver of the Mutual Fire Insurance Company of Chester County. He is a Republican in politics, 
a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, of which he is a trustee, and has been superintendent 
of the Sunday-school. He is the inventor of an improvement in apparatus for transmitting motion 
(No. 154,008, issued July 6, 1874), which is of great value, and is now in successful use in 
the oil regions of New York and Pennsylvania.

Source: Futhey and Cope, History of Chester County, 1881.  pp.461-504.