Biographical Sketch of Mackey WHERRY; Chester County, PA Contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Terry Mossop. Thanks to the Missouri Historical Society for granting permission for the inclusion of the bio in the USGenWeb Archives. *********************************************************************** USGENWEB ARCHIVES NOTICE: Printing this file within by non-commercial individuals and libraries is encouraged, as long as all notices and submitter information is included. Any other use, including copying files to other sites requires permission from the submitters PRIOR to uploading to any other sites. We encourage links to the state and county table of contents. http://www.usgwarchives.net/ *********************************************************************** Source: Bulletin of the Missouri Historical Society. Vol. B #3, April 1952. Policeman, Tanner, Soldier, Merchant, Farmer, and First Register of St. Louise MACKEY WHERRY By His Grandchildren Maggie M., William M., Joseph A., and John M. Wherry[1] Mackey Wherry, the first Register of the City of St. Louis, was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, the 10th of July, 1766. He was the second son of the second marriage of David Wherry II, and bore his mother’s maiden name. She was margaret, eldest daughter of James Mackey of Cecil County, Maryland, whose family had long been established and prominent in that state. His grandfather, the first David Wherry, came to America from the north of Ireland in 1718, bringing with him his wife, Mary, and his three small children, James, David, Jr., and a daughter. The plantation on which he settled was so near the Maryland line that some years later its boundaries became the subject of dispute. The land was claimed by a citizen of Maryland, who destroyed Mr. Wherry’s fences. When Mr. Wherry resisted this action, he was arrested, but he gave bond and was not imprisoned. Afterward the boundary stones were found, and Mr. Wherry was proved right; his land was in Pennsylvania. Before the problem was settled, however, it became the subject of a correspondence between the Governors of the two disputing states, and the whole matter was recorded in the Pennsylvania Archives (January 1, 1730, Vol. I, 281-292.) On this plantation the children grew up, and the daughter married John Lusk, who was later killed by Indians. The elder David Wherry died July 13, 1743, leaving his 400 acres to be divided between his sons. James died in 1771, and his share of the land passed to other hands. David, Jr., built a two-story stone house on his two hundred acres, and in this homestead Mackey Wherry was born, and spent his childhood. The house is still standing, and is still occupied by descendants of David II, bearing the Wherry name. David Wherry II took an active part in the American Revolution. He was on the “Committe of Observations,” for Chester County, where his associates were General William Montgomery and General Anthony Wayne. A Presbyterian, he was an elder in his church. He married twice, having six children by the first wife, and nine by the second. Of these fifteen, only one died in infancy. All the other reached at least middle life, and several attained great age. Twelve of the fifteen married and had children, whose descendants are now scattered from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, and dwell in many states. David died July 7, 1800, at the age of eighty-three. George Washington had died the previous December, and the entire county was mourning. Since at that time the country had almost no manufactories, the supply of black goods was so reduced by this universal mourning that Mr. Wherry’s family had a great difficulty getting suitable attire for their own bereavement. A few years before his father’s death, young Mackey Wherry had set out for the West to barter with the Indians, never to return to the old homestead. He was at first unsuccessful; it is said that he lost three separate consignments of furs before striking a gainful bargain. The venture which proved successful took him to New Orleans, and it was there that he formed the friendship with Manuel Lisa which he afterwards continued in St. Louis, where he came as a merchant in 1798. In St. Louis he met Miss Louisa Camp, who was then living with her widowed mother. Miss Camp had suffered more than the usual vicissitudes in life. Born in Amherst Glebe, Amherst County and Parish, Virginia, she was the daughter of the Reverend Dr. Camp[2], Rector of the Parish, a district now divided into four counties. In 1778, however, Dr. Camp left the Glebe, where his parishioners were such families as the Cabells, Penns, Gaines, Ruckers, and Gooches, to adventure down the Ohio with his wife and children. They came part of the way under the protection of George Rogers Clark, and then moved on down the Mississippi to the Settlements of Natchez. With them moved Dr. Benjamin Farrar, uncle of Bernard Farrar, with his family and Negroes. The group had expected to join a colony of friends from New England and the Carolinas, but misfortune had disbanded the colony before their arrival, and shortly thereafter Dr. Camp’s eldest daughter died[3]. Dr. Camp consequently moved his family back north, and in 1779 they settled in Kaskaskia, Illinois. After seven happy years in this little French settlement, Dr. Camp died.[4] In 1786, his widow and four daughters moved to St. Louis, where, on March 19, 1800, Mr. Mackey Wherry and Miss Louisa Camp were married. The young couple probably settled in St. Charles soon after their marriage, but for several years they were much of their time in St. Louis. They were there in 1803, when in October Mrs. Wherry’s mother, the Widow Camp, died, and Mr. Wherry had the estate to settle. But in 1804 Mackey Wherry became the first sheriff of the St. Charles District, which included all the Missouri territory north of the Missouri River. He was still sheriff when the District was divided into townships in 1807. St. Charles County was not established until 1812. Meanwhile Mr. Wherry had established a tannery, which he operated successfully for several years, and was St. Charles agent for the Missouri Gazette. In 1804 he had been entrusted by the authorities with the task of finding a suitable house for the first Court of Common Pleas, and a building for a jail. Through his efforts, the latter was established in the windmill of Francois Duquette, in “consideration of the annual sum of Sixty Dollars Peltry.”[5] Mr. Wherry had also organized a troop of horse, of which he was captain. When, in the summer of 1808, General William Clark rode out to confirm his treaty with the Osage Indians, he was accompanied by Captain Wherry’s troop of horse from St. Charles. In April of the following spring, Wherry’s company was ordered to rendezvous with arms and ammunition at St. Louis. During the War of 1812, Mackey Wherry commanded a company of cavalry raised at St. Charles. At the close of the war, Mr. Wherry moved his family to St. Louis. Very shortly he was appointed the first Register of the city. He also served as Collector. In fact, there is a tradition in the family that at one time he held all the offices in the city except that of mayor. Certainly, besides the two above offices, he was Market-Master, and by 1818 he had organized a police force, the first in the city. His friend, Captain Sullivan Blood,[6] whom he appointed constable in 1818, and who became captain of the police force, said that Mr. Wherry was as brave a man as he had ever seen. At the time when the rivermen were terrorizing the people of the town with riots and roistering, Mr. Wherry would go down with his hickory stick and his dog, and order would soon be restored. There was always a dog in stories about him. One old gentleman used to tell what a capable and faithful Market-Master Mr. Wherry made, and how he would order stale vegetables and fruit and bad butter destroyed, and how his dog-in this instance named “Cap”-became so expert in testing butter that he would run ahead, and getting a sniff of rancid butter, would “point” as if to game, much to the dismay of the marketwomen. Another of Mr. Wherry’s dogs he gave to a friend going to reside in New Orleans. The faithful creature resented this change of masters, and determined to return to Mr. Wherry. He made his way to a New Orleans wharf, and boarded a steamboat. The captain recognized him as Mr. Wherry’s dog, and brought him back up the river. Once arrived in St. Louis, the dog at once made his way to the office of the Register. When Mackey Wherry came to St. Louis to live in 1815, he moved his family into the “old Beaugenou House,” which had been built in 1765, and from which it is recorded that the first St. Louis wedding took place. The family owns a painting of this house, made in 1876 by Miss Susan Paddock from her recollections of the house as she saw it first in 1815. The picture shows a good front yard, with, to the left, a small enclosure within the larger enclosure, said to have been used as a rabbit warren. Mr. Wherry had a hobby of raising English rabbits. When the undertaking proved expensive and unsatisfactory, friends persuaded Mr. Wherry to give a rabbit dinner. The resultant feast was long remembered as the most expensive of its time, since the meat had cost so much. According to Frederick L. Billon, Mr. Wherry lived in the Beaugenou House until 1821, and was so listed, at 124 South Main, in the first city directory. From this house Mr. Wherry moved late in 1821 to a place on the corner of Main and Spruce, recently vacated by Alexander McNair. Mr. McNair had erected a brick house opposite General Ashley’s on the Bellefontaine Road in 1819, and lived there until he died in 1826. The house on Main and Spruce which Mr. Wherry took over had also been built in 1765.[7] While here Mr. Wherry was visited by his sister, Mrs. Mills, the only member of his original family he ever saw after leaving the old homestead in Chester County. Her daughter later described the house on Main and Spruce as “very comfortable and well appearing.” From that house, Mr. Wherry moved to a brick house on the northwest corner of Sixth and Market, which he considered to be “quite in the country.” There Mrs. Wherry died, August 6, 1825. She was buried in Rutgers Cemetery in St. Louis. After her death, Mr. Wherry spent much of his time on a farm he owned near Creve Coeur Lake. His sister, Mrs. Mills, and her husband and sons had moved into this farm. Mr. Mills died the year after they moved in, and the sons had improved the place. When Mr. Wherry retired from the office of Register in 1827, he went to live with his sister on the farm, and took great interest in planting trees and shrubbery, and developing a terraced vineyard. He died at the farm, August 3, 1828, after a short illness. His eldest son, Joseph, was with him when he died. He was buried in the family burial place on the farm. When, in 1825, Rutgers Cemetery was condemned by the city to permit the opening of South Seventh Street, the body of his wife was removed, and placed beside his in the family lot on the farm. Mr. Wherry had bought the farm at the sale of the estate of Gregoire Sarpy. Known as “Ravine,” it was originally on a Spanish land grant, described in the deed as being “on the waters of the River Fifi.” When the United States came to lay out land, the farm fell within the sixteenth section, and was claimed as school land, but the family had possession of it until 1846, when it was divided and sold. Mr. Wherry’s second son, Dr. Mackey Manuel Wherry, bought a portion of the land, and lived on it for some time, but he did not get the old house, or the gardens and grounds his father had planted. The house has since burned down, and there in now no trace of cultivation. Mr. Wherry had three sons, Joseph, Mackey Manuel, and Boone, all unmarried at the time of his death. When Mr. Wherry retired as Register in 1827, his son Joseph A. Wherry, whose whole business life had been passed as deputy in his father’s office, took over as Register, and continued in that position until his last and only illness a few weeks before his death. He died February 13, 1843, a few days before election time. Shortly after his death a committee of prominent citizens called upon his brother, Dr. Mackey Manuel Wherry, and asked him to allow his name to be used as a candidate for Register. Dr. Wherry was appreciative of the compliment, but he was unwilling to give up his profession. He felt, also, that it would be wrong for the office remain longer in the same family. In 1889, however, Joseph a. Wherry, Jr., the son of the second City Register, and the grandson of Mackey Wherry, the first Register, was elected to the office and served four years. Dr. Mackey Manuel Wherry died June 26, 1864, aged 61. Mackey[8] Wherry was the first of his name in St. Louis, and for more than sixty years his family were the only ones of that name in the town. He had seven children, but four of them died in infancy. The three sons who survived him all later married and left descendants. All three had sons, but only those of Joseph A. Wherry, the second Register, attained maturity. Of these only one has sons. Many people have paid tribute to the Wherry family, and especially to Mackey Wherry and his son Joseph A. Wherry. Elihu H. Shepard, in the History of St. Louis and Missouri, writes: The father and son had filled the office [of Register] more than a quarter of a century, with the regularity of the sun, and there is not to this day a better example of fidelity in office than these two gentlemen gave to the people of St. Louis. Mrs. William Glasgow, who knew Mr. Mackey Wherry when she was a little girl, as he was a friend of her father, Dr. William Carr Lane, was very fond of him. She loved to tell of his enterprising spirit, and his eagerness to try new things. In Pennsylvania he had been used to coal fires. After he came to Missouri, in trips between St. Charles and Fort Bellefontaine, he noticed coal deposits near Le Charbonniere on the Missouri River. He at once had some of the coal brought to St. Louis, paid a blacksmith to make a grate from him, and tested the coal, which proved of good quality, but too difficult to access. This is said to be the first coal grate used in St. Louis. Mrs. Glasgow spoke often of Mackey Wherry’s good qualities, and of his public spirit, and his useful ness as a citizen. In gratitude for his services, of those of his son, Joseph A. Wherry, the city of St. Louis named a street on the south side Wherry Avenue, a name it still bears. ----------------------------------- [1] From Our Contributors, page 224: Maggie M., William M., Joseph A., and John M. Wherry are the grandchildren of Mackey Wherry, first Register of the City of St. Louis, whose biography they have written in this issue. Miss Wherry is the daughter of Dr. Mackey Manuel Wherry, second son of the elder Mackey Wherry. Brigadier General William M. (retired), Joseph A., Jr., and John M. Wherry are the sons of the eldest son, Joseph A. Wherry, who succeeded his father in office to become the third Register of St. Louis [2] Ichabod Camp was born in Connecticut, February 15, 1726, took A.B. and M.A. degrees at Yale, and went into the Episcopalian ministry. On November 26, 1749, he married Content Ward, by whom he had two children. She died December 29, 1754, and in 1757 Dr. Camp married Anne Oliver of Boston; they had eight children, of whom Louisa was the seventh. [3] This was Mary Anne, who was born November 15, 1762, and died February 23, 1779. [4] These years were not so happy as here implied. In 1785, Louisa’s older sister, Catherine (April 21, 1765-1804) married John B. Guion, a Canadian Frenchman of passionate and brutal disposition. He mistreated Catherine, and she fled to her father’s house for protection. Guion followed, and tried to force her away. Dr. Camp came to the door to remonstrate, and Guion shot him dead. This was on April 20, 1786. Guion was never prosecuted, but he died shortly after the murder. A month later, on May 26, 1786, Catherine gave birth to his child, a daughter who died the following August. [5] Original documents in the Missouri Historical Society. [6] Sullivan Blood was born in Vermont in 1795. From 1815 to 1816, he was in the lumber business with the Seneca Indians. In 1817, he came to St. Louis, where he was captain of the first police force. In 1823, he revisited Vermont, and there married Miss Sophia Hall. He brought his wife back to St. Louis, and served as deputy sheriff of St. Louis County. In 1833, he was elected to the Board of Aldermen. He then entered the river trade, commanding several boats. He was one of the incorporators of the Boatmen’s Savings Institution in 1847, and became a prosperous banker. He died in St. Louis in 1875. [7] This house was originally the Jacques Noise House. It was a poteaux en terre structure, 22 x 30 feet, with a galerie on three sides. Alexander McNair lived in it for thirteen years. (Charles E. Peterson, Colonial St. Louis: Building a Creole Capital, Missouri Historical Society, 1949.) [8] Mr. Wherry generally signed his name on documents as “Macky,” leaving out the e to preserved the pronunciation, as he grew tied of being addressed as McKey or McKay.