A Collection of DICK & BRISBANE Papers; Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Martha DeLOSSO and Sharon KLEINSTUBER Transcribed by Vince Summers http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm ******************************************************** A Collection of DICK & BRISBANE Papers I. The History of [the] BRISBANE Name The name of BRISBANE, according to genealogist E. Haviland Hillman, is derived from the village of Brespan in the Commune of Lenerzel, Arrondissement of Vannes, Department of Maebim in Brittany, not far from the original home of the STEWARTs at Dol, with whom the STEWARTs were early associated. He adds there is absolutely no ground for assuming a Saxon origin for the family while there is every reason for believing a Breton or Norman one. These early BRISBANEs first settled in England in the wake of the Norman invasion but some moved to the west of Scotland sometime between 1124 and 1153. In the course of the centuries the name has undergone various changes. For more than 500 years the BRISBANEs remaining in Scotland were defenders of the Kirk and covenant and clan. They fought a long and losing fight against the English - some of them emigrating to America in 1730... coming to New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and South Carolina. II. [No title, but someone's personal DICK & BRISBANE history.-VES.] From an old family Bible I find that William DICK was born in 1778 in Scotland. [He] married Margaret BRISBANE who was born in Paisley, Scotland, March 2, 1775. The name of BRISBANE dates back to 1225 when they followed William the Conqueror in invading the British Isles. They came from a place called Brispan in France and some of them settled in Scotland and some in Wales. We are descended from the ones who settled in Scotland. Grandfather and Grandmother DICK (Large Portraits) were married in Scotland in 1798. William DICK died March 3, 1831 [and] Margaret Brisbane DICK died Sept. 13, 1851. Grandfather DICK met Bishop WHITE in London before he came to America and I think I was told he met him at the Archbishop of Canterbury's. When he came to America, Bishop WHITE appointed him in charge of the buildings of the University of Pennsylvania and it was while he was there that General Lafayette visited America the second time and Grandma* was born at the U. of P. in the house built for [George] WASHINGTON (which he never lived in) which became the Medical Department on August 17, 1816. She married Enon HARRIS Oct. 6, 1836. Enon was lost in a hurricane outside of New York, Sept. 14, 1839. After Grandmother DICK's death, she married Dr. George SPACKMAN, July 10, 1854. During the Civil War 1861 to 1865, Bam, as we called her, was a trained nurse and went up and down the Delaware River on hospital boats and went out on the battlefields and gave first aid. On a trip to Virginia she heard a boy crying for water in the enemy quarter. She went to him, washed his face and hands and gave him a drink. [She] then told the stretcher bearers to take her and the boy to the enemy headquarters. When she got there she told the officer in charge the boy had pneumonia and asked for a doctor who came in and recognised her. Dr. SPACKMAN had coached him and put him through his course at U. of P. Medical School. The boy's mother wrote to Grandma and told her, she loved her for saving her boy's life, but he hated her because she was a Yankee. The last hospital Grandma was connected with was Summit House in Paschalville, 69th and Woodland Ave., where the Catholics have built a large building. There she met Dr. Maison who started our church in Collingdale. I forgot to say that Grandfather Dick graduated from the University of Edinburgh and spoke nine different languages. * who is Grandma Bam. Bam is Sarah McAllister DICK. F.N. Sarah McAllister Dick born August 17, 1816, married 1. Enon HARRIS Oct. 6, 1836. Had two sons William lost in storm in Indian Ocean unmarried Enon b. March 3, 1839 2. Dr. George SPACKMAN III. Obituary from the "Indicator" newspaper of March 29, 1901, according to Sharon. Mrs. Sarah McAllister Spackman Passes Away ------ IN HER EIGHTY-FIFTH YEAR ------ The End Came on Tuesday at the Home of Her Grandson Borough, Engineer Enon M. Harris, Jr. ------ WAS CIVIL WAR ARMY NURSE Mrs. Sarah McAllister Spackman died on Tuesday morning at the home of her grandson, Borough Engineer, Enon M. Harris, Jr., at Collingdale, in the 85th year of her age. The funeral takes place this afternoon, interment to be made at South Laurel Hill. Services will be held in the chapel on the cemetery grounds. Deceased was the daughter of the late William and Margaret Brisbane Dick, who were prominent among Philadelphia's oldest and most highly respected residents. The date of her birth was September 17, 1816, and she enjoyed the distinction of being one of the only two who were born in the house erected by the State of Pennsylvania as a residence for George Washington, on the site of the present post office building, on Ninth street. The other person born there was her nephew, William Dick, now of the firm of Dick & Fitzgerald, the New York city publishers. She was married in 1836 to Enon Harris and lived in New York city until the death of her husband, in September, 1839, when she returned to the home of her parents in Philadelphia. Two children were the issue of this marriage--William F. Harris, who died in 1859, and Enon M. Harris, president of the Darby Board of Health. Her grandchildren are Enon M. Harris, Jr., borough engineer of Darby; Miss Maggie B. Harris, a teacher in the Collingdale public school; James M. Harris, who is connected with the German-American Trust Company, Philadelphia, and Thyrza B. Harris. She leaves five great- grandchildren, the offspring of the only married grandson, Enon M. Harris, Jr. In 1854 deceased was married to Dr. George Spackman, a Philadelphia physician of wide repute, who died in August, 1861, without issue. Immediately after Dr. Spackman's demise Mrs. Spackman entered upon the noble work of caring for the sick and wounded Union soldiers of the civil war then in progress. She organized the first corps of army nurses in Pennsylvania, in a house that stood where the Odd Fellows' Temple now stands, at Broad and Cherry streets, Philadelphia, and was one of the original nurses who constanly attended upon the sufferers in the hospital at Twenty-second and Wood streets. She also cared for the wounded soldiers who entered the hospital located on the present site of the Broad Street Station. During the war she made several trips to the front, was in the vicinity of a number of engagements and endeared herself to the hearts of thousands of the boys in blue by her careful attention, kindness of heart and unselfish devotion to their welfare. In 1862, while on a steamship off White House Landing, on the James River, she met with a providential escape from serious, if not fatal injury, a rebel shell passing through her stateroom scarcely half a minute after she had left it. While a resident of Claymont, Del., for several years, deceased regularly visited, and did never-to-be- forgotten kindly service at the hospital located on the site now occupied by the St. Vincent's Home, in Paschall. Mrs. Spackman always delighted in relating her meeting with General Lafayette on his visit to Philadelphia in 1824. She was then a girl of eight years of age and her father was superintendent of the University of Pennsylvania. He escorted the General through the institution and she accompanied them, Lafayette chatting freely with her and patting her playfully upon the head. Since 1885, Mrs. Spackman had made her home with her grandson, Enon M. Harris, Jr., in Collingdale, and she was greatly respected by all who knew her.