Editor’s note: Pennsylvania and New Jersey have played a key role in the nation’s 250-year history. While most are familiar with the events that happened in Philadelphia, our region also played a pivotal role in the development of the fledgling nation. In honor of the country’s 250th anniversary celebration, we will feature some of the places, people and events in the region that helped shape America’s history.
As the British advanced toward Philadelphia after the Battle of Brandywine in September 1777, many Patriots fled the city in fear of their lives.
“About 1,000 families spread out into the surrounding countryside and towns,” said Philip E. Pendleton, a retired architectural historian and author of “Oley Valley Heritage, The Colonial Years: 1700-1775.”
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During the approximately nine-month British occupation of the city, about 30 families drawn from Philadelphia’s professional and merchant classes took refuge in Reading, then a frontier town, he said.
Pendleton, formerly of Oley Township and now of Portland, Maine, wrote about the ensuring tensions between the Philadelphia refugees and long-term Reading residents in his master’s thesis.
Most of the families seeking refuge in Reading, he said, were headed by English-speaking affluent merchants, professionals and landowners, tied socially and economically to Philadelphia.
Among them was Mary Keen, the future wife of Charles Evans, founder of the Reading cemetery that bears his name.
Portrait of Charles Evans, 1768-1848, founder in 1846 of the Charles Evans Cemetery in Reading. (MICHELLE LYNCH/READING EAGLE)
Mary was just 9 years old when she arrived in Reading accompanied by her parents, Reynold and Christiana Keen; their nine children; Reynold’s 13-year-old orphaned niece, Margaret “Peggy” Stout; and Christiana’s half-sister, Sarah “Sally” Barry, wife of then-Capt. John Barry, later celebrated as Commodore Barry, father of the American Navy.
Mary Keen Evans, 1768-1838, the wife of cemetery founder Charles Evans, was just 9 years old when she stayed about eight months in Reading as a refugee during the British occupation of Philadelphia beginning in Sept. 1777. Portrait from the Charles Evans Cemetery collection.
(MICHELLE LYNCH/READING EAGLE)
The Keens, like many of the other refugees came to Reading attended by servants, and in some cases, by enslaved African Americans, who traveled with them.
They disdained mingling with the local townspeople and socialized strictly among themselves or with prominent locals, including future governor Thomas Mifflin and iron master Mark Bird.
Their haughty behavior and affluent connections drew suspicion and resentment locally, particularly from the Pennsylvania German population, Pendleton said.
The Berks County courthouse is seen in this model of Colonial Reading made by the Museum Extension Project, W.P.A., and dedicated to the Historical Society of Berks County, now Berks History Center, in 1941. (Courtesy of Floyd Turner, a former president of the BHC.)
The refugees were not generally zealous in their dedication to independence, he noted. And some would have been content with simply negotiating rights and representation for the American colonies.
In contrast, Pendleton said, many Reading artisans of the period belonged to the radical wing of Patriots, who pushed aggressively toward independence and greater political and social equality.
In that charged political climate, he said, suspicion fell on the Philadelphians and accusations of Toryism, or loyalist sympathies, spread rapidly, regardless of a family’s actual political allegiance.
Reynold Keen was one of those to fall under suspicion, Pendleton said.
Mary’s father drew scrutiny when he traveled back to British-occupied Philadelphia to manage business affairs. Commander of the local militia Col. Henry Haller, a bootmaker and Berks County auditor, accused Keen of conspiring with the British and urged Pennsylvania authorities to prosecute him.
Original correspondence and legal documents detailing the matter survive in the collection of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.
The Berks County courthouse and a market stall are seen in this model of Colonial Reading made by the Museum Extension Project, W.P.A., and dedicated to the Historical Society of Berks County, now Berks History Center, in 1941. (Courtesy of Floyd Turner, former president of the BHC)
Records show the officials responded by confiscating Keen’s Reading property for auction and ordering him to remain in Philadelphia and stand trial for treason.
With their father gone and mother dead — Christiana died in late 1777, just weeks after giving birth to her 10th child — the Keen children were left in their aunt Sally Barry’s care.
When Barry learned of the impending auction, she attempted to intervene. Though she petitioned the government to allow the family in Reading to retain furniture and other basic necessities, her request was refused. She was instructed to bid along with the public at an auction of Keen’s possessions on Penn Square on Feb. 21, 1778.
Innkeepers and shop owners often served as officers of Pennsylvania’s local militias. Reading’s Gen. Wolfe tavern, named in honor of a British hero of the French and Indian War, was renamed at the start of the Revolutionary War. The tavern, which was next to Conrad Weiser’s White Store in the 500 block of Penn Street, is seen in miniature in this this model of Colonial Reading made by the Museum Extension Project, W.P.A., and dedicated to the Historical Society of Berks County, now Berks History Center, in 1941. (Courtesy of Floyd Turner, former president of the BHC)
Among the so-called goods and chattels sold were an enslaved woman and girl.
The teen-aged girl had been given to Keen’s niece, Peggy, by her parents before their deaths.
Before Pennsylvania began abolishing the institution of slavery through the Gradual Abolition Act of 1780, wealthy merchants, ironmasters and professional families frequently relied on enslaved labor for domestic work, skilled trades and household service.
It was not unusual for a wealthy child, like Peggy, to receive the gift of an enslaved child of the same sex and similar age.
The girl sold for £130; the older woman, only £35.
While it is difficult to estimate the purchasing power of those figures in today’s dollars, some idea of comparative value can be gleaned from the auction report, which also survives in the state collection.
Keen’s feather mattress and pillow, for example, sold at the same auction for £45. His carriage, the most expensive item sold, went for £277.
Col. Henry Haller’s bootery is seen this model of Colonial Reading made by the Museum Extension Project, W.P.A., and dedicated to the Historical Society of Berks County, now Berks History Center, in 1941. (Courtesy of Floyd Turner, a former president of the BHC)
The 1778 sale of these two people serves as a reminder of the contradictions of the Revolution. The unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness outlined in the Declaration of Independence did not apply to all.
The episode also reveals how the war’s upheaval could harm innocents, who had little power to shape events.
The Keen children, already grieving the loss of their mother and deprived of their father, saw their household dismantled and possessions sold.
The enslaved woman and girl faced the even harsher reality of being auctioned as property with no control over their futures.
History does not record their fates.
The Keen children and their cousin and aunt returned to Philadelphia after the British evacuated the city in June 1778.
Keen, who remained in Philadelphia, was eventually cleared of all charges and later resumed public office, serving as an alderman and judge.
A little more than a decade after the war’s end, his daughter, by then Mrs. Charles Evans, returned to Reading, where her husband set up a successful law practice.
She died in her home on South Fifth Street at age 70 in 1838, leaving no surviving children. Evans, who outlived his wife by 10 years, went on to found the cemetery at 1100 Centre Ave. in 1846.
Portraits of the couple and other family artifacts, including an engraved print that once belonged to Sally Barry, remain in the cemetery’s collection.
Revolutionary Refugees at Reading
Portraits of Reynold and Christiana Keen, painted about 1768, were bought by Sally Barry at the Penn Square auction. They now hang in the American wing of Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
This lesser-known chapter of the American Revolution and Reading’s history, has not been forgotten at the cemetery, 1100 Centre Ave., where the story is shared annually during a December open house.