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Eli Balderston The Griffith line goes back hundreds of years. Rachel (Hackney) and John Griffith
The earliest images I have are a deguerreotype of Eli Balderston, and a photograph of John Griffith and his wife Rachel (Hackney).
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Eli Balderston
The Griffith line goes back hundreds of years.
Rachel (Hackney) and John Griffith
Eli and his wife Esther (Brown) were members of Baltimore
Monthly Meeting, while John and Rachel were members of Hopewell Meeting
near Winchester, Virginia. Here are the two Baltimore meetings:
The interior of the earlier meeting house, on Aisquith
Street, where the
The meeting house for the west side of the city, on Lombard Street. Eli
and Esther's sons
Balderstons were members at first, and Eli and Esther
remained.
High and Isaiah Balderston transferred to the new meeting.
At some point there may be a Griffith page, but for now
here is a picture of their homestead on Apple Pie Ridge, near Winchester,
above the Shenandoah Valley.
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In the next generation, there are photographs of several of the children
of Eli and Esther (Brown) Balderston.
Martha 
John
Kelso 
Martha Balderston
married
John Kelso
Hannah Balderston, another daughter
Presumably Martha Kelso Dunning was named for her.
A son, Samuel F. Balderston, and Samuel's wife, Martha Ann Griffith
Balderston, the daughter of John and Rachel (Hackey) Griffith. Samuel was
born 21 November 1810.
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Martha Ann Griffith Balderston
Samuel Fothergill Balderston
Samuel F. Balderston's favorite chair
Samuel and Martha were married on 11 November 1835 under the care of
Hopewell Monthly Meeting, and moved to Bellefonte, in Center County, Pennsylvania.
There they attended Centre Meeting (Orthodox) and Samuel taught in the
Friends School. Centre Meeting recorded Samuel as a minister.
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| Hopewell Meeting, 2000 | 1883 view of Centre Monthly Meeting, Dunnings Creek Quarter |
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One of the old benches, now on the porch of Hopewell
meeting house
John Griffith left money to build a wall around the Hopewell burying ground;
it was
completed in 1870, when the stone mason wrote his initials and date in
the wall.
In 1849 Samuel and Martha and their children moved to 1513 Oxford Avenue, Philadelphia, and became active members of the Northern District Monthly Meeting at Sixth and Noble Streets.
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Exterior of Northern District of Philadelphia Monthly
Meeting at 6th and Noble Streets interior, with the facing
benches where Samuel and Martha sat
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Interior looking toward the rear (and main door) of the
meeting house
chair on the left used by a child in the NDMM First Day School, on the
right the chair
used by Lydia Balderston when she taught FDS; the footstool used by Martha
when
she sat on the facing bench because her legs were so short.
By 1882 the Balderstons had moved to 2018 North Twelfth
Street, where they remained the rest of their lives. Samuel had a small
paper hanging business on Spring Garden Street, in which his sons Isaiah,
Marcellus, and Thomas joined him from time to time.
Samuel and Martha had eight children who all lived to adulthood. The
oldest was Isaiah Balderston, born
23 July 1837. His first wife, Adelaide Brackney, died 3 November 1885.
Isaiah then married Ellen Leiden Dawson. They were resident
caretakers of Northern District Meeting until Ellen died in 1912 and the
meeting closed in 1913.
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Isaiah Balderston
Isaiah's first wife, Adeline
Isaiah's second wife, Ellen Dawson
Isaiah and his wives had no children. For a while as a
widower "Uncle I" lived with his neice, Martha K. (Dunning) and her husband,
Charles S. Paxson and their family of lively children. Then around 1915
or 1916 he moved in with Martha's parents, Isaiah's youngest sister, Lydia
and her husband Thomas S. Dunning. For a photograph of Isaiah at their
Christmas celebration in 1919, click here.
Isaiah's bureau 
Samuel and Martha's second child was John Ely
Balderston, born 2 January 1839. He married Rachel S. Fogg on
25 January 1860. They had three children, Samuel F, called
"Sammie", who died at the age of 8 years; Martha, called "Mattie", who
lived with her widowed mother, and then finally moved to a Friends Home
in Germantown; Henry C. who married Alma Day. Henry and Alma lived in Merchantville,
NJ and had daughters Corinne and Lillian, and perhaps other children, as
well.
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Sammie Balderston
Samuel and Martha's third child and eldest daughter was Rachel
Esther Balderston, born 12 October 1840. She never married,
living with her parents until they died. Her grand nephews
and neices called her "Aunt Rachie". After her brother Marcellus's wife
died, Rachel lived with him until her death on 5 January 1916.
Samuel and Martha's fourth child was Marcellus
Balderston, called by his family "Cellie". He was born 12 November
1842, and married Cecilia I. Wright on 6 June 1876. Cellie
was an active member of Northern District Meeting, while Ceci was high
church Episcopalian. After her death on 26 October 1903 Cellie lived alone,
or occasionally took in boarders. Marcellus was recognized as a minister
by Northern District shortly before it closed in 1914. After his father's
paper hanging business was closed, Cellie was cashier at the Friends Center
at Fourth and Arch until his death in 1935.
Marcellus..
"Aunt
Ceci"
"Cellie" was active most of his life volunteering as superintendent
for the Bethany Mission
Bethany's home
on Brandywine St. in Phila. 
Uncle Cellie in old age
Marcellus's bureau and favorite chair 
Samuel and Martha's fifth child and second daughter was Mary
Balderston. She married the physician Edward Livezey on 4/5/1866.
He was the son of Rachel (Richardson) Livezey, the sister of Sarah (Richardson)
Paxson, mother of Charles S. Paxson.
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Dr.
Edward Livezey
Mary and Edward Livezey had four children: John, Martha, Henry, and Edward.
John Richardson Livezey married Martha Blair; they had
a daughter, Dorothy Livezey who married Leroy Worley.
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Martha
(Blair) Livezey
Martha Balderston Livezey married Joseph Willits, and
lived in Tom's River, NJ. They had two daughters, Mary and Martha.
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Martha Balderston Livezey as a young girl,
and a few years later
Joseph Willits in 1893
Henry Livezey married Anna Little in April, 1899.
Edward Livezey was the youngest child.
Henry, fall 1889 
Edward
Thomas Chalkley Balderston was the
sixth child of Samuel and Martha, born 2/9/1848. He married Mary Wetherald
on 25 November 1870. They took in Mary's neice, Blanche Wetherald,
and raised her from infancy. Mary died on 9 October 1890, and Thomas married
Fannie Baynes. She died on 4 April 1909 and Thomas married for a third
time on 12 April 1911 Rachel Lockerbie. His Dunning neices and nephews
called her "Aunt Rae". Rae's daughter by a previous marriage, Blanche Hildebrand,
lived with the family.
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Thomas C. Balderston
Mary Wetherald
Blanche Wetherald
Blanche Hildebrand, Thomas C. Balderston, and Rachel
Lockerbie Hildebrand Balderston.
Samuel and Martha's youngest child was Lydia
Balderston, born 4 December 1849. She married a homeopathic
physician, Thomas S. Dunning on 8 October 1872, and they
lived to celebrate 68 wedding anniversaries together.
1855,
age 6
Thomas was a Methodist, and Lydia was dropped from membership
in Northern District Monthly Meeting for marrying outside of the meeting.
The couple lived in a three-storey brick row house at 1328 North 15th Street
in Philadelphia.
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Left picture: House on the right was the Dunning family's,
with maid Hattie standing in the door. The house on the left belonged to
J. G. Johnson (of the collection in the Philadelphia Museum of Art); he
rented it out. In the scene of Fifteenth Street, the picture on the right,
the Dunning's house is on the right; the house with the arrow pointing
to it was where Helen A. (Child) Shepler grew up.
Over the years their hospitable home welcomed many family members: Thomas's widowed half-sisters, Caroline (Dunning) Woods Jones and Anna (Dunning) Cowgill (Aunt Lina and Aunt Anna); Lydia's widowed brothers Isaiah and Marcellus Balderston (Uncle I and Uncle Cellie); two elderly women who had no families of their own, Hannah M. James (called "Auntie J") and Sarah Kerns; there were also extended stays by their daughter Mary and granddaughter Lucy when William B. Shoe was traveling. For more information on these individuals, see 1328 North Fifteenth Street: the Dunning Family and Its things (© 2008), available here.
Thanksgiving, 1899, photograph by Charles Paxson. Back
row from left: the upstairs maid, the coachman, Thomas S. Dunning, Margaret B. Dunning, the cook;
middle row: Dan Clark, Auntie J, Lydia B. Dunning holding Anna
Bartlett Dunning, a visiting missionary, Margaret Ann Stevenson Dunning;
front row: Martha K. Dunning, Lydia J. Dunning, Thomas Snively Dunning.
For the children of Lydia click on the Dunning
page.
For pictures of the descendants of Lydia's daughter Martie, look at
the Paxson page, or at additional
extended
family photographs. For more of Martie's in-laws, see also the Richardson
family.
Return to home page.
Mamie Griffith, resting here waiting for a Griffith page:
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Mary Newbold Griffith, wife of Richard
Robert Griffith (born 1821)
Sidwell Griffith, son of Rachel (Hackney)
and John Griffith, brother of Martha Ann
Griffith Balderston (above)