Wister family.

William Logan Fisher (1781-1862) purchased "Belfield," a large house in Germantown, Pennsylvania, from painter Charles Wilson Peale in 1826. He gave the house to his oldest daughter, Sarah Logan Fisher (1806-1891) and her husband, William Wister (1803-1891). Belfield remained home to their descendants until 1984 when it was sold to La Salle University.

William Logan Fisher, son of Thomas (1741-1810) and Sarah Logan Fisher (1751-1796), was born in 1781. His great-grandparents were James Logan and Sarah Read Logan. He was raised at "Wakefield" in Germantown, Pennsylvania, not far from Belfield. When he was fourteen he travelled to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he was placed in the counting house of William Rotch, Jr. It was in New Bedford and through the Rotch family that William met his first wife, Mary Rodman (1781-1813). William and Mary married in 1802 and had two children, Thomas (1803-1861) and Sarah Logan (1806-1891), before returning to Wakefield in 1807. In 1810, they had their third child, Elizabeth (1810-1891), and in 1813, Mary died. Years later, William Logan Fisher married Sarah Lindley (1785-1865). They had three children together: Lindley (1818-1852), Charles William (1820-1857), and Mary Rodman (1822-1903).

William Logan Fisher was an industrialist and entrepreneur. In New Bedford, he owned several whaling vessels and, upon his return to Germantown, he established Wakefield Mills Manufacturing Company. At its peak, Wakefield Mills produced nearly all the hosiery and fine knit goods in the United States. It was just the first in a series of mills owned and operated by Fisher and his descendants. Together with William Wister, his daughter Sarah's husband, he also operated a calico print mill. In 1834, he established the Duncannon Iron Mill in Clark's Ferry, Pennsylvania with Charles Morgan.

Sarah Logan Fisher (1806-1891), William Logan Fisher's oldest daughter, and William Wister (1803-1881) were married in 1826. William Logan Fisher gave them the Belfield house as a wedding gift. Sarah and William Wister had six sons who lived to adulthood: William Rotch (1827-1911), John (1829-1900), Langhorne (1834-1891), Jones (1839-1917), Francis (1841-1905) and Rodman (1844-1913). The six brothers were raised at Belfield, receiving their earliest education at Germantown Academy. Though they all pursued different professional paths, all of the brothers were in some way affiliated with the various businesses established by their grandfather at Wakefield, Duncannon and other locations.

John Wister, Sarah and William Wister's second eldest son, was apprenticed at the Iron Works of Fisher & Morgan at Duncannon and worked for the company his entire adult life. Jones and Rodman Wister were both iron merchants in Philadelphia. Additionally, William Rotch, who was a lawyer by trade, John, Langhorne and Jones Wister established an iron furnace in Harrisburg, calling their joint business venture J & J Wister Company. Jones, Langhorne and Francis Wister also fought in the Civil War. Though business and war took some of the brothers away from Philadelphia and Germantown, all of them retained close ties to their childhood home. They were all members of the Germantown Cricket Club (Jones Wister was a charter member, in fact) and the Belfield Country Club, among others.

In 1890, John Wister and his family returned to Belfield from Harrisburg, where they were living, to take care of his mother, who died in 1891. Upon her death, John inherited the estate, and he and his family lived at Belfield until his death in 1900. In 1922 John's wife, Sarah Tyler Boas (born about 1833), a member of the prominent Harrisburg Boas family, died. She left the Belfield house to Sarah Logan Wister Starr (1873-1956), John and Sarah's second oldest daughter.

Sarah Logan Wister Starr was raised in Harrisburg and, later, at Belfield. Throughout her life, she was involved in a wide variety of organizations in Philadelphia and Germantown. Most notably, she served as president of the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania from 1921 to 1941. One of her many contributions to Women's Medical College was the establishment of the Wister Fund in 1953, which provided money to erect new buildings on the school's East Falls campus. Starr was the state vice chairman of the World War I era National League for Woman's Services, as well as the Germantown branch. In that capacity, she raised two million dollars for children in Belgium. She was also chairman of the Women's Committee of the Liberty Loan program for the Federal Reserve District, and in 1917 she led the first parade for the Liberty Loan campaign in which several hundred women marched from the Women's Club of Germantown to Germantown Academy. Starr also served as president of the Colonial Dames and of the Women's Permanent Emergency Association of Germantown. She was associate trustee of the Board of Libraries at the University of Pennsylvania and served as Chairman of the Germantown Branch of the Civic Club. Starr was a member of the Acorn Club, Print Club, Sedgley Club, Germantown Historical Society, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and Society for the Preservation of Landmarks. She was heavily involved in preparations for the Sesquicentennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1926. She founded the Zoe Valley Library in Nova Scotia, where she summered as a child. Starr also wrote histories on her ancestral homes of Belfield and neighboring Stenton. With her cousins Frances and Anne, she published the magazine "The Sparrow." She was awarded honorary degrees from Ursinus College in 1933 and the University of Pennsylvania in 1941. She died in 1956.

In 1901, Sarah Logan Wister Starr married James Starr (1870-1937), a mining official. James graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1891 and Towne Scientific School in 1892. He served in the Spanish American War. James was a collector of Chinese stamps and a specialist in Chinese Treaty Ports. Organizations which James was affiliated include: China Stamp Society, Chinese Philatelic Society in Shanghai, Board of Libraries of the University of Pennsylvania, Council of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Germantown Cricket Club, Zoological Society, and United Spanish American War Veterans.

While they lived at Belfield, the Starrs made significant changes and improvements to the house and grounds. They added electricity and telephone service via underground wires, water and rock gardens, and a rose garden. Aspects of the new garden decor were inspired by a trip to China the Starrs enjoyed in 1933. The Starrs were frequent travelers, embarking on several "Round the World Cruises" during the 1930s. In 1937, they accompanied Pennsylvania Governor George H. Earle to Sweden on the 300th anniversary of Swedish colonists coming to America.

Sarah and James' daughter, S. Logan Wister Starr (1903-1979), married Dr. Daniel Blain (1898-1981) in 1936. Blain, the son of Presbyterian foreign missionaries, was born in Kashing, China. He was a psychiatrist who received his M.D. from Vanderbilt University in 1929. During World War II he served in the U.S. Public Health Service, War Shipping Administration, and Veteran's Administration. He held high-ranking positions at many hospitals and mental health institutions, including the now-defunct Tratelja Farms, from the 1930s until his retirement in the 1963. Logan and Daniel Blain's son, Daniel Blain Jr., sold the Belfield property to La Salle University in 1984.

Bibliography:

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Stanoch, Dave. "The Life of William Rotch Wister (1827-1911)." La Salle Local History web page (accessed online on December 10, 2010: http://www.lasalle.edu/commun/history/articles/wrwister.htm).

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Wister, Jones. Jones Wister's Reminiscences . Philadelphia: Printed for private circulation by L.B. Lippincott Company, 1920 (accessed online via Google Books on December 20, 2010: http://books.google.com/books?id=LTtHAAAAIAAJ&dq=Jones%20Wister&pg=PR3#v=onepage&q&f=false).