Chew, Benjamin, 1758-1844

Benjamin Chew's son Benjamin Jr. (1758-1844) had become increasingly involved in his father's affairs, practicing law with him, and managing the elder Benjamin's land holdings, ultimately taking responsibility for the family's plantations and the purchase and sale of slaves. In many ways, Benjamin Chew Jr. followed firmly in his father's footsteps, studying law at the Middle Temple in London from 1784 to 1786, where he cultivated a relationship with the Penn family, before returning to practice law with his father and brother-in-law, Alexander Wilcocks. Within the law practice, Benjamin Jr. was brought into his father's extensive financial affairs. It was at this time that Benjamin Chew and his son began to speculate in large quantities of land on the western Pennsylvania frontier. As time passed, the younger Chew gained more authority over the family's financial endeavors. He increasingly acquired the primary responsibility for the legal work necessary to purchase and administer the burgeoning family land holdings. After his father's death in 1810, Benjamin Jr. took over primary control of the family's business interests. He also managed the personal, financial, and legal affairs of his three unwed sisters, Henrietta (1767-1848), Maria (1771-1840), and Catherine (1779-1831), as well as assisting his sister Harriet (1775-1861) with her estrangement from her husband, Charles Carroll, Jr. In addition, he served for a time as president of the Germantown and Perkiomen Turnpike Company. Reflecting his interest in education, Benjamin Jr. acted as a trustee for both the Germantown Academy and the University of Pennsylvania for a number of decades in the first half of the nineteenth century. Benjamin Chew, Jr. married Katherine Banning (1770-1855) in 1789. Katherine Banning Chew was the daughter of Anthony Banning and Martha Spencer, of Kent County, Maryland. The couple had nine children who survived childhood: Benjamin III, Samuel, John, Eliza Margaretta, Henry Banning, William White, Anne Sophia Penn, Joseph Turner, and Anthony Banning. The family lived at the Chew town house in Philadelphia and Cliveden, which Benjamin Jr. inherited upon his father's death in 1810. Through the years, the family was active in the Episcopal congregations of both St. Peter's Church in Philadelphia and St. Luke's Church in Germantown. Benjamin Jr. expanded the Cliveden property and turned it into a working farm during his tenure of ownership. Labor was provided by servants, both free and slave into the 1820s. In 1810, Chew commissioned a new family town house to be built on 4th Street. His death in 1844 ignited a contentious and lengthy family quarrel surrounding the distribution of his estate. The family's disagreements had a great impact on the relationships between Benjamin Chew Jr.'s children and their mother.