Constellation Similarity Assertions

Henry Banning Chew (1800-1866) spent the majority of his life in Maryland on the family's farm Epsom. Henry married twice, first to Harriet Ridgely (1803-1835), daughter of a Maryland governor, Charles Ridgely, and then to Elizabeth Ann Ralston (1793-1862). The first marriage produced eight offspring, of whom only Charles, Benjamin, and Samuel lived past twenty years of age. The family lived first at the Ridgely estate known as Hampton and then at Epsom, in Towson, Maryland, where Henry kept slaves and operated a farm on the property. In addition to farming, he had a small venture shipping goods between mid-Atlantic and Caribbean ports on his schooner the Morgiana. He established the firm of Luke and Chew with William Luke in the 1820s, but the business did not succeed, and ended with a legal dispute between the two former partners. Around the same time, Henry B. Chew was vice-consul to Mexico, and invested money with his brother Samuel in the construction of a ship for the Mexican government. After his father's death in 1844, Henry B. Chew became one of the principal administrators of his father's estate, managing the family's property holdings in western Pennsylvania, along with James M. Mason and Henry's brother William.

From the description of Chew Family papers : Series 7. Henry Banning Chew (1800-1866), 1800-1871. (Historical Society of Pennsylvania). WorldCat record id: 435804076