Logan

The Logan family was prominent in Philadelphia from the start of the province, serving the people in many capacities, including political, medical and literary.

James Logan, the first secretary of the colony under William Penn, was born on October 20, 1674 in Lurgan, Ireland, the son of Patrick and Isabel Hume Logan. His father was a scholar and an Anglican minister until his conversion to Quakerism. James was educated in his father’s school, the Friar Meetinghouse School in Bristol. His early careers included working as a linen draper in 1687, as an assistant schoolmaster to his father from 1690 to 1693, and as the schoolmaster of the Friar Meeting house from 1693 to 1697. From 1697 to 1698, James unsuccessfully worked in the linen trade; however, in 1699, James Logan obtained a career as a secretary for William Penn, who was about to sail for his province of Pennsylvania.

Upon arriving in Pennsylvania, James Logan began his service to Pennsylvania through positions including Secretary of the Province, Receiver-General of Pennsylvania, Member of the Provincial Council, Mayor of Philadelphia, Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, President of the Provincial Council and Acting Governor. At the same time, he gained wealth through commerce, trade with Native Americans and land purchases.

James Logan was an intellectual. He was “a linguist of competence in a bewildering number of languages, a classicist who in the margins of his books crossed swords with greatest European editors, and a scientist who described the fertilization of corn by pollen, understood and used the new inventions of calculus, wrote on optics, and made astronomical observations,” ( At the Instance of Benjamin Franklin, page 32). He collected books and arranged for his substantial library consisting of nearly 2,600 volumes, the Loganian Library, to be made public upon his death. The Loganian Library, which was received in trust by the Library Company of Philadelphia, exists almost in its original entirety. According to Edwin Wolf II, historian and past librarian of the Library Company, Logan “brought enthusiasm, erudition, and a good Quaker sense of value to bear on his book purchases, [but was] however, finicky, bad tempered, over pedantic and hard,” (Wolf, page 44)

On December 9, 1714, Logan married Sarah Read Smith, the daughter of Charles and Amy Child Read. James and Sarah became the parents of James, William and Hannah. Three other children, James, Rachel and Charles died as children. Sarah Read Smith Logan died on December 9, 1714 and James Logan died on September 2, 1751 at the age of 77 in his country home, Stenton, which he built in Germantown, Pennsylvania. From the time that James Logan arrived in Philadelphia, he was “an integral part of the history of Pennsylvania,” (Library Company of Philadelphia, page 4).

William Logan, the son of James and Sarah, was born on July 14, 1718 in Philadelphia. At age 12, he went to England to study with his uncle, also named William, who was a doctor in Bristol, England. After returning to Pennsylvania, he worked with his father as a Philadelphia merchant. In 1741, he became the attorney to the Penn family. He was elected to the Common Council of Philadelphia on October 4, 1743 and continued to serve until 1776 when the Declaration of Independence dissolved the municipal government. He also served on the Governor’s Council from 1747 until his death, in 1776. As a Quaker and a pacifist, William Logan opposed Indian wars and the Revolution. With his cousin, Israel Pemberton, Logan formed the Peace Association in order to prevent a war with the Delaware Indians in 1756 (French and Indian War, 1756-1763).

In 1751, his father, James Logan, died and he inherited the family’s home, Stenton. At this point, William began working in agriculture. He also, “with his brother James and sister, Hannah Smith, … on August 29, 1754, deeded library property, designed by his father for the use of the people of Philadelphia to a board of trustees. .. [and] bequeathed to the library thirteen hundred volumes bequeathed to him by his uncle Dr. William Logan of Bristol, England,” (Jordan, page 31).

William married Hannah Emlen on March 24, 1740. She was the daughter of George Emlen and was born on January 30, 1777. She and William had six children, four of whom survived childhood. These children are Charles, George, Sarah, and William Jr. William died at Stenton on October 29, 1776 and Hannah died on January 30, 1777.

William Logan, Jr., son of William and Hannah, was born in 1747. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh, receiving his medical degree in 1770 under the direction of Doctor Fothergill. According to John Woolman, “he made a hasty marriage without the knowledge of either family” (Woolman, page 560) to Sarah Portsmouth in April 1770. Sarah was the daughter of Doctor Portsmouth of England. They returned to Philadelphia where William, Jr. practiced surgery. He died at the age of 25 on January 17, 1772 in Philadelphia. He and Sarah were the parents of William Portsmouth Logan who died before his mother. Sarah returned to England and died in March 1797.

George Logan, the second son of William and Hannah and brother of William Logan Jr., was born on September 9, 1753 at Stenton. He received education at Worcester, England and worked as a mercantilist. After his father’s death, he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, earning his degree in 1779. He worked as a physician and an agriculturist and was described by Thomas Jefferson as “the best farmer in Pennsylvania in theory and practice,” (Stenton). He was also a founder of the Pennsylvania Society for the Promotion of Agriculture.

George Logan was active in politics, serving in the Pennsylvania Assembly and as United States Senator from Pennsylvania. The Logan Act of 1798, prohibiting conducting foreign relations without authority, was created because of his efforts to prevent war with France in 1798.

On September 6, 1781, George married Deborah Norris, an eminent Philadelphian. She was born on October 19, 1761, the daughter of Charles Norris and Mary Parker Norris and the granddaughter of Isaac Norris. She obtained her education at Anthony Benezet’s public school for girls, the first public school for girls in America, and is considered highly educated for a woman of her time. She was “a skilled historian and writer … [and] wrote articles and poetry into her seventies” (Stenton). She documented her life in seventeen volumes of diaries, wrote a memoir of her husband after he died in 1821 and transcribed many of James Logan’s papers. She was the first woman elected as a member of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. She died at Stenton in February 1839 and her husband, George, died on April 9, 1821 at Stenton. George and Deborah were the parents of Albanus Charles, Gustavus George and Algernon Sydney.

George and Deborah’s oldest son, Albanus Charles, was born on November 22, 1783. Albanus was a physician. He married his second cousin Maria Dickinson, daughter of Mary Norris and John Dickinson, who was born in 1753. Albanus Charles and Maria Dickinson Logan had four children, Mary Norris, Sarah Elizabeth, Gustavus George and John Dickinson. Maria died in 1851 and Albanus died on February 10, 1854.

Their son, John Dickinson Logan, married Susan Wister on April 28, 1846. John Dickinson Logan headed the Pennsylvania Hospital. They were the parents of Algernon Sydney Logan (1849-1925), born May 17, 1849. He was educated at Yale and travelled to Europe with the goal to be “remembered as a brilliant poet” (Plunkett). According to The Biographical Record of the Class of Seventy, Yale College, 1870-1904, Logan was “never … engaged in any business or trade, having inherited a competence from his ancestors,” (Hicks, page 249). To further complete this picture, Plunkett states, “by 24, [Logan] had settled into a life of full-time aristocratic leisure.” Algernon Sydney Logan married Mary Wynne on November 4, 1873, the daughter of William Wynne Wister, a Germantown banker. They had one child, Robert Restalrig who was educated at Harvard and married Sarah Wetherill.

Algernon Sydney Logan wrote prolifically, but was not commercially successful. In addition to his writing, “in 1881, Logan inherited 2,600 acres of depleted farmland in Delaware and managed, after studying farming techniques, to restore the soil’s fertility” (Plunkett). Despite farming, writing was still his greatest interest and he self-published his books. He is the author of: Mirror of a Mind, 1875; The Image of Air, 1878; Saul, 1838; Jesus in Modern Life, 1888; Messalina, 1890; Not on the Chart, 1899; and A Feather from the World’s Wing . Despite the number of books he self-published, none were successful and towards the end of Algernon Sydney’s life, he became slowly disenchanted by his lack of success (Plunckett). Published after his death, in Algernon Sydney’s diary, Vistas on a Stream, he states “Failure and death are alike in their loneliness. The vast companionship in each case is invisible.”

Bibliography:

Hicks, Lewis Wilder, ed. The Biographical Record of the Class of Seventy, Yale College, 1870-1904 . Boston: Beacon Press, 1904.

Jordan, John W., ed. Colonial and Revolutionary Families of Pennsylvania . Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., 1978.

Library Company of Philadelphia. James Logan, 1674-1751: Bookman Extraordinary . Philadelphia: Library Company of Philadelphia, 1971.

Plunkett, Keving. “A Eulogy for Logan,” Philadelphia Independent, Vol. 1. No. 21, October 2004.

Stenton.org. “History, Art and Collections.” (http://www.stenton.org/history/), accessed May 4, 2010.

Woolman, John. “The Journals and Essays of John Woolman.” New York: The Macmillan Company, 1922.

Wolf, Edwin, 2nd. “James Logan, Bookman Extraordinary,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Third Series, Vol. 79 (1967), pages 33-36.

From the guide to the Logan family papers, 1684-1925, (Library Company of Philadelphia)