Leacock, John, 1729-1802

The goldsmith and silversmith John Leacock was born in Philadelphia in 1729 into a family of rising fortunes. His father, also named John Leacock, was an established pewterer and merchant and a vestryman at Christ's Church, and his mother, Mary Cash (first cousin once removed of Deborah Read Franklin), was a sister of one of the founding members of the prestigious fishing club, the Colony in Schuylkill.

Leacock was probably apprenticed in his early teens to either a gold- or silversmith, possibly Philip Syng, but regardless of how he entered the trade, success came rapidly to him. By the time he turned 23, he was earning a sufficient living to marry Hannah McCally, and after he received a sizable inheritance from his father in 1753, he removed to a new shop on Front Street, the heart of Philadelphia's silver and gold trade. Skilled in both metals, he advertised small swords, tea services, snuff and patch boxes, buckles, buttons, and a wide variety of other goods, as well as elegant silver plate. Helped, undoubtedly, by his kinship with brothers-in-law David Hall and James Read, not to mention the Franklins, Leacock found a ready market for his wares among the colonial elite of Philadelphia and his social stock rose accordingly. Signs of his increasing social standing include his signature on the 1754 petition to build St. Peter's Church, and his admission to membership in 1759 as the 88th member of the Colony in Schuylkill.

Like many successful Philadelphia merchants and craftsmen of the period, once he had amassed his fortune, Leacock began a gradual removal from his trade into a sort of active, landed retirement. In 1767, shortly before his wife died, he purchased a 28 acre plantation in Lower Merion Township west of Philadelphia, and set about raising a mixed crop of wheat, buckwheat, vegetables, and fruit, and maintaining the usual variety of livestock. Prompted by an open letter from Edward Antill to the American Philosophical Society in the following year, Leacock also began experimenting with vine cultivation. His success encouraged Leacock on December 29, 1772, to propose a scheme to the APS to establish, as he put it, a "public vineyard by subscription, for the good of all the Provinces." Situated on his plantation, this vineyard would serve essentially as a clearinghouse for the cultivation of as many different varieties of grape as could be obtained, and these would be exported and adapted to other regions of the country. Cuttings, he noted in an advertisement in the Pennsylvania Gazette, were to be made available to the public free of charge as a gift to the future of the country. In 1773, Leacock held a "Public Vineyard Cash Lottery" to help finance his venture.

In retirement, Leacock also became increasingly engaged in politics. A member of the Society of the Sons of Saint Tammany and one of the signatories of the Non-Importation resolution of 1765, he was associated with the Revolutionary faction in Philadelphia from its earliest days. He was best known, however, as a parodist and playwright in the cause of independence, and was said to have been as popular a writer in the 1770s as Francis Hopkinson. His biblical parodic satire "The First Book of the American Chronicles of the Times" was widely reprinted in newspapers, and he was equally well known for his play, "The Fall of British Tyranny" (1776). Consequently, when British forces occupied Philadelphia in 1777, Leacock thought it wise to joined the exodus to Reading, where he became one of only 27 men authorized by the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania to sign bills of credit for the United States.

After the British threat was turned away, Leacock left his farm in the care of his brother and returned to the city. He was appointed coroner in 1785, holding that office for 17 years, and he also ran an inn on Water Street between Arch and Race. During the last decade of his life, he and his second with Martha Ogilby (whom he had married on October 7, 1771) resided at 10 South Fifth Street. Leacock died quietly at home on November 16, 1802, and was buried at Christ Church.

From the guide to the John Leacock commonplace book, 1768-1781, (American Philosophical Society)