Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 5.djvu/389

 ELIJAH BINGHAM. 353

Some very large and ancient trees cast their shadows over the roof of the mansion. Among these are some ehns which were transplanteil a hundred and fifteen years ago by Colonel Rolfe. One of them is enormous. Around you stretches the land which belongs to the estate, — some thirty acres or more, — and all under good cultivation. The sun is shining upon the old mansion — the sunshine of 1882— but the house dreams on, dreams of its hundred years of greatness. And we stand and dream too, of the pageants, and the fair women and brave men, whose histories are enwrought with that of the mansion. All the old time and the dashing figures that adorned it pass before our mental vision. All the legends and traditions throng upon our mind as we stand under the branching elms by tlie old gate of the mansion. Even as we walk away they pursue us ; they will not down.

" Vanished are the story's actors; but before my (ireaiuy eye Wave these mhigling shapes and figures, like a faded tapesl ly."

��ELIJAH BINGHAM.

��BY ROLAND D. NOBLE.

ELIJAH BINGHAM was born at Lempster, New Hampsliire, February 24, A. D. iSoo. He died at Cleveland, Ohio, July 10, A. D. 1881.

Bingham is supposed to be of Saxon origin, as a family of this name lived in Sutton, England, before the Norman conquest.

The Bingham family, in the United States, is understood to have originated from four brothers, supposed to be of about the 20th generation, sons of Thomas and Mary Bingham, of Sheffield, England, who came to America in the last half of the seventeenth century. Their names were Thomas, Samuel and Jo- seph, who settled in New England, and William who settled in Pennsylvania.

Elijah Bingham, the subject of this notice, was a lineal descendant of Thomas Bingham, above mentioned, who settled in New England. The ancestry of Elijah Bingham, on his father's side, is traced back to Thomas and Miry Bing- ham, of Sheffield, Yorkshire county, England. Of his family was a son of the name of Thomas, who came to America and settled in Norwich, Connecticut, about the year 1659. The name of Thomas Bingham is recorded as one of thirty-five {proprietors of Norwich, in that year. He married Mary Rudd, daugliter of Jonathan Rudd, December 12, 1666, and subsequently he reauved to Windham, (Conn.) and there he died January 16, 1729, aged eighty-eight years. He is described on the gravestone erected to his memory in the Wind- ham burying place as " Deacon Thomas Bingham," and as a man eminent for piety, love and charity ; and there he is noted as the son of " Mr. Thomas and Mary Bingham, living in Sheffield, in Yorkshire, in England." Of Deacon Thomas Bingham's family, a son, Joseph, born January 15, 168S, was the great grandfather of the Elijah Bingham of this memoir. He married Abigail Scott, December 14, 1710. Of his family, his son Ehjah, born June i, 1719, was the grandfather of the one of whom this sketch is written.

Joseph lived in Windham, and died there S^i)tember 4, 1765, aged seventy- seven years. Elijah Bingham (grandfather) married Theodora Crane, March 2,1739. Theodora died April 6, 1751. July 19, 1753, said I'^lijah married Sarah Jackson. Of the children of this (second) marriage was James, born at Windham, April 23, 1758. James was in his fifteenth year when his father moved from Windham to Lempster, New Hampshire, in the year 1772-3.

�� �