New Hampshire Landmarks
The Lear HOUSE HISTORY
Home of Tobias Lear V. who became secretary to George Washington.-.
Washington visited the house in 1789 while touring Portsmouth.
Tobias Lear IV
3rd great grand uncle of Ted L Durgan , brought his bride Mary Stilson here in 1759. He also worked for his cousin John Langdon, a wealthy ship builder. Tobias Lear IV was Langdon's crew chief at the building of The Ranger, the Portsmouth- built ship commanded by John Paul Jones.(
Note }Mary is sister of third great grandmother of Ted L Durgan Lettice Stilson ..Lettice is mother of Joe E. C. Durgan Sr. of Fort Vancouver WashingtonMary, Stilson
3rd great grand aunt of Ted L Durgan bapt. May 27, 1739; died May 21, 1828 age 90 years; married 1757 Capt.Tobias Lear,who was the son of Tobias and Elizabeth (Hall) Lear, of Portsmouth and grandson of Tobias Lear, of New Castle and his first wife Hannah Weeks.Mary Stilson is the "Mrs. Lear" upon whom Washington called when he visited Portsmouth. She had the following children:
<>a. Mary Lear, bpt. December 30, 1759; m. April 22, 1781 to Samuel Storer
<>b. Tobias Lear (Col.) 1762,
1st cousin 4 times removed of Ted Durganm. (1st) 1790 Polly Long, who died at the home of General Washington in Philadelphia in 1805;
m.
(2nd) Fanny Washington, niece to George Washington. Col. Lear was secretary to President Washington in 1780. .M.3rd Frances ("Fanny") Dandridge Henley Lear.. Third wife of Tobias Lear and niece of Martha Washington. The Lears honeymooned aboard the USS Constitution or "Old Ironsides" on their way to Algeria where Lear was consul for many years.
Tobias committed suicide in 1816 after their return to the USA and Fanny lived another 40 years until 1856.
Some writers dont think much of him: ~~ ~ Tobias Lear, secretary to George Washington and of dubious character (he had already embezzled Washington's. rent and engaged in other shady deals) takes the diplomatic approach with Jefferson's approval, though he exploits his position in the Mediterranean for personal profiteering. As the story unfolds, Eaton's military approach clashes with Lear's diplomatic approach and Lear, ultimately, wins. Eaton, upon his return to the U.S. is feted and celebrated as a military hero yet remains heavily in debt and can never recover his expenses in spite of many appeals to Jefferson and Congress. Lear, ironically, becomes an auditor for precisely the military expenditures from which he profited. ~He was so bad he shot himself rather than face the charges..
Tobias Lear
(Col.) 1762, 1st cousin 4 times removed of Ted L Durganmarried (1st) 1790 Polly Long, who died at the home of General Washington in Philadelphia in 1805; m. (2nd)
Fanny Washington, niece to George Washington. Col. Lear was secretary
to President Washington in 1780
More on Tobias Lear1762-1816
A combination of fate and influence put a Portsmouth, NH boy from Puddle Dock smack in the spotlight at the dawn of the American nation. But luck faded quickly and kept its distance from Tobias Lear. The fifth in his family to bear that name, Tobias Lear V was born into revolutionary times.
His father's cousin John Langdon was among the new nation's most powerful businessmen and noted patriots. Wealthy from privateering profits,
Langdon commanded the raid on Fort William and Mary, attended the Continental Congress and built two warships for Capt. John Paul Jones.
Tobias' father, however, was not so lucky. A failed shipping venture destroyed his income and created a debt that would plague his only son.
In his time, Tobias V would rise above the fame of the Langdons and fall below the debt and depression of his father.
Despite moderate means, young Toby managed to attend Governor Dummer Academy and Harvard University in Massachusetts. By 1784 in his early 20s, he was back in Portsmouth casting about for a career when a family friend received a letter from George Washington. America's "First Citizen" was in need of a private secretary, and this was no small job.
A farmer by trade, General Washington had just spent a decade of fightingfor the Revolution. The new secretary would have to catch up on the neglected accounting at Mt. Vernon, Washington's 10,000 acre plantation in Virginia. In addition, young Mr. Lear would become tutor to Washington's adopted children and would handle a flood of correspondence
.The aristocratic "Farmer" Washington wrote to his Yankee friend describing the job this way:"Mr. Lear...will sit at my table, will live as I live, will mix with the company who resort to the house, will be treated in every respect with civility and proper attention. He will have his washing done in the family, and may have his stockings darned by the maids...".
Luckily for history, both Lear and Washington were clear and prolific writers. Their letters and journals give us a precise picture of Mt.Vernon.
Tobias Lear arrived in Virginia in 1786 and remained when Washington was selected as first President of the United States three years later.
True to Washington's word, the young man from Portsmouth became part of the family and, intimate with the most famous people of his time. The young secretary attended the Commander in Chief's inauguration in New York City, the nation's temporary capital.
Later, traveling through New England, Washington made a courtesy call at Hunking street in Portsmouth, NH where he met the family of Tobias Lear. Mrs.
Mary Stillson Lear, mother of Tobias V, soon become a friend of Martha Washington.
Frances ("Fanny") Dandridge Henley Lear..Third wife of Tobias
Lear and niece of Martha Washington{
note this is not same person as below this is her cousin) both are George Washington's niece's.. One died so he married the other one..The Lears honeymooned aboard the USS Constitution or "Old Ironsides" on their way to Algeria where Lear was consul for many years.
Tobias committed suicide in 1816 after their return to the USA and Fanny lived another 40 years until 1856.
Fanny Washington, niece to President George Washington Frances ("Fanny") Bassett Washington Lear .Second Wife of Tobias Lear
{note this is not same person as above this is her cousin) both are George Washington's niece's.. One died so he married the other oneLike Tobias, Frances had lost her spouse two years before their marriage. A niece of Martha Washington, she was previously married to Augustine Washington who was a nephew of George! She had one daughter Mary, and died in 1796, soon after her marriage to Tobias.
The Washingtons gave them a small farm called River Woods (still open to the public today) as a wedding gift. (Note} this farm has the worlds second largest Osage Orange tree in the World which was brought from Missouri by Lewis and Clark as one of the spiecies of trees of the west.. The largest at Patrick Henry's Red Hill farm at Brookneal, Virginia..
This association with Lewis and Clark had prompted speculation, now discredited, that the Osage orange tree at Red Hill was a specimen from their expedition. Dr. Copenheaver's findings confirm, instead, that the central trunk of the young Osage orange tree at Red Hill was already a century old when Patrick Henry died here in 1799.Frances married Col. George Augustine Washington, son of Charles Washington and
Mildred Thornton, About 1785. (Col. George Augustine Washington was born About 1763 and died About 1793.)Benedict "Swingate" Calvert who had married. Elizabeth Calvert, dau. of Charles Calvert colonial gov of MD and Rebecca Gerard. Among the children of Benedict and Elizabeth,
Eleanor Calvert married firstly
John Parke Custis, stepson of George Washington, and son of Daniel Parke Custis and Martha Dandridge the wife of George.According to an article in the New England Hist. Gen. Reg., the mother of Benedict "Swingate" Calvert was Melusina de Schulenberg, Countess of Walsingham and illegitimate daughter of
George I, King of Great Britain ,died 1727 and Ermengarde Melusina de Schulenberg, duchess of Kendal.All most to the day in 1786 that he completed piecing together the plantation of more than 7,000 acres at Mount Vernon, the work of more than thirty years, Washington began arranging for its future break up.I
In October of that year his nephew Maj. George Augustine Washington, who was acting as Washington's estate manager and living at Mount Vernon, married Martha Washington's niece Frances Bassett of Eltham, who also was living at Mount Vernon.
In October 1786 Washington wrote his nephew that he intended "to give you at my death, my landed property in the neck, containing by estimation between two & three thousand acres." The tract on Clifton's Neck was that portion of the Mount Vernon plantation that lay to the east of Little Hunting Creek on the Potomac River, 1,806 acres of which he had bought from William Clifton in 1760 and 238 acres from George Brent in the same year.
Washington developed on this property what he called River Farm, one of the five farms that he organized and operated at Mount Vernon.
At Washington's urging George Augustine Washington took over a 360 -acre section of this land on Clifton's Neck at the north east corner of River farm and established a farm there with the slaves given to him by his father-in-law, Burwell Bassett.
When George Augustine died in 1793, his widow retained control of the farm, called Walnut Tree Farm, and at
Fanny Washington's marriage to Tobias Lear in 1795 control of the farm passed to Lear, where it remained after Fanny's death in March 1796.Lear moved to Walnut Tree Farm with his own young son and with the children of George Augustine and Fanny Washington,
Anna Maria and the two heirs of Clifton's Neck, George Fayette and Charles Augustine Washington.In 1797 Washington expressed a willingness to lease the whole of River Farm to Lear in 1798, but this was not done, possibly because Lear became occupied with the duties of military secretary for Washington.
Lear was there when When George Washington died