Thomas Mifflin, Shillington, Berks County

I've gone back to work since I last updated this blog, and I just want to remind everyone that COVID-19 is still a thing. Please keep wearing your masks - and wearing them correctly. I have seen entirely too many people in recent days who are doing a spectacular job of protecting their chins.

Speaking of work, it directly led to today's blog post. Andrea and I were both feeling a little nostalgic for our annual trip to Lancaster, as I wrote last time, and by happy coincidence, we were asked to drive down there last week to get some supplies from one of our sister stores. Naturally, that involved some marker hunting on my part, and I came home with the single biggest haul of marker pictures I've ever collected on one trip. I think I got seven or eight in Lancaster itself, and also today's marker, which was only slightly out of our way in Berks County. It's been several months since I did a Berks marker, so we're overdue!

(Also, one final reminder - I'm still doing that giveaway! Just sign up for the mailing list to enter! Winners will be announced in my next post.)

The marker stands at the intersection of
East Lancaster Avenue (PA 422) and Mifflin
Boulevard, on the property of Governor
Mifflin Senior High School

There are actually quite a number of places throughout Pennsylvania which are named for the gentleman in today's post. These include (but are by no means limited to) Fort Mifflin on the Delaware River, Mifflin County, and the communities of Mifflin, Mifflin Cross Roads, Mifflinburg, Mifflintown, Mifflinville, West Mifflin, and three separate townships in Lycoming, Dauphin, and Cumberland Counties. He's also the eponym for one of the schools in the Philadelphia school district, for one of the main buildings at Fort Lee in Virginia, and for the Governor Mifflin School District in southern Berks County, which is where his marker is situated. Furthermore, if you're a fan of the American version of the show The Office, which took place in Scranton (Luzerne County), you might recognize the name from Dunder-Mifflin, the fictional company in the show; yep, they named that after him too. But who was this guy?

Well, his name was Thomas Mifflin, and he was born January 10, 1744, in the city of Philadelphia in what was then called the Province of Pennsylvania. His parents were John and Elizabeth (Bagnall) Mifflin, and his great-grandfather was an English Quaker who came to Pennsylvania to partake of William Penn's promised religious freedom. Thomas Mifflin graduated in 1760 from the College of Philadelphia, which we now call the University of Pennsylvania, and went into business with his brother George. In 1767 he married Sarah Morris, his second cousin; they had no children. 

A few years before he married, Thomas went on a trip to Europe. He returned to Philadelphia during the kerfuffle regarding the Stamp Act, and almost immediately became active in politics. He was regarded as one of the most radical members of the first Continental Congress. (I grew up in the 1980s and can't hear the word "radical" without thinking of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, so that description makes me laugh.) After being elected to the second Congress, he got involved with recruiting and training troops for the Continental Army; it's said that he was a persuasive speaker, and allegedly he was the one who convinced many soldiers to remain with the army and continue fighting for the cause. In June 1775 he went to serve as aide-de-camp to George Washington, but left the post two months later when he was instead appointed Quartermaster General of the entire army. He held that job almost continuously until 1778, during which time he participated in the battles of Trenton and Princeton. By February 1777, he held the rank of major general, due to his leadership in those two battles.

Now, that "almost continuously" bit I mentioned? As it turns out, there was a brief period where he asked to be relieved from the post. This is because reportedly, General Washington confronted him about some rumors that instead of properly supplying the troops, Mifflin was selling supplies to the highest bidder. I don't know, and in fact nobody today really knows, whether or not there was any truth to this, but he was pretty insulted by the implication and tried to step down from being Quartermaster General. He ended up keeping the job because they couldn't find a replacement, and only as a favor to some of his friends in Congress.

Portrait of Thomas Mifflin; public
domain image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Mifflin spent about a year serving on the Congressional Board of War before returning to the army in 1778, but because of the unsavory things said about his performance as Quartermaster General, he didn't take much of an active role. He even invited those accusing him of embezzlement to conduct an inquiry, which never happened. (This leads me, and probably at least a few other historians, to think he was really innocent all along. Whatever the case, for the rest of his life he insisted that he was.) Fed up with the accusations, he resigned his commission and the resignation was accepted by Congress, but they continued to ask his advice anyway.

From 1772 to 1776, Mifflin was a member of the Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly. He served his two terms in the Continental Congress from 1774 to 1775 and again from 1782 to 1784, and his final seven months were spent as the presiding officer. As president, he accepted General Washington's resignation on December 23, 1783, which is regarded as having been the most important thing he did in that position. He also oversaw the ratification of the Treaty of Paris in 1784, and appointed Thomas Jefferson as minister to France later that same year. In 1787, he was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, where he became one of the signers of the Constitution.

With the United States accepted as an actual nation, Mifflin turned his attention to his home state. He served in the house of the Pennsylvania General Assembly beginning in 1785, and was a member of the Supreme Executive Council of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. If you don't recognize the name of that council, that's because it hasn't existed in over 200 years; but from 1777 to 1790, it was the executive branch of the commonwealth's government. It was headed by a president and a vice-president, and its most famous member was the inimitable Benjamin Franklin, who served as its sixth president. Old Ben stepped down as president in 1788, and Thomas Mifflin was elected to succeed him as the seventh and, ultimately, last President of Pennsylvania. He was reelected a year later, and then in 1790, he oversaw the committee which wrote the State Constitution, the document which eliminated the Executive Council and replaced it with the system of government we still have today.

On December 21, 1790, Mifflin became the first Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and held the office until December 17, 1799. He was succeeded by Thomas McKean, for whom McKean County is named (and we'll talk about him in another post). Mifflin then returned to the state legislature, but was only there for a few weeks before dying on January 20, 1800. He was a member of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Lancaster, and is interred there. The church has a historical marker of its own, so we'll be visiting that subject in a future post.

The modern community of Shillington, where Mifflin's marker is located, is mostly made up of land which once belonged to Thomas Mifflin. His plantation was known as Angelica Farm. In 1824 the farm was turned into the Berks County Farm and Home, which provided for area residents in need until it was replaced by Berks Heim, a nursing and rehabilitation facility in Bern Township, in 1952. (The Thomas Mifflin marker was erected in 1947, so the wording was accurate at the time.) The land today is chiefly occupied by the buildings of the Governor Mifflin School District, although one stone wall of the almshouse remains intact and is situated not far from the home of Shillington's other most famous resident, author John Updike*.

So that's the story of Pennsylvania's last president, and first governor. This is his particular marker, but you'll find his name on a variety of markers and monuments throughout the state. For example, his position as major general in the Continental Army is commemorated on the Pennsylvania Columns in Montgomery County; in Allegheny County, the historic site known as the Original Settler's Cabin sits on land which was deeded by him to Jacob Beam. His name is going to appear in this blog many times, and indeed already has - he was the one who signed Philip Ginter's application for land in Carbon County. His impact on the course of the commonwealth's history has been a lot greater than I imagined before I started researching this post, and it's no wonder that we've named so many things in Pennsylvania in his honor.

* Brief note about John Updike - he doesn't currently have a historical marker, but he is getting one! The marker application has been approved and they're just waiting for the COVID crisis to lift before they schedule a dedication ceremony. So I'll be returning to Shillington sometime down the road.

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Sources and Further Reading:

Caldwell, John; Oswaldo Rodriguez Roque; and Dale T. Johnson. American Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, vol. 1: A Catalogue of Works by Artists Born by 1815. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994.

Beeman, Richard. Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution. Random House, 2010.

Thomas Mifflin at FounderOfTheDay.com

Biography of Thomas Mifflin at American History: From Revolution to Reconstruction and Beyond

Official website of the borough of Shillington

Thomas Mifflin at FindAGrave.com

Thomas Mifflin at the Historical Marker Database

If you've enjoyed this, please leave a comment!

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Except where indicated, all writing and photography on this blog is the intellectual property of Laura Klotz. This blog is written with permission of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. I am not employed by the PHMC. All rights reserved.