Henry Wynkoop

Henry Wynkoop (March 2, 1737 – March 25, 1816) was an American politician, who was member of the Continental Congress (from 1779) and later a United States representative for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania during the First United States Congress, 1789 to 1791.

Henry Wynkoop
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania's At-large district
In office
March 4, 1789 – March 3, 1791
Personal details
Born(1737-03-02)March 2, 1737
Northampton Township, Province of Pennsylvania, British America
DiedMarch 25, 1816(1816-03-25) (aged 79)
Bucks County, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Resting placeLow Dutch Reformed Church, Richboro, Pennsylvania
Political partyPro-Administration
Occupationjudge

Formative years and family

Wynkoop was born in Northampton Township in the Province of Pennsylvania on March 2, 1737. His father engaged in the practice of chattel slavery to operate the family's 153-acre farm in Newtown. Raised on the farm, Henry Wynkoop was subsequently admitted to Princeton University, but opted not to complete his studies, choosing instead to enter into local politics. In 1759, when his father died, he inherited both the farm and the people that his father had enslaved.[1]

Wynkoop married three times and had eight children. In 1761, he wed Susannah Wanshaer, who died in 1776. In 1777, he wed Maria Cummings, who died in 1781. He then married his third wife, Sarah Newkirk, who died in 1813.[2]

Career

As a farm owner in Pennsylvania, Wynkoop benefitted financially from the practice of chattel slavery, as his father did before him.[3]

Prior to his term as a representative, Wynkoop served as a justice of the Court of Common Pleas and the orphan's court in Kingston, Pennsylvania, from 1780 to 1789. After his term in Congress, he was appointed as an associate judge in Bucks County, a post he held until his death.

Later years, death and interment

During his later years, Wynkoop created a will in which he decreed that, upon his death, the people he had been enslaving should be freed by manumission, a process which finally occurred on March 25, 1816 when he died in Bucks County. Some of the individuals who were freed stayed and continued to work for the family.[4][5]

Following his death, Wynkoop was interred in the graveyard of the Low Dutch Reformed Church in Richboro, Pennsylvania.

References
  1. "Henry Wynkoop: Princeton, Class of 1760". Rootsweb.com Wynkoop Family Research Library. Retrieved July 7, 2015.
  2. Wynkoop, Richard. Wynkoop Genealogy in the United States of America New York, 1904. Knickerbocker Press
  3. Weil, Julie Zauzmer; Blanco, Adrian; Dominguez, Leo. "More than 1,800 congressmen once enslaved Black people. This is who they were, and how they shaped the nation". Washington Post. Retrieved February 20, 2023.
  4. LaVO, Carl (February 15, 2021). "LaVO: The story of Bucks County Judge Henry Wynkoop, the 'good tall judge' and key figure in American Revolution". Phillyburbs.com. Wynkoop freed his nine slaves at his death on March 25, 1816. That was 36 years after Pennsylvania abolished slavery by freezing the slave population and giving slave holders a grace period to free captives — a process called manumission. Wynkoop's thoughts on the matter are unknown.
  5. "Wynkoop House, Old Haarlem". New Britain Museum of American Art.

Further reading
  • Beatty, Joseph M., Jr. "The Letters of Judge Henry Wynkoop, Representative From Pennsylvania to the First Congress of the United States." Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 38 (January 1914): 39–64, 183–205.
  • Geyer, Virginia B., FURTHER NOTES ON HENRY WYNKOOP

Mrs. Geyer was the author of the 1976 history for the Bucks County Historical Journal (Fall 1976 Edition) celebrating Northampton Township's 250th anniversary. The article, which deals with Henry Wynkoop the man, supplements a paper on Wynkoop the politician, read at the Historical Society meeting in May by Lyle L. Rosenberger, Associate Professor of History at the Bucks County Community College. It is on file at the BCHS Library. Link: https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wynkoop/genealogy/webdocs/further.htm


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