John Beale Bordley


John Beale Bordley, was a Maryland planter and judge.

Life

He was the son of Thomas Bordley, from Yorkshire, England 1694, attorney general for Maryland, and his second wife Ariana Vanderheyden. A half-sister, through his mother's subsequent marriage to Edmund Jenings, was Ariana Jenings Randolph, the wife of prominent Virginia loyalist John Randolph, making Bordley the uncle of the first Attorney General of the United States, Edmund Randolph.
He was educated at the library of his step brother, Stephan Hadley,
At the age to ten, he went to live with his uncle in Chestertown. He received his early education under the direction of the Chestertown Free School teacher, Charles Peale.

Colonial Posts

He married Margaret Chew,, in 1750, and went to live at Joppa, Maryland, then in the "wilderness" of Baltimore County. For the next 12 or 13 years he worked his plantation, and held the county clerkship.
In 1768, he was one of the commissioners to help determine the boundary between Maryland and Delaware.
On September 25, 1770, he was present at the Upper House of Assembly of Maryland.
Later he moved to Baltimore City, where he was appointed a judge of the Provincial Court, and judge of the British Admiralty Court.
He served as a member of Governor Horatio Sharpe's and Governor Sir Robert Eden, 1st Baronet, of Maryland's Councils.

Family

In 1770, his wife inherited from the Chew family half of Wye Island, in Queen Anne's County, on the Chesapeake Bay,. The Bordleys maintained their winter residence in Annapolis, they moved to his beautiful estate on Wye Island. They had four children: Thomas Bordley, Matthias Bordley, Henrietta Maria Bordley, John Beale Bordley, Jr.
After Margaret died, in 1777, he married Mrs. John Mifflin , a widow of Philadelphia. Then the Bordley family wintered in Philadelphia, and a large farm in Chester County, Pennsylvania, "Como Farm". He soon became a member of the American Philosophical Society. They had the daughter Elizabeth Bordley.
He is buried in St. Peter's Churchyard in Philadelphia. Como farm is now a golf course.

Agriculture

In 1785, he encouraged the formation of the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture. The archives of the society are held at the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center, University of Pennsylvania.
He developed an eight field system, which included three fields of clover in the rotation plan. He had hit upon the contribution of legumes to the soil. He also experimented with hemp, cotton, fruits, many kinds of vegetables, and animal husbandry. He established a profitable wheat trade with England and Spain, turning away from tobacco cultivation. Washington corresponded with him about wheat.

Art

He was a childhood friend of Charles Willson Peale, whose father was his tutor. He raised the funds to send Charles Willson Peale to London, where the young artist trained under Benjamin West in 1767, for two years. Bordley also helped Peale obtain his first major commission in America—two life-size portraits. His grandson John Beale Bordley was also an artist, who studied with Peale.

Works