Eunice Norris Shearer

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see and endearingly quaint letter written by Jesse W. Bean for memories of 'get-up-and-git' school girls of Norristown.

the Gus Shearer referred to in Jesse W. Bean's letter(s): Whistful thinking at Ring's branch

' I well recollect Mrs. Eunice Shearer. she was about two or (Jesse seems to be responding to something his brother Edwin had brought up in correspondence) three years older than me and we were school mates. Col Gus was a courting her when she went to school at the Old Norriton school house on the Ridge pike above Jeffersonville . There were a splendid lot of young woman there in them days : Eunice schrack, Mary and Margarett Stinson, Jane Getty, Maggy Hamill, Maggy Davis, Mira Heebner, Elizabeth Getty, the Crawford Girls and the Matheys (incl. Jesse's future wife Elizabeth and her younger sister Hannah Mathey) and the Rittenhouse Girls; two families of Shannon, John and Samuel's, and some five or six of old John Miller's at Jeffersonville. Edwin, you may have more in quantity there now but not of the get-up-and-git quality that girls had in them days. '

The author, Jesse W. Bean, died in 1905...not realizing that his nephew, Theo. Lane Bean would buy Eunice Shearer (Schrack's) childhood home... Norris Hall. Jesse couldn't. He had died before that happened.

In yet another letter the story of the courtship of Eunice's parents is revealed.

The first Schrack in America arrived from Germany in 1717, and settled on 250 acres of land near Trappe, Upper Providence township, Montgomery county. He died February 22, 1742, aged sixty-three years.

John Schrack (grandfather) was born in 1780. He married Mary Elizabeth Norris. There's an interesting story there, as well. Their children were :

David, a farmer in Norriton township, who married Elmina, daughter of Christian Weber, and had two daughters, Kate and Elmina, the latter marrying William Porter, and having two children, David and Elmina;Norris (2), a farmer in Norriton, and father of John Schrack ;John (3), who studied medicine with Dr. Benjamin Johnson, of Norristown, graduated at Jefferson College, and practiced in Norriton, Providence and Worcester townships;

Eunice (4), married Colonel Augustus W. Shearer, and had the following children : Mary, married E. B. Moore, who had one son, Augustus ; Kate, married William Owen ; John Schrack, married Martha Ambler; Naomi, married George Longaker; Eliza, married Dr. Daniel Brower ; Lydia, married J. Roberts Rambo.

Mary Elizabeth Norris Schrack (grandmother) was a member of the Quaker family of Norris for whom Norristown and Norriton townships were named.

Charles Norris Schrack (father) married in 1841, Harriet, youngest daughter of Rev. Sylvanus Haight, pastor of Providence Presbyterian church, and Charles N. and Harriet Schrack had three children : David, a prominent physician during his life time; John, subject of this sketch, and Charles Norris.

https://archive.org/stream/biographicalanna01robe/biographicalanna0...