Ancestors

Samuel Lane

Samuel Lane was born on 17 April 1699, the eldest son of Edward Lane and Ann Richardson. He farmed in New Providence Township, on the west side of the Perkiomen Creek, in what was then Philadelphia County and is now Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. The land came to him from his father. A Pennypacker family article in John W. Jordan's Colonial Families of Philadelphia, printed in 1911, gives his birth date and says he "inherited a large part of his father's land in Providence township."

His father was Edward Lane, by an 1895 history of St. James's Church at Perkiomen written by a Mr. Barrow for the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. Barrow worked from Edward Lane's will and from a manuscript pedigree kept by Judge Samuel W. Pennypacker, who later became governor of Pennsylvania and descended from Samuel Lane. "Samuel Lane was a son of Edward Lane," Barrow wrote, and Edward's will left Samuel the land west of the Perkiomen. Edward had bought 2,500 acres on the creek in 1698 and married Ann Richardson, a daughter of the provincial councillor Samuel Richardson, in 1694. He died about March 1710.

Samuel was a churchman. On 2 October 1737 he was chosen a warden of St. James's, Perkiomen, and in 1738 he sat on its vestry. "In 1738, Jonathan Woodley and Peter Rambo appear as wardens, and vestrymen, Samuel Lane ...," Barrow recorded. A warden was one of the two lay officers who kept a parish's property and accounts, and the vestry was its governing board.

He seems to have married twice. The Rambo family genealogy of 2007 thinks it "probable that Samuel Lane was married twice" and that his son Edward and his daughter Anne were children of the first marriage. His second wife, and his widow, was Rebecca.

His daughter Anne married John Rambo, the son of Peter Rambo, his fellow officer at the church. The Lane and Rambo farms adjoined. Anne died in 1754 and John in 1758, leaving six children to be bound out until they came of age.

Samuel made his will on 9 April 1771. "ITEM I give to my grand Children, which are the Children of John Rambo deceased Viz Ann Todd, Alee Roberts ...," it reads. The Rambo genealogy says Alice's share was £20. "To my granddaughter Rebecca Church £200. To my five daughters, All the residue: Christiana Richardson, Sarah Lane, Elizabeth Lane, Rebecca Lane, Mary Lane." His executors were "Wife Rebecca, my cousin Robert Shannon, and my neighbor Henry Newberry." The will was proved on 18 February 1772. He died on 17 December 1771, by the 1911 article, a date that falls between the will and its proving.

Rebecca lived on at New Providence. A deed of 1775 and another of 1778 call her "widow and Relict of Samuel Lane late of New Providence." The 1775 deed bounds the land that had been his "by Land of Peter Rambo."

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Cite: Heirology, "Samuel Lane (1699-1771)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/samuel-lane-1699-1771-f84d31.