Anthony Toomer ²

  Noted events in his life were:

1. Book: Autobiography of great-grandson Anthony Toomer Porter, 1898. ³
IN compliance with the frequent suggestion of my friend, the late Rev. Charles Frederick Hoffman, D.D., LL.D., D.C.L., of New York, I began, Oct. 5, 1896, to write some reminiscences of my life. All of the older members of my family having died while I was very young, my knowledge of my progenitors I derived from my mother, and from an aged grand-aunt on my mother's side. The following is my family tree, as far as known :

My ancestors on my mother's side came from Wales and from England. Like my paternal grandfather, my mother's grandfather had come South, from New England; his forefathers having settled in Massachusetts sometime in the seventeenth century.

My great-grandfather, Anthony Toomer, migrated with two brothers when quite young. One settled in North Carolina, and became a distinguished jurist. From him are descended some of the chief families of that State. Another branch went to Georgia, or Alabama. Of that branch I have no knowledge.

In 1767, my great-grandfather married Ann Warham, who was a lineal descendant of William Warham, the brother of Archbishop Warham, of Canterbury. While serving as an officer in the Continental army of the Revolution, he was captured after the surrender of Charleston on the 12th of May, 1780, and with other prominent citizens was sent to St. Augustine. There, for some cause, he with others was imprisoned in one of the vessels, and after much suffering was sent to Philadelphia, and not exchanged or released until the war was over. A daughter was born to him on the day of his capture, but she was four years old before he ever saw her.

From him are descended a number of families, residing principally in Charleston. My maternal grandfather married Charlotte Cheesborough, whose ancestor was a clergyman of the Church of England. They had several children, but my mother and Mrs. Mary Ford alone married and left children. I was born on the 31st of January, 1828, in Georgetown, South Carolina, and was baptized by Rev. P. T. Keith, November 16, 1828.

My mother had been educated in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and retained to her death a great attachment for the North and her Northern friends. Left a widow at the age of twenty-five, with five children, the oldest eight years, and the youngest nine months, with a handsome estate left to her by my father, she determined, four years after my father's death, to take her children to New Haven, Connecticut, where she believed she could educate them to greater advantage.

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Anthony married Ann Warham on 10 Aug 1767 in Charleston, Charleston, SC.¹ (Ann Warham was born on 29 Dec 1745 in Charleston, Charleston, SC and died on 13 Jan 1827 in Charleston, Charleston, SC.)