Henry Cazier

     Henry Cazier was born on 14 June 1799 at Delaware.¹ He was the son of Jacob John Cazier and Charity Benson. Henry Cazier married, at age 29, Sarah Johnston on Tuesday, 23 December 1828. Henry Cazier died on 5 November 1859 at age 60 years, 4 months and 22 days.
     PENCADER FOLKS

HENRY CAZIER

He would indeed be a disloyal son of old Pencader Hundred, who in a series of articles such as these, from time to time, did not return to the community in which he first saw the light.

Compared with some of the other Hundreds of the County, Pencader has had a much less important history. Whole decades pass in which its sons and daughters receive but little notice from the historian and yet the men and women who for more than two hundred and thirty years have lived, moved and had their being there, have been sturdy folk, agriculturists mainly, of a type that can ill be spared and who in their several generations contributed in an important manner to the religious, social and political welfare of their state and of the nation.

Of such of these was Henry Cazier, through birth and inheritance a son of that Hundred, that by its name is ever a reminder of the Welsh settlers that, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, came there from abroad.

Henry Cazier was born June 14, 1799, at White Hall, on what was known later as the Homestead Farm, located on the road that paralleling the north bank of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, leads from what colored folks used to call the Upper Buck to Chesapeake City. He was the son of Jacob Cazier and Charity McCoy, a widow, born Benson. His grandfather also was named Jacob Cazier and his only son, Jacob B. Cazier, whose daughter Edna Cazier-Townsend is our fellow townswoman.

The ancestors of the Caziers were French Huguenots whose patents for land on the Bohmia Manor show them to have been in possession of large tracts in Maryland as well as in New Castle County as early as 1760.

The maiden name of the grandmother of Henry Cazier was Rebecca VanBibber, a daughter of Mathias VanBibber, who in 1714 bought a part of Augustine Manor from the doughty Augustine Herman.

On the 23rd of December, 1828, Henry Cazier was married to Sarah Johnston of New York City. At that time he still was living at White Hall and it was there that his four children were born.

Sarah Johnston-Cazier must have been a woman of rare quality and her influence upon her husband an uplifting one. According to the records of Pencader Presbyterian Church, she was received into church membership in 1832 and her husband, the year following. This was during the pastorate of Rev. Samuel Bell, whose tombstone for more than three-quarters of a century has been a landmark in the adjoining cemetery.

According to the Encyclopedia of Delaware, the conversion of Henry Cazier produced a marked change in his life and character. He became ardent in his attachment to every form of aggressive Christianity which he was ready at all times to sustaiin by liberal contributions.A

In 1854 the name of Henry Cazier appears as one of the Board of Trustees of the Church. There are no known records of the meetings of the Board from 1833 to 1854, but it is believed that his membership therein began from a much earlier period than the date last mentioned. On June 18 of the same year he was elected a Ruling Elder and ordained on the following Sabbath.

Following the destruction by fire of the church at Glasgow, Henry Cazier took an active part in the erection in 1852 of the present church building. Not only did he subscribe liberally to the building fund, but also supplemented his original subscription by another substantial one when the collections fell short of the sum required to complete the construction.

He was an ardent advocate of temperance and espoused the cause of prohibition which he supported with the same earnestness that he gave to other measures calculated for the betterment of mankind, not only by public and private speeches but financially as well.

In addition to his farms in Pencader Hundred he owned two fine farms at Clayton s Corner containing together approximately six hundred acres and another large farm on the north side of the Bohemia Ricer, east of the Bohemia bridge.

The construction of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal afforded an opportunity for Henry Cazier to add to his already, for that day, extensive fortune.

Although work on the canal was begun April 15, 1824, it was not completed until October 17, 1829. Sliding banks at the deep cut at Buck Bridge where the excavation was begun presented difficulties similar to those experienced by the United States engineers at Culebra Cut in the Panama Canal, years later. Of this the Encyclopedia of Delaware says,---tThis deep cut had to be excavated to the depth of seventy-six and a half feet, and of course the needed width for such depth, and when the vast masses of earth were piled on the surface in contiguity thereto, the sliding back of large portions, occasioned great expense as well as delay.A My father has told me that quicksands were encountered which seemed to well up, in the bed of the cut, in inexhaustible quantities. One contractor after another undertook the task and failed because the amount of cubic yardage that he was called upon to remove so greatly exceeded the estimate; until at last others feared to bid on the work, that is, all but Henry Cazier, who undertook the contract at a price reflecting the hazard of the undertaking. As it happened the sliding had about reached the limit and Henry Cazier finished the job easily and at a handsome profit, although I was told that he was obliged to bring suit in order to enforce payment of the contract price. Some folks might call this good luck, but I would call it, exercise of good judgement.

Contiguous and to the north of the Homestead Farm is the farm that for many years has been known as Mount Vernon; the two farms including about one thousand acres. On the last mentioned farm were two sets of buildings; the tenant house and other buildings then as now located in about the center of the farm. Another set of buildings was located nearer the road leading from The Buck to Glasgow, the small brick dwelling thereon, built in 1802. To this building located about one-third of a mile back from the road, in 1844, Henry Cazier added considerably, planted the long avenue with a double row of trees and English fashion, built a small brick cottage by the roadside which he rented upon the condition that when he drove down the lane the tenant should come out and open the gate. To Mount Vernon Place he then removed and established himself for the balance of his life. However, there is a story extant that when Henry Cazier drove down the lane for the first time after the lease had been executed, out stepped the tenant, pushed back the gate and propped it open with a stick, saying, tNow my rent s paid for the year,A and I never did hear the final outcome of the matter.

An old line Whig; friend of John M. Clayton, with whom he frequently debated the temperature question, as to which their opinions differed, Henry Cazier never let this difference interfere with their friendship; an admirer and a strong supporter of Henry Clay, he retired from active politics when the star of Henry Clay became dimmed and he never would consent to be candidate for public office.

Henry Cazier died November 5, 1859, at the age of sixty years and is buried in the family burial lot just back of the Pencader Church of which he was so faithful a supporter. Sarah Johnston-Cazier survived her husband nearly eighteen years, dying August 1, 1877, at the ripe age of eighty-one years, continuing her support of Pencader Church by a legacy in her will.

The portrait of Henry Cazier, owned by his granddaughter, depicts a man of about sixty years, with a somewhat narrow face, firm thin lips, Grecian nose, a quantity of iron grey hair and wearing a black stock. Sarah Johnston-Cazier, at about the same period, appears in white lace cap with ribbons, lace collar and brooch, she too has a strong somewhat thin face. Both husband and wife are said to have been thin and not very tall. The portrait of their daughter, Catharine Eugenia Cazier-Dickey, presents a sweet faced girl of eighteen, wearing a black velvet dress with a lace collar.

In the widening of the canal about ten or twelve years ago, the Federal Government, needing room for the enormous quantities of spoil taken from the deep cut, bought the Homestead Farm, incident to which White Hall and the adjacent buildings were razed or removed and now naught remains but the clump of trees in which the Mansion stood, the fertile fields nearby covered deep with dredgings from the cut.

Mount Vernon Place, remodeled again in 1878, where my brothers and I spent many pleasant evenings more than thirty years ago, presents very much the same appearance that it did then. The two story and mansard roof double front mansion with broad front porch is surmounted by a low iron fence. The fountain is gone from the front lawn, enclosed by a high picketed iron fence, but the trees and boxwood remain. The main body of the house is divided by a hall running back from the front doors to the rear and on the first floor to the north, a large parlor, on the south, two rooms, library and dining room with service rooms in the rear. The ample bedrooms above are reached by two handsome walnut stairways, beginnings at the front and the rear doorways respectively, and meeting at the top.

One cannot turn back the hands of the clock of time, but it is at least worthwhile, now and again, to recall to mind the men and women of force and character who in days gone by have done their part in old Pencader.

Little Known History of Newark, Delaware and it Environs by Francis A. Cooch With a Introduction by George H. Ryden. The press of Kells, Newark, Delaware, 1936. Pages 101 x 105.

From Gary R. Hawpe, ed., 'Pencader Folks, Henry Cazier,' Van Bibber Pioneers E-Newsletter, Vol. 4 No. 5 (March 2001), pp. 3 - 6.