Image: Receipt for a Library Company share, 1733.

We continue our monthly “Shareholder Spotlight” series by taking a closer look at Share #252 and its second owner, Sarah Jenkins Harmar (1761-1847).

Shareholders have always been the backbone of the Library Company of Philadelphia. Starting with the first group of fifty tradesmen who formed the library in 1731, shareholders have provided crucial financial support each year for our mission to “pour forth benefits for the common good.”

We keep careful track of who has owned each historic share, and our list of 9,800+ shareholders includes signers of the Declaration and Constitution, merchants, doctors, soldiers, scientists, artists, philanthropists, politicians, and much more.

Share #252

This share was first issued to William Jenkins on April 6, 1769. Like a number of previously profiled shares, that puts him among the shareholders of the Union Library Company, which merged into the Library Company on this date.

Jenkins continued as a Library Company shareholder for the next twelve years. He sold the share to Sarah Jenkins on November 12, 1781. Given the matching surname, one can assume a family connection, but the Library Company’s share records provide no indication of whether they were related.[i]

Sarah owned the share for the next sixty-six years, and her estate owned it for two more years after her death. Despite her impressively long ownership of the share, Sarah’s name appears only a few times in the Library Company records that survive.

She married three years after she purchased share #252, becoming the wife of noted military officer Josiah Harmar (1753-1813). By that time, Sarah’s sister Mary had already married another notable military officer: Samuel Nicholas (1744-1790), who is remembered as the first Commandant of the Marine Corps and was himself a Library Company shareholder.[ii]

Sarah’s new husband Josiah Harmar had certainly made a name for himself by the time of their marriage, with George Washington (1732-1799) later describing him as among the best officers in the Army. In fact, when Josiah and Sarah married in 1784, he had recently returned from a high-profile trip to Paris to deliver Congress’s ratified peace treaty between the new United States and Great Britain. (He delivered the treaty to Library Company shareholder Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), who was serving as the U.S. Minister to France.)[iii]

Image: Sarah Jenkins Harmar is included in the “List of Members” published in the Library Company’s 1807 published catalog. Library Company of Philadelphia, A Catalogue of Books, Belonging to the Library Company of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1807).

After their marriage, Sarah spent at least some time living in the western frontier with Josiah. One biographer notes that within a couple weeks of their marriage, they left for Fort Pitt. Sarah and their young son Charles are also known to have joined Josiah at Fort Harmar near today’s Marietta, Ohio in a “commodious fine house . . . an elegant building for this wooden part of the world.”[iv]

Josiah acted as commander of the U.S. Army and eventually rose to the rank of brevet brigadier general, but his 1790 expedition against the Miami and Shawnee Indians was a disaster for the Army and came to be known as “Harmar’s Defeat.” He resigned from the Army on January 1, 1792, and he, Sarah, and their children returned to Philadelphia.[v]

Image: John C. Browne, photographer, Harmer House. East bank of Schuylkill below Grays Ferry. Torn down for the B & O R.R. (1885). Lantern slide.

The family lived near Gray’s Ferry in Philadelphia, in a “handsome brick house, painted yellow.” Josiah then served as adjutant general of Pennsylvania’s militia from 1793 to 1799. He also apparently owned the Conestoga Wagon Tavern, the Philadelphia inn that had been previously owned by Sarah’s brother-in-law Samuel Nicholas.[vi]

Sarah owned her Library Company share for the rest of her life. After she passed away, Sarah’s son and surviving executor William Harmar (1803-1878) eventually sold the share to Sarah’s daughter Eliza Harmar Thomas (1787-1869) on May 4, 1849.

The share was owned by other Harmar relatives until 1930, so Sarah and her descendants owned the share for at least 150 years. It has been owned by nine people total in its history.

Not yet a shareholder?

Share #252 is currently available. We work hard to match potential shareholders with historic shares that match their interests, and we would love to match you with Sarah Jenkins Harmar’s share or another option.

You can become a Library Company shareholder with an initial gift of $500. To learn more, visit our website or reach out to our Development Office at [email protected].

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[i] Sarah’s father was Charles Jenkins, an innkeeper. See “Maj. Samuel Nicholas,” The State Society of the Cincinnati of Pennsylvania https://pasocietyofthecincinnati.org/gallery_post/maj-samuel-nicholas/ (accessed August 5, 2025).

[ii] “Maj. Samuel Nicholas,” The State Society of the Cincinnati of Pennsylvania https://pasocietyofthecincinnati.org/gallery_post/maj-samuel-nicholas/ (accessed August 5, 2025).

[iii] Alan S. Brown, “The Role of the Army in Western Settlement Josiah Harmar’s Command 1785-1790,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography vol. 93, no. 2 (April 1969), 161-178. “Lt. Col. Josiah Harmar,” The State Society of the Cincinnati of Pennsylvania https://pasocietyofthecincinnati.org/gallery_post/lt-col-josiah-harmar/ (accessed August 7, 2025).

[iv] The description of the house is quoted in Brown, 172.

[v] For an overview of Harmar’s military service, see Shannon Wait, “Finding Aid for Josiah Harmar Papers, 1681-1937,” University of Michigan William L. Clements Library https://findingaids.lib.umich.edu/catalog/umich-wcl-M-306har (accessed August 7, 2025).

[vi] The description of Harmar’s house in Philadelphia is quoted in Brown, 161. Harmar’s ownership of the tavern is mentioned in “Lt. Col. Josiah Harmar,” The State Society of the Cincinnati of Pennsylvania https://pasocietyofthecincinnati.org/gallery_post/lt-col-josiah-harmar/ (accessed August 7, 2025).