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- t Philip Syng was born in Ireland in November, 1708, and arrived at Annapolis, Md., September 29, 1714 (O. S.), in company with his father, Philip Syng, who died there, May 18, 1739, aged 68 years. He settled in Philadelphia, where he acquired excellent reputation as a silversmith, his skill being attested by several good works of art yet in existence, among the number an inkstand (preserved in Independence Hall), made in 1762 for the General Assembly of Pennsylvania, and used by the Continental Congress during its sessions in Philadelphia, and at the signing of the Declaration of Independence. He was one of the grantees of the charter of the Library Company of Philadelphia, a Member of the Junto and of the American Philosophical Society, and an original Member of the noted Fishing Club styled "the Colony in Schuylkill." He made the science of electricity "a subject of constant study and laborious experiment for many years," and, according to James Parton, "imparted to Franklin valuable suggestions and discovered, "which the latter "acknowledged and applauded," contriving, "for example, an electrical machine, similar to those in Europe, of which he had never heard." He promoted the organisation of the "Association Battery" of our city, elsewhere referred to. He was appointed Provincial Commissioner of Appeal for Philadelphia In 1764. He signed the Non-Importation Resolutions of 1766. He was a Vestryman of Christ Church from 1747 to 1749, and a Trustee of the College and Academy of Philadelphia from their foundation till 1773. He died May 8, 1789, and was buried in Christ Church Ground, where Mrs. Syng had been interred October 3, 1786. (Facts very courteously supplied me by Mr. Syng9s great-great-grandson, the late Philip S. P. Conner, Esq.) By his wife Elizabeth Warner, a descendant of an early Swedish settler on the Delaware, he was the great-grandfather of Philip Syng Physlck, who m. Caroline Eliza Jackson, a descendant of Joran Kyn hereafter mentioned.
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