Haines Family Business Records

In the early to mid 1800s, Jeremiah B. Haines and John Kirk (as well as several other men) owned and operated a series of shad fisheries in Lancaster County, including Kirk’s Battery, Washington Battery, Brown’s Fishery and Halfway Battery. This fishing operation was actually only one of many links between the two men’s names; this very extended and influential family included several marriages between the men and women of the Kirk and Haines families.

Born on April 3, 1797, Jeremiah B. Haines was the son of Timothy Haines and Sarah Brown. As well as being a shareholder of the shad fishing company, he owned a mercantile business in Darlington, Maryland called “Brown and Haines”. He established a post office in Little Britain, Pennsylvania in 1825 and was appointed as postmaster in 1826 and 1841. Jeremiah B. Haines helped to build the Conowingo Bridge, and also owned a farm called the “Frazer” or “Frazier Place” which Eugene M. Haines later inherited. After erecting a frame store and a dwelling house (later called the Railroad Hotel) in a town then known as Barr’s Quarries, either Jeremiah B. Haines or his brother, Lewis, actually gave the town it’s present name: Quarryville.

Members of the Society of Friends, the Kirk family was an “honest, industrious and intelligent” family (according to Ellis and Evans’ Biographical Annals of Lancaster County). The Kirk family was very influential in the 18th and 19th centuries – the town of Kirk’s Mills was actually founded by John Kirk’s father, Jacob, which John’s half brother Lewis J. was a member of the Board of Commissioners of Lancaster County. John Kirk was apparently already familiar with Jeremiah B. Haines before they opened their shad fishing business together, as John’s half sister Mary Kirk was the wife of Jeremiah’s son, William P. Haines.

Eugene M. Haines was a direct descendant of Jeremiah B. Haines. In the 1870s, he was employed as a clerk in the town of Pleasant Grove, PA. By the 1880s, he owned a general store called E. M. Haines and Co., also in Pleasant Grove.