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By Margaret Leidy Harner from her book One Day at a Time: A Social History of Boyertown, PA.
April 21, 2001: Notification of an inheritance of more the $6,500,000 from Marguerite Leaver Macpeak has astonished the congregation of St. John’s Lutheran Church, because no one had ever heard of the Connecticut woman.
It was only after tireless research by Linda DeTurk Schlegel that it was discovered that Mrs. Macpeak had deep roots on Boyertown, and the church is dedicating the Warren and Lizzie Leaver Memorial Trust Fund in two special services today to honor her parents. She was born and grew up in Boyertown and was baptized and confirmed at St. John’s.
Ironically, the official beginning of that congregation was the recorded baptism of her great grandfather, Samuel Leaver on June 30, 1811, a statistic also uncovered by Mrs. Schlegel. One of her great-great grandfathers was Aaron Mory, a founder of the National Bank of Boyertown, and another, Jeremiah Sweinhart, started the Boyertown Carriage Works that evolved into the Boyertown Auto Body Works. A great grandfather, Charles Mory was one of the organizers of the Boyertown Burial Casket Company.
Marguerite was a graduate of Boyertown High School and the University of Pennsylvania, and she and her husband Thomas were married in St. Columbkill’s Roman Catholic Church at 43 South Chestnut Street in Boyertown. They originally lived in New Jersey, where he was a dentist and she was a school teacher. When Mrs. Macpeak died at the age of 98, she was living in Easton, Connecticut.
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