The Removal Of The County-Seat To Media.

of that month. The meeting was well attended, and an address to the people of the county formulated, as well as two different petitions to be circulated for signatures, desiring the Legislature to enact a law submitting the question to a popular vote. At the time the Hon. William Williamson, of Chester County, was senator for the district, and Hon. John Larkin, Jr., was the member in the House from Delaware County, and, although both of these representatives were favorable to a law submitting the controversy to the vote of the people, yet neither favored an act in which the site of the proposed county-seat should be left as a future matter to be decided. Hence, when the bill submitted in the House in that form was called up, Mr. Larkin objected to it, for that reason, and it was defeated. In 1846, Hon. Sketchley Morton was elected to the Legislature, and at the session of 1847, when the act providing for the removal of the seat of justice, submitting the matter to the popular will whether the county-seat should be continued at Chester, or be removed to a point not more distant "than one-half of a mile from the farm attached to the house for the support and employment of the poor of Delaware County," nor more than a half-mile from the State road leading from Philadelphia to Baltimore. Mr. Morton, although adverse to the measure, voted in favor of the bill, and it was adopted. As the time for the election drew nigh, the public excitement was fanned to fever heat, and the newspapers teemed with lengthy articles urging the peculiar views of the various writers on the question at issue, which in the lapse of years has become very uninteresting reading.

The election was held on Oct. 12, 1847, and resulted in a majority of seven hundred and fifty-two votes in favor of the proposed change in the location of the county-seat. The opponents of the measure, inasmuch as the Supreme Court had decided that a law submitting to the vote of the people the power to determine whether spirituous liquors should or should not be sold in the respective townships when such a vote was had was unconstitutional, determined to test the validity of the law, which had been in like manner submitted to the people, respecting the change of the county-seat. In the mean while the act of April 9, 1848, confirming the removal of the seat of justice was adopted, a proviso in that act, however, declaring it should not go into effect until the Supreme Court had decided the question as to the constitutionality of the law under which it had been voted on by the people. At the December term of that year the case was argued, and at the following spring term the Supreme Court held the act to be constitutional. In compliance with that decision the court records were removed from Chester to Media in the summer 1851, on the completion of the public buildings at that borough.

The incidents and happenings in the county from that date are so connected with the various townships wherein they occurred that practically the general history of the county terminates for the present. The glorious story of the civil war - for no locality in the loyal States exceeds in patriotism that of Delaware County in that trying period of our nation's annals - will be related in the succeeding chapter.

Under the provisions of the Constitution of 1874 Delaware County became the thirty-second judicial district, the vacancy on the bench thereby created being filled early in that year by the appointment by Governor Hartranft of Hon. John M. Broomall, president judge. At the ensuing election in November, Hon. Thomas J. Clayton was elected to the bench, and took his seat in January, 1875.

The Civil War.

The war of sections, which had overhung the country for over forty years, burst upon the nation on Saturday, April 13, 1861, when the American flag was hauled down at Fort Sumter, under the assaults of Southern military men who, on the plains of Mexico, had proudly marched to victory under its folds. Then the pent-up anger of the North broke all restraint, and a great people rose resistless in their might. It was amazing with what rapidity the news sped from farm-house to farm-house that Fort Sumter would be evacuated by Maj. Anderson on the morrow. In Chester, Media, Darby, Rockdale, Kellyville, in all the towns, villages, and cross-road hamlets in Delaware County, the people, abandoning their usual avocations, gathered in excited groups to discuss the engrossing intelligence, knowing not in what direction to give expression to their enthusiasm, save in demonstrations of patriotism. Over the court-house at Media, at the town hall in Chester, and the public buildings throughout the county, over mills, workshops, stores, and private dwellings, before nightfall the stars and stripes floated to the winds, or where that was not done, the angry muttering of the populace soon compelled compliance with the popular will, and tri-colored badges were displayed on the breasts of almost every man, woman, and child, for the people were stirred as no living man then could recall the like in all our national history. Sunday followed, and the anxiety to learn the news from the seat of war was intense, and in the absence of intelligence the suspense became oppressive. On Monday morning, April 15, 1861, direction was given to the public excitement when President Lincoln issued his proclamation calling for seventy-five thousand troops to be enlisted for a period of three months, unless sooner discharged.

In Media, on that Monday morning, the people crowded the court-house, called thither by the ringing of the bell, when patriotic speeches were delivered, and finally it was determined to form a rifle-corps im-