Bethel Township.

children, - Anna, Robert (who died in youth), John H. (who entered the service during the late war, and after an active military career of two years and nine months was fatally wounded at the battle of Mine Run), and Charles M. The last named was born in Thornbury township, Delaware Co., Oct. 26, 1835, and received his education at the public schools of the vicinity, with the additional advantage of a brief period at a private school in Media. He then engaged in the labor incident to farm-life, and was thus employed at the time of his enlistment in Company F, Twentieth Pennsylvania Cavalry, under Col. John E. Wynekoop, for a period of seven months' service before the close of the late war. Mr. Cheyney was married in 1861 to Sallie J. Hall (born in 1838), whose great-grandparents came from their native land with William Penn, and purchased land of him in Concord township, Delaware Co., where they settled. George Hall, her grandfather, married Jane James, whose son Mifflin Hall, father of Mrs. Cheyney, was born in 1808, and married Lydia McCullough in 1835. Mr. and Mrs. Cheyney have had nine children, - John H., Arthur B., David M., Lucius L., William T., Charles R., James S., Harrie B., and Albert B. Mr. Cheyney is a Republican in his political views and has filled various township offices, having served for eighteen years as a member of the school board. In religion he is a supporter, though not a member, of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He has since his marriage been engaged in farming in Delaware County.

Two brothers of the Booth family emigrated from England, if tradition be correct, about two centuries ago, one of them, whose name was Robert, having married, and among his children a son, Robert, who settled in Bethel township. His son, Thomas, the grandfather of the subject of this biography, married Phoebe Cloud, and had children, - James, Joseph, Robert, Nathaniel, Jemima, John, and Isaac. The last-named son is the only survivor of this number. James Booth was born in 1790, on the homestead in Bethel, which he occupied, and the land of which he cultivated until his marriage. He then removed to land purchased by his father, and now owned by the subject of this sketch. He married Lydia Forwood, and had children, - Thomas, Mary, Ann, Phoebe, and one who died in infancy. Thomas Booth was born in 1817, in Bethel township, and spent his childhood upon the farm of his father. Having lost that parent when seven years of age, he became an inmate of the house of his uncle, John Booth. After receiving limited advantages of education he entered upon a career of labor, and at twenty-one became owner of the homestead, having inherited his share and purchased the remaining interest. He married, in 1844, Susanna Marshall, daughter of John Marshall, who was of English descent, and has children, - Sarah Ann (Mrs. John M. Hinkson, of Concord), Thomas, Samuel (deceased), and Lydia Emma (deceased).

Thomas married Leah Talley, of Delaware, and has children, - Laura and Thomas. About 1854, Mr. Booth became a merchant at Booth's Corner, and continued thus employed for some years, after which he returned to the farm, and again resumed the duties of a farmer. He is in politics a staunch Republican, and has held various township offices, as also the appointment for many years of postmaster at Booth's Corner. Having now abandoned active labor, he still resides in the township, and by his advice and experience aids his son, who cultivates the farm.

Birmingham Township.

At the extreme southwestern end of Delaware County is Birmingham township, which in early days was pronounced as though written Brummagen. The Brandywine Creek constitutes the entire western boundary of the township. This stream was called by the Swedes Fiskekill, and the present name, by tradition, is asserted to have been given to the creek from the fact that after the conquest of New Sweden by the Dutch in the fall of the year 1655, a Dutch vessel, ladened with brandy, termed by the Dutch "brandwein," wintered in the stream, and, being cut through by the ice in the following spring, sank. The wreck of this vessel is said to have remained until the middle of the last century on the northern side of the stream, several hundred yards above the juncture of the Brandywine with the Christiana River.¹ The name of the township, Birmingham, it is generally supposed was given to the territory by William Brinton, the first white settler known to have located in that neighborhood, in remembrance of the town of the like name in England, near which he resided previous to his emigration (in 1684) to the New World. At that time he was a man beyond the noonday of life, and accompanied by his wife, Ann, his junior by five years, a son (William) and two daughters (Elizabeth and Esther), he pushed out beyond the extreme limit of civilization, where he erected a log cabin, as was then the custom, near a spring, among a heavy growth of hardwood trees, preferring to undergo the privations which must necessarily attend his residence there than to submit to the persecutions which, for conscience' sake, he had been forced to endure in his native land. He had purchased from Joseph Allibone and William Morgan four hundred acres, and his patent was so located that a century later, when the county of Delaware was erected out of Chester,