Birmingham Township.

crossing the Brandywine at Harvey's Ford, below Smith's bridge. For nearly a century the Presbyterians of Birmingham were without a church building, but on Monday, June 3, 1878, a church of that denomination was dedicated at Dilworthtown. The building is of serpentine stone, and is lighted with stained glass memorial windows. The church was the direct outgrowth of the labor of Miss Cassy Brinton, a daughter of Hill Brinton, of Thornbury, who, about 1860, started a Sunday-school at Dilworthtown. For years that hamlet had been termed "the Devil's Half-Acre," and many of the old people declared that it was known the country round as furnishing more drunken men, more fights and disturbances, than any locality of the like size in twenty miles. That unpleasant reputation has long since passed away from Dilworthtown, and now better manners, if not better whiskey, will be found in the village.

Baptist. - The Baptist Church in Birmingbam, the third of that denomination in Pennsylvania, was instituted May 14, 1715, the membership comprising fifteen persons, but nearly a quarter of a century previous to that date religious services by Baptists are said to have been held on the same ground where the church was afterwards erected. At first the meetings for worship were held at private houses, but in a few years the congregation determined to build a church, which was done in 1718, a log structure being erected on a lot of land which had belonged to Edward Butcher, doubtless given by him for that purpose. The first permanent pastor was William Butcher, a native of Birmingham, in 1719. He was twenty years of age when intrusted with the charge of the church. In 1721 be received a call to New Jersey, and died in that province in his twenty-sixth year. The struggling congregation continued to worship in the primitive building until 1770, when it was demolished, and a stone structure erected on its site. For forty years it had been without a regular pastor, until 1761, when Rev. Abel Griffith was installed. Here he remained until 1767, when he resigned, but in 1775 he returned to the charge of the church, continuing there until 1790. In 1791, Rev. Joshua Vaughan was installed. He was by birth a Chester countian, by trade a blacksmith, and during the Revolution, when David Mackey was sheriff, he was the jailer at the prison in Chester. While in that employment he was baptized by the Rev. Philip Hughes, a Baptist clergyman, who frequently preached at the county-seat. It is related that, when the minister and he were walking to the stream to be baptized, some one in jest asked who they were. "We are Philip and his jailer," retorted Vaughan. He continued in the pastorate until the summer of 1808, when he died. His remains lie in the burial-ground alongside the church.

The fourth pastor was Rev. Charles Moore. He was an Episcopalian, residing in Concord, and as the church of that denomination in that township was without a rector be frequently conducted the services there as a lay preacher. In 1802 he became a Baptist, being immersed in the Brandywine at Chad's Ford. In 1812 he was licensed to preach, and in the fall of the year 1813 he was ordained pastor of the church, and continued in charge of the congregation until 1848. It is remembered that Rev. Mr. Moore, as he grew older and saw the wonderful growth of the United States (he died in 1847), he would frequently relate how, as a child of six years, he was taken to the State-House yard, Philadelphia, when the old liberty bell with its brazen tongue proclaimed the birth of the new nation.

Rev. Joseph Walker, who succeeded Mr. Moore, was a native of Delaware County, having been born in Lower Chichester in 1787. In 1822 he was licensed to preach, and in 1824 became the pastor of the church at Marcus Hook, continuing there twenty-four years, during which period be frequently preached at Birmingham. In 1848 he became the pastor of the latter church, and continued there until 1863, when he resigned, his seventy-six years having brought with them the infirmities of age. On Feb. 10, 1870, the present and third church, on the same site, was dedicated, and not quite three weeks thereafter the aged pastor, Mr. Walker, having completed, excepting two weeks, his eighty-third year of life, died in Alleghany City.

The sixth pastor was Rev. Jesse B. Williams, who was ordained in 1866, and remained in charge of the Brandywine Church until 1869, when he was succeeded by the seventh pastor, Rev. Isaac M. Haldeman. The latter was a native of Concordville, Delaware Co., and was twenty-six years old in 1871, when installed pastor of the Brandywine Church. Just previous to his taking charge of the congregation the old stone building was torn down and the present edifice erected. It was dedicated Thursday, Feb. 10, 1870, and on that occasion, it appearing that two thousand dollars was still due for work and materials, Samuel A. Crozer offered to discharge five hundred dollars of it, if the remaining fifteen hundred dollars could be collected. This was done and the church freed from debt. Mr. Haldeman's pastorate was eminently successful, and the church thrived under his care as it had never done before. In April, 1875, be resigned to accept a charge in Wilmington, Del., and was followed by Rev. John Reader, who continued there from May, 1877, until the following April, when he resigned. In May, 1878, Rev. Alexander MacAuthor, a graduate of Crozer Theological Seminary in that year, was ordained, but resigning in the following February, the present and tenth pastor, Rev. J. Wesley Sullivan, also a graduate of Crozer Theological Seminary, was installed in June, 1880, and is now in the fourth year of a successful pastorate. Before dismissing the account of the Brandywine Baptist Church, it is proper to recall Robert Frame, who, dying Feb. 20, 1871, in the seventy-eight years of