The City Of Chester.

circumstances that the Provincial Council, May 19, 1698, ordered the residue of his property in Chester should be appropriated to her support. He returned subsequently, and apparently was repentant for his misdeeds. Ann died, and Oct. 5, 1704, was buried by the side of her first husband, James Sandelands. As her name appears on the old tablet in St. Paul's Church, it proves that the stone was not set up by the descendants of Sandelands until after that date.

In a closet in the Sunday-school, some time ago, was deposited, for safe keeping, the noted tombstone which for many years attracted the attention of all strangers visiting the old churchyard, because of its antiquity, the manner in which the sculptor had performed his work, and the singularity of the inscription. The stone was cracked and in bad condition. The inscription reads, -

Martin states that Francis Brooks was a negro. The inscription would seem to indicate that Brooks was a native of the American colonies, and as his age at death precludes the idea of his birth in Upland, the chances are that he was a New Englander or Virginian.

The most noted monument in St. Paul's ground, at least within recent years, - for, strange as it may appear, neither Trego, in his "Geography and Historical Accounts of Pennsylvania," nor Burrowes, in his "State Book of Pennsylvania," both published within the last forty years, make any mention of John Morton, - is that of the signer of the Declaration of Independence, whose remains lie beneath a plain Egyptian obelisk of marble, eleven feet in height, its four sides forming precisely the four cardinal points of the compass. The inscription on the west side of the monolith is as follows:

On the east side of the shaft is as follows:

"In voting by States upon the question of the Independence of the American Colonies, there was a tie until the vote of Pennsylvania was given, two members of which voted in the affirmative, and two in the negative. The tie continued until the vote of the last member, John Morton, decided the promulgation of the Glorious Diploma of American Freedom."

On the south side of the stone is cut the statement:

"In 1775, while speaker of the Assembly of Pennsylvania, John Morton was elected a Member of Congress, and in the ever memorable session of 1776, he attended that august body for the last time, establishing his name in the grateful remembrance of the American People by signing the Declaration of Independence."

On the north side of the shaft is inscribed the following sentence:

"John Morton being censured by his friends for his boldness in giving his casting vote for the Declaration of Independence, his prophetic spirit dictated from his death bed the following message to them: "Tell them they shall live to see the hour when they shall acknowledge it to have been the most glorious service I ever rendered to my country."

This monument to John Morton was erected Oct. 9, 1845, sixty-eight years after his death. A regard for the truth of history compels me to state that there is not a particle of evidence to establish the assertion engraved on the stone that John Morton gave the casting vote for the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Indeed, the little information we have bearing on that point absolutely negatives the inscription on the monument in St. Paul's graveyard.

St. Luke's Protestant Episcopal Church. - The church organization was effected on Nov. 28, 1868, when the court of Delaware County incorporated the rector, church wardens, and vestrymen of St. Paul's Protestant Episcopal Church. The corner-stone of the neat little Gothic stone sanctuary at the southeast corner of Third and Broomall Streets, South Ward, was laid on Monday morning, Feb. 1, 1869, Right Rev. William Bacon Stevens, Bishop of Pennsylvania, officiating, assisted by Revs. Messrs. Brown, of Chester, Reed, of Linwood, Clemson and Potcken, of Delaware, Morrell, of New York, Stone, of Montgomery County, and Long, of Scranton. In order that Bishop Stevens should be in Philadelphia as early as possible on important business, Superintendent Kenney ordered the New York express train to stop at Lamokin and receive the distinguished divine. St. Luke's was then included in St. Paul's parish, and Rev. Henry Brown, the rector, had charge of the chapel, for such in the beginning it was designed to be during its erection. The funds of the building committee having become exhausted before the church was completed, the congregation for a time worshiped in the edifice, which was then without pews, settees being used in their places, and the unplastered walls presenting a rough and uninviting appearance. After Sunday, May 8, 1870, services were held there in the morning and evening, Thomas R. List, a student at the Divinity School of Philadelphia, being employed as lay reader, which duties he discharged until June 19,1873, when he became rector of the parish. The church, now firmly established, was due largely to the efforts of John Burrows McKeever, William Ward, Samuel Archbold, Samuel Eccles, Jr., William H. Green, William A. Todd, Maj. Joseph R. T. Coates, and their wives and other ladies of St. Paul's Church, South Ward, and South Chester. Edward A. Price and wife presented the parish with a handsome communion