Upper Darby Township.

The Burd Orphan Asylum. - This charitable establishment, although having its origin in Philadelphia, and being in a certain sense one of that city's institutions, is located in Upper Darby. Its full title is "The Burd Orphan Asylum of St. Stephen's Church," and its location is described as "Market Street, west of Sixty-third Street." The institution was founded by the munificence of Mrs. Eliza Howard Burd, deceased, formerly of Philadelphia, who was the widow of Edward Shippen Burd, and daughter of Woodrop Sims. She was a lady of culture and refinement, and upon being left a widow, and losing her two daughters, she determined to use her large fortune in philanthropy. The inception of the enterprise which culminated in the orphan asylum was a "home" established by Mrs. Burd in 1856, in the rear of her dwelling, on the southwest corner of Ninth and Chestnut Streets, Philadelphia, to which she admitted twelve fatherless girls. During her life she superintended the management of it herself. Seeking a method for her wealth to do good when she should be no more, she was advised by her pastor, the late Rev. Henry W. Ducachet, of St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, to found a similar school upon a larger scale. At her death, in 1860, she bequeathed to the rector, church wardens, and vestrymen of St. Stephen's Church, in trust, the sum of five hundred thousand dollars to build and endow the present institution.

In 1861 a lot of ground, consisting of forty-five acres, partly in the city limits and party in Delaware County, was purchased, and the erection of the present buildings begun. The property was formerly known as "Sellers Hall." It had passed in the division of the estate of John Sellers to Margaret Sellers Powell, wife of Joseph Powell, by whom it was sold to the trustees of the asylum.

The orphans admitted by Mrs. Burd were removed to the new building, and others were received in September, 1863. The chapel was completed and consecrated Nov. 3, 1866. A writer in Progress, of Sept. 13, 1879, presumably the late John W. Forney, says, "The asylum . . . is different from any other I have ever seen. It resembles more in its appearance, artistic surroundings and appointments, some old deserted English manor than a house for poor little orphans." The asylum consists of a group of detached buildings connected with corridors, with an outbuilding containing the kitchen, laundry, bake-room, and bedrooms for the domestics, connected with the main buildings by means of a covered railway. The style is the early English Gothic. It is built of a light-gray stone, quarried on the grounds, laid in rubble, pointed with facings of dressed Leiperville stone. The buildings are two stories high, with basements twelve feet clear above the surface of the ground, and a sub-cellar containing the steam furnaces for heating. In the basement is a large dining-room, which will seat one hundred and fifty children, play-room, bowling-alley, bath-rooms, reception-room, and nursery. In the main building, on the first floor, are a parlor and library, containing the antique furniture and the books (about four thousand volumes) bequeathed to the asylum by Mrs. Burd, a large school-room, four class-rooms, and housekeeper's room. On the second floor, approached by two broad iron stairways, is the beautiful chapel, which will accommodate three hundred and fifty persons. It has two memorial windows to the foundress, and one to her rector, the first chaplain of the asylum, the Rev. Henry W. Ducachet, D.D. In the rear is a large dormitory, teachers' rooms, etc. All the stairs are iron, the railings outside and in are also iron, and the building is as far as practicable fire-proof. The north wing contains the warden's residence, a large sewing-room, and two dormitories. The south wing, which is not yet erected, will add a hundred feet to the length, and double the accommodations. In the hall is a portrait of Edward Shippen Burd, painted when the subject was a young man, by Rembrandt Peale, and elsewhere are the portraits of Mrs. Burd's daughters.

The grounds are very attractively laid out. They contain hills and dales, running water, smoothly-sloping lawns, and shady groves, forming appropriate surroundings for the beautiful buildings. The asylum and grounds cost about one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars.

The objects of the asylum, as set forth in the will of Mrs. Burd, are "to maintain, educate, and at a suitable age and time (to be judged of and determined by those to whose management I have intrusted the asylum) to place out to be instructed in proper employments, first, the white female orphan children of legitimate birth, of the age of not less than four years and not more than eight, who shall have been baptized in the Protestant Episcopal Church, in the city of Philadelphia; secondly, the same class of children, baptized in the said church, in Pennsylvania; and, thirdly, all other white female orphan children of legitimate birth, not less than four years of age and not more than eight years, without respect to any other description or qualification whatever, except that at all times, and in every case, the orphan children of clergymen of the Protestant Episcopal Church shall have the preference. If the establishment or the means provided shall not be sufficient to accommodate all the several classes of children herein described, each class shall be preferred in the order in which they are herein mentioned, to the exclusion in whole or in part of the other classes. By the term 'orphan,' for the purpose of this codicil, I mean a child whose father is deceased and whose mother remains a widow, or who may have lost by death both father and mother."

It is also directed and enjoined by the will that "all the children received into the asylum shall be faithfully instructed, as a part of their education, in the principles of the precious Gospel of Christ as they are