Haverford Township.

and the restraints of a judicious discipline. No student is admitted without a certificate of character from his last instructor, and none believed to be of low moral character are retained. Second, thorough scholarship. The teaching is of high quality; the classes are small enough to allow regular performance of work and the opportunity for individual instruction. The absence of the constant distractions which attend life at many colleges, and the example and influence of the professors, enables a large amount of honest work to be done, so that the standard of graduation is high. Third, the healthfulness of the student life. In the large and beautiful lawns every facility is given, right at the doors, for cricket, baseball, foot-ball, tennis, archery, and other field games. The gymnasium furnishes judicious physical training, under the care of a skillful physician. The rooms are pleasant, the table and service good, and all the conditions wholesome."

Haverford College, from its modest beginnings, has slowly but surely won a position among the foremost literary institutions of the country, and may justly be counted an honor to the county and the commonwealth in which it stands. In October, 1883, it celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of its opening. Six hundred of the old students assembled on its beautiful grounds, and their high character and eminence gave a striking testimonial to the merits of their Alma Mater.

Churches - Haverford Meeting-House. - Friends' meeting-house in Haverford township, the oldest place of worship in Delaware County, was erected in 1688 or 1689. The first marriage solemnized in it was that of Lewis David to Florence Jones, at a meeting held First month (March) 20th, 1690. The south, or what is now known as "the old end" of the structure, was built in 1700, at a cost of about one hundred and fifty-eight pounds. It was erected as an addition to the meeting-house of 1688 or 1689, which original building was replaced by the present "new end" in the year 1800. At the date last mentioned the part built one hundred years before was modernized somewhat in its outside appearance, by changing the pitch of the roof and in substituting wooden sash in the windows for those of lead. The gallery was originally at the south end of the building. It is also claimed that a number of chestnut boards with which the house was at first lined are still in place. For many years the original building and its annex of 1700 was without a chimney, being warmed with a kind of stove or furnace, placed on each side of the audience-room, and supplied with fuel from the outside. Only the tops of these stoves were of iron, and the smoke escaped by flues opening on the outside of the wall, a few feet above the opening through which the fuel was introduced. Part of this arrangement is yet conspicuous in the walls of the old end of the meetinghouse.

Soon after the completion of the building erected in 1700, Governor William Penn visited Haverford and preached in the new meeting-house. Yet from the fact that the Welsh language was the prevailing dialect then spoken in Haverford, and that the majority of its inhabitants at that time could speak no other, many of his hearers could not understand him.

Sutcliff, an English Quaker, who visited the province about the tinge of Penn's second visit to America, mentions another incident concerning the Governor which is pertinent to the history of Haverford meeting-house. A little girl named Rebecca Wood was walking from Darby, where she resided, to Haverford meeting-house, when Penn, who was proceeding to the same place on horseback, overtook her and inquired where she was going. Upon being informed, "he with his usual good nature, desired her to get up behind him; and bringing his horse to a convenient place, she mounted, and so rode away upon the bare back, and being without shoes or stockings, her bare legs and feet hung dangling by the side of the Governor's horse."

The burial-ground attached to Haverford meeting-house was laid out in 1684. During the same year the first interment was made in these grounds, it being the body of William Sharpus, who was buried Ninth month 19th. More than one hundred years later another burial was made in the same place, which attracted many people. The circumstances are related by Dr. Smith, as follows:

"In the winter of 1788 a very tragic affair happened on Darby Creek, where it forms the line between Marple and Haverford, in the death by drowning of Lydia Hollingsworth, a young lady of great worth and beauty, who was under an engagement of marriage to David Lewis. The party, consisting of Lewis, Lydia, another young lady, and the driver, left the city in the morning in a sleigh, and drove out to Joshua Humphreys, near Haverford meeting-house, and from thence they drove to Newtown; but before they returned the weather moderated and some rain fell, which caused Darby Creek to rise. In approaching the ford (which was on the road leading from the Presbyterian Church to Cooperstown), they were advised not to attempt to cross, but were made acquainted with the existence of a temporary bridge in the meadows above. They drove to the bridge, but the water was rushing over it, and the driver refused to proceed; whereupon Lewis took the lines, and, missing the bridge, plunged the whole party into the flood. All were rescued but Lydia, whose body was not found till the next morning. The feelings of Lewis can be more readily imagined than described. The young lady was buried at Friends' graveyard, Haverford. In some pathetic rhymes written on the occasion it is stated that 1700 persons attended her funeral."

Haverford meeting-house occupies one of the most beautiful and commanding sites in the township. Regular meetings are held there each week, the Friends usually attending being from twenty to thirty in number. A Friends' meeting-house is also located near the Haverford College grounds.

St. Dennis' Church. - This, the first Catholic Church edifice erected in Delaware County, stands near Haverford meeting-house, and was built during the year 1825. Dennis Kelly, the well-known woolen and cotton manufacturer, donated its site and the land for the burial-grounds, and also was the greatest contributor to the fund for its erection. It was built for the accommodation of those of the Catholic faith who