Middletown Township.
Delaware County, as well as in the Seventh Congressional District, and probably in Eastern Pennsylvania. He was twenty-three years of age, and weighed four hundred and one pounds. He measured six feet round the waist, was five feet seven inches in height. His legs were thicker than the body of an ordinary man, and his arms of proportionate girth.
The Middletown Friends' Meeting. - The first allusion to an organized meeting of Friends in Middletown occurs at a Chester Quarterly Meeting, Third month 3,1686, whereat it was "agreed yt a meeting be kept at John Boiter's upon yt same first day it used to be at Bartholomew Coppock's, for ye case of such yt live westerly in ye woods, and ye rest of friends living ye other way upon yt same day to meet at ffrancis Stanfield's until further consideration." Ten years after this action by the Quarterly Meeting, at a similar meeting held on Third month 4, 1696, it was agreed that "a meeting be settled at John Bowater's every first and fifth day," and on Ninth month 6, 1699, "The ffriends of John Bowater's meeting Lay their Intentions of Building a meeting-house" before the Quarterly Meeting, and Philip Roman, Robert Pipe, Nathaniel Newlin, George Robinson, John Hood, and John Wood were appointed "to determine the place for that service, and make report to ye next Quarterly Meeting, under all their Hands, that it may be entered in the Meeting Books." Early in this year (1700) the committee reported that they had fixed upon the burial-lot of Friends in Middletown for the site of the meeting-house, but it is very probable that the meeting-house was not erected until the following year (1701). At all events, the building was completed in 1702, for it was then called Middletown Meeting-House. The present building is not the first meeting-house erected, but it was certainly built many years before the beginning of this century.
Orthodox Friends' Meeting-House. - After the division of the society of Friends, in 1828, the Orthodox branch of Middletown held their meetings in a school-house belonging to James Emlen, near the Emlen Grist-Mill, now owned and operated by Humphrey Yearsley, until they could complete their present meeting-house, which was not ready for occupancy until 1835. The house was erected on a lot of ground which Joseph Pennell, in 1834, donated to the society for a meeting-house. The plot contained half an acre, and subsequently he gave an additional half-acre adjoining for school and burial purposes. The meeting-house was erected on this lot.
Cumberland Cemetery. - About 1860 Thomas Pratt laid out a tract of land adjoining Hicksite Friends' Meeting-House ground as a cemetery, and sold a number of burial-lots thereon. The land which was not sold is now owned by his heirs, and is still being used as a burial-place.
Middletown Presbyterian Church. - The organization of religious societies under the form of the Presbyterian Church in the Middle States distinctively marks the beginning of the immigration to the American provinces of that sturdy class of people who have in this country been termed the Scotch-Irish. There is some reason to believe that, as early as 1689 or 1690, Rev. Francis Makemie came to America, sent hither by the United Brethren of the Presbyterians and Congregationalists of London, and that he organized a church in Accomack County, Va. If that be the fact, the Virginia Church antedates the First Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia eight years, for Rev. Jedediah Andrews began his ministry in that city in 1698. The Scotch-Irish about 1718 began to make settlements in Chester County, and doubtless as soon as they waxed sufficiently strong to form a congregation of worshipers according to the Presbyterian faith, such an organization was effected. The exact date of the formation of this church will probably never be known, for the early records are said to have been lost in the fire which burned the dwelling of Rev. Thomas Grier, in 1802. The church was doubtless established in the latter part of the year 1728, or early in 1729, for on April 1, 1729, the Presbytery of New Castle, in response to the desire of the people of Middletown to be permitted to build a church, acceded to the request, on condition that the congregation would continue "a united congregation with Brandywine." Tradition asserts that in 1720 a log church was built in Birmingham, but this assertion may justly be questioned, although in the historical account of that township in this work this date is followed. In the summer or fall of the year 1729 a log church was erected in Middletown on grounds the title to which was not conveyed to the trustees until 1751, when the building thereon is mentioned in the deed. That the church was fully organized and a meeting-house erected in 1735 cannot admit of