Radnor Township.

On the 1st of January, 1837, John Evans sold to the directors of schools a school-house site of eighty square perches, adjoining the lands of John Matthews. In 1855 the school directors purchased another lot (comprising two acres) for school purposes from Anna Loudon. Since that year other grounds have been purchased, suitable buildings have been erected thereon, old buildings have been rebuilt, and other needed improvements made from time to time, until the seven school buildings now standing in Radnor will compare favorably with any in the rural districts of the State.

Following is a list of the school directors elected in the township since 1840, as found of record at the county-seat:

1840, William Morgan, John Mather,¹ and John Pugh; 1842, Jesse Brooke and Mark Bartleson; 1843, Enoch Matlock and William Morgan; 1844, Jonathan P. Abrahams and H. Jones Brooke; 1845, Mark Bartleson and Hiram Cleaver; 1846, Mark Brooke and Edward B. Wetherell; 1847, Jesse Gyger and William Pugh; 1848, William Sitar and John Pechin;1849, Mark Brooke and William W. Esrey; 1850, Alexander Brooke and Jesse Gyger; 1851, Stephen S. Davis and Edward B. Wetherell; 1852, Samuel P. Abrahams and Alexander Johnson; 1853, Alexander Brooke and Mark Brooke; 1854, Samuel Jones and Lewis Garrett; 1855, Jesse Gyger and Samuel P. Abrahams; 1856, Alexander Brooke and Charles Pugh; 1857, Mark Brooke and Robert Paiste; 1858, George P. Hughes and Robert Paiste; 1859, Hiram Cleaver and Daniel C. Abrahams; 1860, Virgil T. Eachus and Lewis T. Brooke; 1861, James Roberts and J. S. Park; 1862, Enoch Matlock and T. R. Petty; 1863, Benjamin Brooke and John G. Henderson; 1864, Anderson Kirk and Samuel P. Abrahams; 1865, Thomas B. Jones and Thomas R. Petty; 1866, John G. Henderson and Benjamin Brooke; 1867, Anderson Kirk and Samuel P. Abrahams; 1868, Frank Fenimore and Tryon Lewis; 1869, Jesse Gyger and Benjamin Brooke; 1870, Anderson Kirk and John R. Whitney; 1871, no report; 1872, Tryon Lewis and John Cornog; 1873, Jesse Gyger and Benjamin Brooke; 1874, Barclay Hall and Joseph H. Childs; 1875, Tryon Lewis and Mrs. David Paxon; 1876, A. R. Montgomery and Benjamin Brooke; 1877, Barclay Hall and Tryon Lewis; 1878, Archibald Montgomery and Joseph Croll; 1879, J. H. Ewing and Elwood Carr; 1880, Barclay Hall and Tryon Lewis; 1881, Jesse Gyger and A. Montgomery; 1882, A. R. Montgomery and James Callahan; 1883, Barclay Hall and Tryon Lewis; 1884, Jesse Gyger and William A. Parke.

Villanova College. - In the upper part of our county (Delaware), in the township of Radnor, lie the extensive grounds known as Villanova College, belonging to the Catholic brotherhood of St. Augustine. These established themselves here, as a branch of the parent house in Philadelphia, in 1842. Having purchased the estate belonging to the deceased Mr. John Rudolf in the previous year, they now set about to erect buildings on a large scale for a complete monastic and educational foundation, namely, a convent, with novitiate and study-house for the members of their order, and a college for the education of the laity in the classics, arts, sciences, and polite literature.

This order, founded by St. Augustine (of Hippo), in 387 of our era, consists of three classes: (1) of religious men whose present mission is to preach and teach; (2) of religious women called nuns; and (3) of persons of either sex, known as Tertiaries, living in the world, who seek to lead a Christian life in the service of God and their neighbor, under the patronage of the same St. Augustine.

In 1796 their founder in this country, the Rev. Matthew Carr, D.D., O.S.A., came from Ireland to establish a province of his order, and with faculties from the then reigning pontiff, Pope Pius VI., and with the advice and aid of the Rt. Rev. John Carroll, the first and that time the only Catholic prelate in the United States, fixed on Philadelphia as his abode. Here he built the church of St. Augustine, on Fourth Street, near Race, but circumstances prevented him from realizing all he had designed.

The Augustinian College at Villanova is properly the chief offshoot of St. Augustine's of Philadelphia. It was founded, as we have said, in 1842, by Rev. John Possidius O'Dwyer, O.S.A., who, under the direction of the celebrated Dr. Moriarty, O.S.A., then superior-general of the order in the United States, was its first president.

The title of this college recalls the memory of the great archbishop of Valencia, in Spain, in the sixteenth century, St. Thomas of Villanova, under whose superiorship the Augustinian missionaries to the New World founded in Mexico, with leave from the Emperor Charles V., the University of Mexico, the first school on a grand scale in the Americas. The date of the emperor's decree is Sept. 21, 1551, though the solemn opening of the university was put off until the 25th of January, 1553. Villanova thus commemorates the great scholar and saint and, we may add, the first patron of learning in the Western Hemisphere.

The first college buildings at Villanova comprised merely one stone house of two and a half stories, the former residence of Mr. Rudolf. The upper stories, consisting of six rooms, were devoted to the uses of the students, and the lower to the professors.

In September, 1844, was dedicated the chapel, the first place of Catholic worship in the neighborhood; in 1849 was opened the new college hall, a large stone edifice, eighty-eight feet long and fifty-five feet wide, now the east wing of the college building. This, the main college building, was erected in 1873, by the superior-general, Rev. Thomas Galberry, O.S.A., at the time president of the college, and subsequently bishop of the diocese of Hartford, Conn., and was opened Feb. 3, 1874. It is one hundred and seventy-four feet in front, facing the Pennsylvania Railroad, and contains all the halls and rooms needed for the instruction and residence of the students. There are eleven classrooms, besides apartments for professors and prefects, two large dormitories, a clothes-room, study and music halls, a dramatic hall, and play-room.

The buildings are well supplied with water, conducted from a spring fourteen hundred feet distant, lighted with gas manufactured on the premises, and all are heated with steam.