Springfield Township.

reticence and taciturnity. Devoting all his life and his great natural abilities to the cultivation of one set of ideas, his accumulation of professional information was enormous. This vast knowledge made him exceedingly cautious and careful, - conservative in his ideas, and generally slow to execute. But when his conclusions were reached, and the emergency required it, he became grandly enterprising, and permitted no obstacle to stand in the way of success. His thoughts and opinions were rarely made known, while he displayed infinite patience in listening to the views, desires, hopes, fears, and plans of others. Actions spoke for him, not words. When convinced, he knew no hesitancy or doubt. His conception of the future of American railroads seems now almost supernatural. For twenty years he marked out and reiterated in his annual reports the plan of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and he never deviated from that plan. To such a man system was everything; and there can be no question that much of the success attending the Pennsylvania Railroad was owing to the almost military rigidity with which its workings were arranged and managed under his inspiration. He had that great faculty of a general, - a good judgment of character and capabilities. In this he was rarely mistaken; and, his confidence once placed, he was loyal to its recipients, never abandoning or failing to sustain them. This friendship was undemonstrative except in acts. He had few intimate associates outside of his own family, and was utterly indifferent to popular applause. His affections seemed centred in the great corporation he controlled, and whatever conduced to the success of that, present or remote, was the thing to be done, - the end to be attained.

The peculiar bent of his mind is illustrated by the fact that the larger portion of his fortune was devised for the foundation of an institution for the benefit of a class of people connected with the railways he had been instrumental in creating. This charity, which was opened Dec. 4, 1882, is called St. John's Orphanage. It has been started in two houses, Nos. 1720 and 1722 Rittenhouse Street, and in a modest way is doing active good. It is open to receive the daughters of employés who have died in the service, - first, of the Pennsylvania Railroad; secondly, of the Georgia and Atlantic Railroad; and then of any railroad in the United States. The girls are taken from the age of six to ten, given free of charge a home in the orphanage and a plain education, being taught household work and sewing until they are sixteen, when they will be put out to service or taught a trade. It is intended to open a boarding-house for those who have left the orphanage, that the girls may have protection while they are learning to support themselves. After his death various public bodies united in posthumous tributes to his sagacity and enterprise, leaving no room for doubt as to the respect and esteem his quiet, unobtrusive services had gained in the community where so many years of his laborious life were passed.

Licensed Houses. - The first petition of record for keeping a public-house in Springfield was presented to the court by Samuel Ogden, Sixth month (August) 29, 1727, in which he states "that have lately purchased a settlement, a place heretofore authorized by the Governor's License to keep Public Entertainment and Retailing of Liquors," he desired the same privilege as had been granted to his predecessor.

From this document it clearly appears that Ogden was not the first publican in the township. After this date I lose all further track of both Ogden and his tavern until August court, 1729. Joshua Thomson petitioned for license, stating that living "on a very public road, about half a quarter of a mile from a house which was licensed for a several years, but vacant for considerable time past," and is "4 or 5 miles from any public-house," which application met the approval of the justices. This abandoned inn was doubtless the house for which Ogden had had license in 1727. Yearly thereafter Joshua Thomson's name appears on the clerk's list until 1748, when we hear of his intentions to abandon the occupation. This house appears to have been located on the present Delaware County turnpike.

Blue Ball Inn. - The story of this ancient hostelry can be traced far back in our colonial history. Under date of Aug. 31, 1743, Mordecai Taylor presented his petition, in which he informed the court that he is located on the "great road from Darby to Springfield, and so into Conestoga Road." "No tavern," he states, "within four miles," and "sometimes twenty or thirty waggons passing in a Day." Although his petition was signed by Abraham Lincoln and eighteen other persons, his request was refused, inasmuch as at the same court John West, father of Benjamin West, who had presented his petition, setting forth that he had "Rented a Comoudyas house and all other the convenances there and to belonging for a house of Entertainment on the Roade Leading from Darby To Springfield & from thence to Conistogo, which is of late much frequented by the Duch waggons to the number of 40 or 50 in a Day," was granted license. He was recommended by Richard and George Maris, Samuel Levis, John Davis, John Hall, John Maris, Robert Taylor, Robert Pearson, Quantia Moore, James Bartram, Richard Iverson, and Jonathan Maris.

The following year, Aug. 28, 1744, West having been granted license for a tavern in Newtown, Mordecai Taylor again presented himself at the November court with a petition setting forth that "Living on the public Road Leading from the Great Valley to Philadelphia [the Springfield road], and there being Never a publick House within five miles either way on said road," - between Newtown and Darby, - he asked that he be accorded license, which was granted to him, and he continued at that place until 1764, when his name disappears, and Ann Taylor was granted the license for that year. In 1765, Jesse