Ridley Township.

plunderers. During my absence the enemy's light horse came out to my vedettes, and being in disguise, called to them and informed them they belonged to our army, and by this means got up within a few yards of them, and fired their carbines; they shot one of them, and the other made his escape; they then pursued me with the party, but I fortunately knew the road, and came off within a few yards of their picquet. A few minutes sooner would have enabled me to have taken the plunderers, they had but just gone. Col. Butler I left with two hundred men on that road."¹

On Dec. 25, 1777, at five o'clock in the morning, Maj. Clark writes from the house of Mr. Lewis, in Newtown:

"This morning a party of the enemy, with a few field pieces, moved from Darby towards Chester. Near the White Horse tavern they fell in with a small party of troops, and a pretty smart skirmish ensued, the enemy playing their artillery so warm that our troops were soon obliged to give way. We had one man killed and another wounded with a cannon-ball, and we have taken two prisoners, with their horses, one of them a sutler in the Seventeenth Dragoons, and the other a servant. The enemy's design, they say, is only to forage on the Chester road, and that the party consists of First and Second Light Infantry. Our troops have retired to Springfield meeting-house, and are endeavoring to get some refreshments. The enemy have only forty dragoons with them. The wretched situation of the troops here is much to be lamented. No provisions provided for them, ill-clothed, many of them no shoes, and they are scattered in sixes and sevens all about the neighborhood; in short, they had better be called away. If any considerable number of the enemy's horse had come up the Springfield road they must have inevitably have fallen into their hands. I have ordered the few officers I met with to collect them, send to a mill near the place where there is plenty of flour, and had them well refreshed, experience of late has taught me the advantage of being superior to the enemy in horse."²

The mill where the flour was taken was doubtless Peter Hill's grist-mill, from which establishment it is known not only flour but the teams to draw the barrels were impressed, and for which, many years afterwards, the United States government paid by a grant of five thousand acres of lands in Virginia.³

The losses sustained by the residents of Ridley township during the various raids of the enemy are thus set forth in the claims filed, although the gross sum does not represent the entire damages sustained by the people of that section:

John Morton, whose name appears first on this list, was one of the most conspicuous men of the Revolutionary war in Chester County. He was born in RidIey in 1725, and is generally believed to be of Swedish descent, although that fact has never been fully established. His father died before his birth, and his mother subsequently married John Sketchley, an Englishman, who, himself well educated, instructed his stepson - to whom he was much attached - in mathematics, and imparted to him the common branches of a good education. In 1756, when thirty-one years of age, Morton was elected to the Provincial Assembly, to which body he was successively re-elected until and including 1760, a period of eleven years' continuous service. In 1765, when again a member of Assembly, he was one of the delegates from Pennsylvania to the "Stamp Act Congress," which convened in New York in October of that year. In 1767 he was elected sheriff of Chester County, and in 1769 was a member of Assembly, continuing as such until 1775 inclusive, a period of seven years, presiding as Speaker over its deliberations during the last year of his service therein. In 1764 he was commissioned one of the justices of the county courts, and part of the time the president judge. In 1774, Governor John Penn appointed him an associate justice of the Supreme Provincial Court. In that year the Assembly appointed him a delegate to the first Continental Congress, and he was reappointed to the second memorable Congress which adopted the Declaration of Independence, and when that question was pending before Congress he voted for the adoption of the measure. John Morton was the first, of the signers of the Declaration who died, that event occurring in April, 1777, he having then attained the age of fifty-three. As a private citizen his life was, so far as known, without stain, his public record that of an earnest honest advocate of the right because it was right, and as an advocate and signer of the Declaration of Independence he is deserving of the esteem and admiration of his countrymen.

The following were the taxables in Ridley township in 1715:

Jacob Simcock, Joseph Harvey, John Stedman, John Hanby, Thomas Dell, John Sharpless, Jacob Simcock, Jr., John Simcock, Joseph Powell, John Crosby, Lawrence Ffriend and Gabriel, Amus Nicholas, Enoch Enochsen, George Brown, Andrew Hendrick, George Vanculine, Andrew Torton, Hance Torton, Andrew Morton, John Hendrick, Andrew Morton, Jr., John Orchard, Israel Taylor, Jonathan Hood, Obadiah Bonsall.

The taxables in Ridley in 1799 were as follows:

William Boon, William Beatty, John Crosby (justice of the peace), Robert Colvin, John Crosby, Jr., Philip Cline, Isaac Culin (half saw-mill), Gideon Dunn, George Davis, Caleb Davis, David Likens. James Dicks, Duncan McCarty, Henry Effinger, John Hoof (innkeeper), Thomas Hall, Peter Hill (grist-mill, saw-mill), Charles Hedonville, John Irwin, George Jordan, John Knowles, James Knowles, Curtis Lownes (cutter), Andrew Longacre, John McIlvain (saw-mill and old mill-house), John McDaniel, David Treanor, William McMeanes, James Maddock, Aaron Morton, Daniel Morton, Lydia McIlvain, Thomas West, Ann Morton, James McIlvain, John Miller, Jeremiah McIlvain (farmer), John McCally, Isaac W orrell and Thomas Noblett, William Painter, Abijah Price, Isaac McIlvain, William Price, Mary Pywell, Joseph Pearson (innkeeper), Benjamin Pyle, William Paul, Jacob Painter, Charles Ramsey, Ann Smith Shoemaker, John Smith, William Shoemaker, Abraham Trimble, Michael Trytes, William Worrell, Joseph Weaver (miller), John Worrall,