Ridley Township.

There are eighty-five brick tenant-houses on the property, and in 1880 the company erected a library building, known as "Eddystone Light-house," for the use of its employés. It is of brick, fifty-five feet front by thirty-three feet wide, and built after the old English Chester style of architecture, with a tower thirty-six feet high from the base of the building, running up twenty-six feet above the roof. The first story contains the library-room, adjoining which and on the same floor there is a retiring-room. The second story has a seating capacity for over two hundred persons, and is furnished with comfortable benches and a stage and dressing-room, which indicate that it will be used for amateur dramatic performances and for lectures. The floors are laid with yellow-pine, and are deadened by being filled between with mortar. The furniture and book-cases are of hardwood, white-walnut and ash, no paint or varnish being used. The rooms are heated from the basement or cellar by means of an improved heating apparatus, and, taken altogether, there are but few, if any, structures in city or country more substantial or better ordered in every respect. The library contains six hundred volumes on almost every subject, - scientific, mechanical, medical, and literary. In front of the building there is an extensive lawn of two acres, planted with shade and ornamental trees, which is intended as a play-ground for the children. The admirable system of water-supply, the comfortable houses for the operatives, together with the natural beauties of the location, make Eddystone one of the pleasantest manufacturing centres in the Middle States.

The following mills in Ridley township we have not been able to locate: In 1766, John Lewis was assessed on a saw-mill; in 1779, James Hannum was assessed on a grist-mill; and in 1817, Caleb Churchman on a saw-mill.

Leiper's Railroad. - In 1809 and 1810, Thomas Leiper constructed the first railroad in Pennsylvania and the second in the United States. Strictly it was a tramway and not a railroad. It was three-quarters of a mile in length, and used in transporting stone for his quarries in Springfield to tide-water of Ridley Creek, near the mill of Pierce Crosby (the present Irvington Mill, North Chester borough). In May, 1809, Leiper made an estimate of the railroad, but the project was not completed until January or February of the succeeding year. The estimate of the cost of the road was, including the survey, $1592.47. The survey and draft of the road was made by John Thomson, and in 1873 the original map drawn by Thomson was presented by Dr. Joshua Ash to the Delaware County Institute of Science. In September, 1809, under the supervision of Thomson, the experimental track was built, the construction being done by Summerville, a Scotch millwright. The road "was sixty yards in length, and graded an inch and a half to the yard. The gauge was four feet and the sleepers eight feet apart. The experiment with a loaded car was so successful that Leiper had the first practical railroad built in the United States."¹ The rails of Leiper's road in Ridley were of wood, and of course soon yielded to the heavy friction of the car-wheels, which were of cast iron with flanges, and were not renewed, Leiper designing to lay a stone track. As it was, it continued in use for nineteen years. In 1852 both the railroad and canal were superseded by the present road laid with iron rails.

The experimental track spoken of was laid in 1809, and made on land adjoining the Bull Head Tavern, in Philadelphia. "When the day of trial came a large concourse of people assembled to witness the experiment. After having loaded the car with all the weights that could be procured from the neighboring hay-scales, wagers were offered to any amount that no horse could move it to the summit; but when the word was given the horse moved off with ease, amid the plaudits of the assembled multitude."²

Thomas Leiper was the son of Thomas Leiper, of Strathhaven, Scotland; his mother, Helen Hamilton Leiper, is said to have belonged to the family of Hamilton of Kipe.³ He came to America in 1764, when nineteen years of age, having first settled in Virginia, when he removed to Philadelphia, where he accumulated a fortune as a tobacconist prior to the Revolution. He was an ardent Whig during the struggle, and "was the first man in Pennsylvania to advocate a rupture with the mother-country. While the Declaration of Independence was still only heard of in whispers, Leiper had raised a fund for open resistance to the crown. It was also his fortune to be one of the last to lay down his arms. As treasurer of the First Troop he bore the last subsidies of the French to the Americans at Yorktown."⁴ He was orderly sergeant, treasurer, and secretary of the First City Troop, and subsequently president of the Common Council of Philadelphia. He was frequently a Presidential elector, and was termed the patriarch of the Democratic party, and an intimate personal friend of Thomas Jefferson. "Mr. Jefferson was heard to say that the tables of Dr. Rush, Maj. Butler, of South Carolina, and Mr. Leiper, were the only ones in Philadelphia to whom he was ever invited during those days of Federal persecution, and that the Federalists used to cross the streets to avoid him."⁵ He had made it a rule of life never to accept an office of pay or profit; hence while he served as director of the Bank of Pennsylvania and of the Bank of the United States, and was commissioner for the defense of Philadelphia during the war of 1812, he refused to permit his name to be used for any elective office to which emoluments or pay was attached. During the darkest hour of the American Revolution

⁵ Note to Life of Richard Rush, "Eminent Philadelphians," p. 857.