Ridley Township.
The Battle-Axes. - In 1839 and 1840 a peculiar sect, denominated "Battle-Axes,'' had some following in Delaware and Chester Counties, and attracted considerable attention at the time. The principles they maintained were those subsequently known as "free love," denying the sanctity of the marital relation, and that all they possessed should be held in common. Theophilus R. Gates, then a resident of Philadelphia, was the apostle of the new creed, and his chief disciple was a single woman, Hannah Williamson. In Delaware County the Battle-Axes made a deep impression, for it was directly due to their influence that Aaron T. Morton, of Ridley, on June 5, 1840, committed suicide by cutting his throat with a razor. He was mentally weak, and becoming acquainted with Theophilus Gates, of Philadelphia, Morton embraced Gates' peculiar religious tenets. Gates invited Morton to his retreat, explained his doctrine, furnished him with his publication called the Battle-Axe, and the result was Morton became a religious monomaniac. He was in this state of mind when Gates, in company with Hannah Williamson, came to his house on Saturday, May 30, 1840, with the intention of compelling Morton to separate from his wife and form a connection with Williamson, whose mind was also shattered. As soon as the purpose of their visit was known, the young men of the neighborhood gathered in large numbers to inflict summary punishment on Gates. It was at last deemed best to defer the matter for a day or two to see what might be done. Gates became alarmed and fled to Philadelphia, and as he drove along the road was hissed and groaned until he reached Darby. Morton, laboring under this trouble, committed the act.
Crimes. - Dennis Shields, a man employed in the construction of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad, on Saturday night, Sept. 8, 1871, made an entirely unprovoked attack on Daniel Gibbons, who was quietly walking along the road at Leiperville, in company with a friend. His assailant struck him on the head with a blunt instrument, which felled him to the earth, and while he was prostrate Shields jumped upon his breast and abdomen. Shields fled and was never apprehended, and Gibbons lingered until Monday following, when he died of the injuries received. On June 25, 1877, William H. Johnson, of Ridley, who was insane (occasioned by a blow on the head with a chair received in a difficulty some years previous), went to the house of a relative, John Worrall, and without the slightest cause caught up a gun belonging to Worrall and shot him, inflicting a severe wound in his side. Johnson, returning to his own house, shot himself with a gun he had loaded before going to Worrall's, the load tearing away part of his head and causing instant death. On Aug. 4, 1877, the body of an unknown man was found suspended by a woolen neck-scarf from a tree in a secluded wood on the farm of Isaac Carr, near Spring Hill Station. The clothing on the corpse was rotten from exposure to the weather, and the body was in an advanced state of decomposition, the physicians testifying that the remains had been hanging for several months. The name of the suicide was never discovered.
Interesting Incidents. - John F. Hill, an old resident of Ridley, who died many years ago, in his youth had been bitten by a mad dog, and it is alleged that during the full of the moon he was subject to violent outbursts of passion for which no reason could be assigned other than the reason stated. In January, 1843, Henry Goodman, a resident of Ridley, died from glanders, which disease he had contracted by bleeding a horse three weeks before, he at the time having a cut on his finger. Four days after his death Charles Van, a colored man in Chester, died from a slight wound on the thumb received a week previous, while handling the hide of an ox which had died of the murrain. Immediately the wound began swelling, and he continued in acute agony until death ended his sufferings. On July 16, 1869, a Mrs. Steward, residing on Crum Creek, near Deshong's quarry, was killed by a stone, weighing over twenty pounds, thrown by a blast made two hundred yards away from her dwelling. She was lying asleep at the time, and the stone, crashing through the roof, fell upon the left side of her head, inflicting a terrible gash near the ear, and severed the left arm from her body.
Thomas T. Tasker.
Thomas T. Tasker, the eldest of nine children of William and Mary Tasker, was born in Nottingly, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, on the 12th day of May, 1799. His father, who was a school-teacher and land-surveyor, afforded the lad more than an ordinary English education, after which, at the early age of thirteen and a half years, he began a seven years' apprenticeship in the copper and ironsmith's business. He sailed for America in 1819, landing in Philadelphia on the 4th of June of the same year. For a brief period he was employed in a stove-manufactory, after which, in 1820, he established a coppersmith and iron business in West Chester. In 1824, on leaving the latter point, he removed to Philadelphia, and ultimately entered the establishment of Stephen P. Morris, then engaged in the manufacture of stoves and grates. Later he became his partner, continuing the business under the firm-name of S. P. Morris & Co., which afterwards became Morris, Tasker & Co., its present style. They were extensive manufacturers of tubes for gas, water, steam locomotives, boilers, etc., and the first to introduce them into the market. Mr.