From The Revolutionary War To The Erection Of Delaware County

calling on the friends of removal to rally to the protection of the half-completed buildings, and Thomas Beaumont is said to have ridden all night from farmhouse to farmhouse in Goshen and Bradford townships, summoning the clan. The forces under command of Maj. Harper marched toward the Turk's Head, and at night were camped at the General Greene Tavern, a fen miles east of West Chester, when Col. Hannum was first apprised of their approach. The latter collected his men within the building, the windows boarded on the out as well as the inside and the space between filled in with stones, loop-holes being arranged at convenient intervals through which the defenders could thrust their muskets, and each man had his place assigned him where, under designated officers, they remained awaiting the approach of the enemy. The next morning the Chester people came in sight of the fortification, when Maj. Harper planted his artillery on an eininence known as Quaker Hill, commanding the court-house. The absurdity of the matter dawning on the minds of some of the men in the ranks of Harper's troops, they contrived to bring about a cessation of hostilities, and the whole affair ended in a jollification, during which the cannon was repeatedly discharged in rejoicing over peace restored. The invaders were thereupon invited to inspect the unfinished structure. During the time the troops from old Chester were in the building, one of the latter, seeing the banner of the removalists floating from the flag-staff, struck it down, which so angered the defenders that it was with much difficulty their officers could restrain them from resenting the insult by immediately opening fire on their opponents.

Peace, however, was maintained. The armistice was based on the agreement of the removalists that they would desist from further work on the building until the Legislature should take action in the matter. Although the removalists suspended labor only until the anti-removalists were out of hearing,¹ they would not, had they preserved faith, been long delayed, for, at the next session, March 18, 1786, the following curiously-entitled act became a law: "An act to repeal an act entitled an act to suspend an act of the General Assembly of this Commonwealth, entitled an act to enable Wm. Clingan, etc.," and under its provisions the buildings at the new county-seat were finished. On the 25th of September, 1786, William Gibbon, the then sheriff of Chester County, by law was empowered to remove the "prisoners from the old jail in the town of Chester to the new jail in Goshen township, in the said county, and to indemnify him for the same."

The old court-house and county buildings in Chester were sold on the 18th of March, 1788, to William Kerlin for four hundred and fifteen pounds.

A struggle which had arrayed in bitter feeling one section of the county of Chester against the other, and culminated in the erection of the eastern townships into the new county of Delaware, naturally drew forth many sarcastic articles on both sides of the controversy. The press of that day, however, did not furnish the same facilities for epistolary discussion as the present, hence the following address to the Legislature written by David Bevan,² an acrimonious anti-removalist, for the first time is given to the public:

"To the Honor Representatives of the freemen of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania:
"Through the chanell of the press I make free to address your honor body, not choosing to petition in the usual mode, as I am too well acquainted with the manner pursued by some parts of Chester county, mustering scribes and getting poor-rate duplicates, and inserting names without asking consent. You, gentleman, will no doubt receive a number of petitions from those who have already got every request they wanted from the Legislature, the removal of the seat of Justice or Court of Jurisprudence from the ancient borough of Chester to that elegant and notorious place called the Turk's Head (by some called West Chester), a place as unfit for the general convenience, and much more so, that any one spot that might be pointed out within ten miles square of the above-described place, except towards New Castle line.

"We have no doubt of petitions fabricated for this purpose, that Mr. T---s, the greatest advocate for this spot of any member of Chester county, might vociferate, as he often does, in the house, more for the display of his Talents than any universal good. Let us, therefore, beg, if we have sent one noisey member, that he may be heard, and, altho' he does stammer sometimes, perhaps, with the assistance of a few pebblestones, he may become a prodigee of the age, and (may he) exceed Demothenes to convince you of his superior abilities. I have a petition of his fabricating for the purpose of the Township of Edgmont, which shall be handed to the publick for their perusal as a pattern that any body politic corporate, &c., may have a form to fabricate petitions for much purposes, if ever any such may be needed."

On the other side the removalists were not deficient in scribes who presented the ludicrous aspect of the contest in rude derisive jests wherein their adversaries were burlesqued in sarcastic jingling verses, many of which in lapse of years have been entirely forgotten. One, however, has been preserved by Dr. William Darlington, in a sketch of West Chester prepared by him for the Directory of that borough, published in 1857. The author of the "Pasquinade" was Joseph Hickman, and, as we are told by Dr. Darlington, an old English wool-comber, Marmaduke Wyvil, about the beginning of this century "used to ramble about the country like an ancient Troubadour," and a glass of cider or whiskey "would at any time procure its recital with emphatic intonation and peculiar unction."

The ditty was known as "Chester's Mother," and designed to give expression to the woe of the prominent anti-removalists, who were dependent on the public for a livelihood at the county-seat, and their