The home of John Morton in todays Ridley Park. A state historical marker at E. Ridley Ave. and Cresswell St. marks the spot. He was born here in 1725 and built this brick house in 1764 on the site of his birthplace.
JOHN MORTON, THE SIGNER
Of the seven
delegates allotted to the Province of Pennsylvania in the Continental Congress
that adopted the Declaration of Independence, two of the number were selected
from that section which now constitutes the present county of Delaware, John
Morton of Ridley, and Charles Humphreys of Haverford. A man of ability, undoubted integrity and
high social station, Charles Humphrey had within his grasp undying fame, but in
error of judgment, not personal fear, he cast the laurel wreath aside. From 1763 to 2776 he was a member of the
Assembly of the Province and in 1774 was appointed one of the seven delegates
representing Pennsylvania in the Congress of the Colonies, and was continued as
such in the succeeding Congress.
On
Friday, the seventh of July, 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, presented his
famous resolution, “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be
free and independent States,” and on that measure, when it assumed the final
form of the Declaration of Independence, as did his distinguished kinsman, John
Dickinson, Charles Humphreys voted in the negative. When the great Charter of American liberty
was adopted, he withdrew from public life, resigning his place in Congress and
the Assembly alike. At no time prior to
or since his death at the conclusion of the revolutionary war, was the honesty
of his opinion or the integrity of his purpose questioned. He had only faltered when the crisis of his
life came and comparative obscurity, where he might have secured immortality,
became his fate.
OF SWEDISH ANCESTRY
His
colleague, John Morton of Ridley, takes high rank among the fifty-three men who
gave to the world that Declaration of Independence, which made this nation the
foremost of the earth. He was of Swedish
descent the grandson of Morton Mortonson of “Calking Hook,” the surname in time
assuming the English form, as we now know it.
John
Morton was a posthumous child, his father, John Morton, having died prior to
his birth, which occurred early in 1725, the exact day of the week or month not
being recorded, at least to this time the diligent research of historians, has
failed to ascertain the precise date.
His mother, after a brief widowhood, married John Sketchley, and
Englishman, whose kindness to the orphan boy was recognized by the latter in
giving his name to his son, Sketchley Morton, subsequently a Major in the
Revolutionary Army and a man of sterling worth.
Mr. Sketchley, who appears to have received an educational training
beyond that general among the early settlers, personally instructed his stepson
in the common English branches, devoting particular attention to mathematics,
as young Morton developed a peculiar aptness in that study which subsequently,
in his avocation as a surveyor, as well as a husbandman, had much to do with his
success in life.
In
1756, at the age of thirty-one, he became a member of the Provincial Assembly,
and continued to represent Chester County in that body until 1766, an
uninterrupted period of eleven years.
While still a member of the Assembly, in 1765, he was designated one of
the delegates from Pennsylvania to the “Stamp Act Congress” which convened in
New York City in October of that year.
AN IMPORTANT COLONIAL OFFICIAL
In 1767
he was chosen Sheriff of Chester County and for three years discharged the
duties of that office acceptably to the people, although the mutterings of the
approaching conflict had already depressed trade and brought about much
business disturbance. At the expiration
of his term of service, he was again returned to the Assembly, sitting as a
member of that body until 1776, for which he was not elected in the latter
year, the new representative had not yet been chosen. During the last year of his service he was
speaker of the Assembly, and was such when the Declaration of Independence was
adopted and proclaimed. Twelve years
before he had been appointed in 1764, a Justice of the Peace – an office of
great dignity in Colonial times – and was the Presiding justice of the several
Courts of the County of Chester. In 1774
he was commissioned by Governor John Penn an Associate Justice of the Colonial
Supreme Court. While discharging the
duties of the two offices – member of the House and Judge – he was appointed by
the Assembly in 1774 a delegate to the First Continental Congress and was
re-appointed to the second – the memorable Congress, which adopted the
Declaration of Independence. By this
vote in favor of that measure he achieved immortality.
WAS HIS THE DECIDING VOTE?
On his
monument in St. Paul’s Churchyard, in this city, on the east face – for the
shaft is erected so that its four sides face precisely the four cardinal points
of the compass – is the inscription: “In
voting by States upon the question of Independence of the American Colonies,
there was a tie until the vote of Pennsylvania was given, two members of which
voted in the affirmative and two in the negative. The tie continued until the vote of the last
member, John Morton, decided the promulgation of the great diploma of American
freedom.”
A
strict regard for the truth of history constrains me to declare that there is
no contemporary evidence support the foregoing statement. Shortly after the bicentennial historical
sketches of Chester, Col. Frank M. Etting, the author of the most elaborate and
authentic history of Independence Hall yet published, and the founder of the
National Museum in that building; in a letter to the author, objected to the
printing of the inscription just quoted in the historical sketches. Col. Etting, among other matters wrote as
follows:
“Yet I
cannot pass over one very grievous error or perversion of the facts in
connection with John Morton and the ‘vote of the Stat.’ Not only is there absent a scintilla of
evidence to support the whole statement, but the unquestioned evidence of the
action of the colonies on June 7th and July 2nd, when
every colony concurred in the vote, but New York shows the utter falsity of
such details…I do believe Morton’s friends generally were adverse to
independence ad doubtless upbraided him, as he was Speaker of the House. He may have presided over the separate
deliberations of Pennsylvania’s representatives as a colony, and may have given
his own vote, last, but there is no evidence whatever to this effect, while
every item built upon this in its various shapes is shown to be entirely
baseless.”
It
seems to me that John Morton’s claim to greatness is built upon higher ground
than the old tradition accords him, in as much that although he was Speaker of
the Assembly that by resolution had instructed its delegates to vote against
independence, yet he dared to disregard that mandate when the supreme moment of
action came, placing himself in so doing on a plane with the best minds of the
colonies and acting in unison with that class who recognized that the hour for extra
measures had presented itself and to falter was to fail. He saw the right, unhesitatingly dared to
support if, and in so doing, he justly earned the lasting gratitude of the
American people
John
Morton was the first of the signers to die.
His death occupied in the following April, at the comparatively early
age of fifty-three. It is a strange
circumstance that the exact date of his death as with his birth, has not been
recorded. A good man and true, his life
had been without stain or blemish, and he filled the measure of success that
the world was better in that he had lived.
HIS MOST GLORIOUS SERVICE
No
wonder that Morton felt keenly the responsibility of his act. It must be remembered that his immediate
friends and the leaders of opinion in this section, particularly that part
which was constitutionally the county of Delaware, were not in accord with his
views. Less than a year before, General
Wayne, dashing “Mad Anthony,” in the old Court House, In Chester, offered a
resolution declaring that its idea of separation from the mother country was
abhorrent and “pernicious in its nature.”
Nathaniel Vernon, of Nether Providence, the then Sheriff, was an avowed
Tory, afterward proclaimed a traitor, and his son Gideon had a price on his
head and immunity from punishment promised to anyone who might slay him. Charles Humphreys of Haverford, his associate
in Congress, had declined to vote for the Declaration. Nathaniel Newlin, of Darby, the wealthiest
land owner and an affluent citizen had declared that “King George’s government
was good enough for him.” Henry Hale
Graham, the deputy Register General, and afterward the first President Judge of
the Courts of Delaware County, by reason of his religious convictions, was
opposed to war, and that was the prevailing sentiment of the neighborhood. Apart from this, the continued reverse that
had overtaken the American forces, bringing as their results that period known
as “the dark days of ‘76” doubtless weighed heavily on his sensitive mind and
increased the burden of his accountability for the disasters that seemed to
flow upon his associates and friends as the immediate consequences of his
act. No wonder then is it that when he
felt approaching death, his mind, filled with these thoughts, should give utterance
to the memorable words: “Tell them they
shall live to see the hour when they shall acknowledge it to have been the most
glorious service I ever rendered to my country.” Today the world, not the circumscribed
community he then addressed, acknowledges with praise the grandeur of his deed.
RODNEY’S RIDE
Although
it may not be directly germane to this theme, yet I cannot refrain from
alluding to an incident connected with the story of American independence,
which has not received that attention from poets and historians that is justly
its due. The most picturesque figure in
the Continental Congress on Thursday, July 4, 1776, it seems to me, was Caesar
Rodney. An ardent Whig, in the discharge
of his duties as Brigadier General of Delaware, he was necessarily absent from
Congress much of the time while the question of independency was pending. When it became apparent that a final vote on
the measure would be reached in the near future, Thomas McKean, then a delegate
from Delaware, afterwards Chief Justice and Governor of Pennsylvania, on the
evening of the 2nd, dispatched a courier to Rodney to apprise him of
that fact. The messenger reached him at
St. James’ Neck, below Dover, eighty miles away, about noon on the 3rd. The urgency of the summons could brook no
delay, and with expedition Rodney set out on horseback For Philadelphia,
notwithstanding a heavy downpour of rain which, for a few hours, lessened the
intense heat then prevailing.
The
inhabitants of the little hamlet of Chester had dispatched their evening meal,
when a mud splashed horse and rider clattered over the rickety bridge at the
creek, galloped to the Washington House, where the rider requested William
Kerlin, a fervent Whig, well known to Rodney, to bait his horse, and he himself
would sup while the animal was feeding.
The rider was a tall man of massive frame, attenuated by disease, a green
silk patch shading the right eye to conceal the ravages of the cancer, which,
within seven years thereafter, terminated his life. Only a brief period did Rodney tarry, when,
remounting his steed, he started under whip and spur, reaching Philadelphia at
a late hour that night. Next morning
when his colleague, McKean, approached the State House, he met on the doorstep
Rodney, booted and spurred, just as he had ridden from his country home to
declare in favor of independence, when a final vote was taken late in the
evening of July the fourth.
To me
history furnishes hardly a parallel to this scene. “Tottenham is his boats,” the member from
county Wexford, who rode in the night time sixty miles from Ballycarug
and entered the old Parliament House in Dublin in his big jack boots to cast
his vote – the Mayoral vote – in favor of home rule, and two decades before the
Union destroyed Ireland’s government, became the standing toast at the table of
all the Irish patriots. The famous
midnight ride of Paul Revere, to arouse the yeomanry of Middlesex, and
Sheridan’s ride to Winchester to turn disaster into triumph, were not so great
in their results so that of Caesar Rodney’s, which was largely instrumental in
founding a nation with possibilities the greatest ever known to man.
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