ter. They lived on a thousand-acre tract taken up from the proprietor, bounded on the Street road, a great thoroughfare leading from Philadelphia to Grove meeting-house. The elder Caleb was a member of the Colonial authorities very soon after the settlement, and was a useful man in settling difficulties among neighbors. In the line, down to the subject of our notice, the couple whose marriage has just been stated, and whose certificate, engrossed upon parchment and numerously signed by the members of Chester meeting, is still preserved by descendants, had two sons, Thomas and David. The former married Mary Swayne, and had three sons, Caleb, Thomas, and Jesse. The first, born in 1745, married Hannah Bailey in 1775, and they had five children, Ann, Caleb, Phebe, Lydia, and Susan. Ann, the eldest, was married to James Jones, the father of our subject, as elsewhere stated.

Caleb P. Jones was the sixth and next to the youngest of the family. He, with most of the children of his parents, was born on the old Jones homestead in East Bradford township, Chester county, which property the father sold to enter a laborcombination enterprise, started at Valley Forge about the year 1826. This scheme did not prove a success, as originally designed, and it was soon dissolved. His father, James Jones, on the dissolution of the society, bought the old headquarters homestead, grist mill, and part of the old Valley Forge or Potts' estate, and the family, with an intermission of two years, from 1826 to 1828, have resided upon it ever since, now over half a century.

At a very early age Caleb P. showed a fondness for books and papers, reading then much solid matter, and was conversant with the Scriptures when quite young. Between the ages of fourteen and sixteen he was sent to Westtown boardingschool, an institution of Friends, where he made rapid progress in grammar, chemistry, and the higher mathematics. He was remarkably correct and thorough in elementary studies, became a very clear and forcible writer, and so terse and perspicuous in style that he usually took the lead in writing out resolutions and making brief speeches at temperance, antislavery and free soil meetings, to which his heart was deeply

committed while he lived. He had joined the Methodist Episcopal church in 1844, and that fire infused into his Quaker blood made him courageous and intrepid to the last degree when any great question of human rights, such as slavery or temperance, was concerned. He was a frequent contributor to the reformatory press, especially of the type just mentioned. After arriving at majority he went to teaching school, and continued for several years near home, at Wilkesbarre and Philadelphia. While thus engaged at the last place his health gave way in a severe attack of inflammatory rheumatism. On recovering he was advised to seek more active employment, and obtained a sort of supervisory position on the Reading railroad, which he held with a few intervals for twenty years, his residence in the meantime being at Reading and with his sister at Valley Forge. Had he not been so heartily identified with anti-slavery and temperance reform movements, in advance of the age, he had all the qualities to have made a successful politician and legislator. Although social and very courteous, he was retiring in his habits. His delight was to read, store his mind with useful knowledge, and do good. He was, in fact, to his family and neighbors a walking Encyclopedia. His life was a busy one. At the time of his death he had an immense amount of literary labor projected, leaving some valuable papers worthy of publication behind him.

In person Mr. Jones was rather under the medium height, light complexion but dark hair, and of comely, pleasant features. He died, unmarried, at the age of 46 years, in 1865, and was buried at Friends' cemetery in Schuylkill township, two miles above Valley Forge. Hon. J. Glancey Jones, of Reading, who was possibly a distant relative, and a particular friend, as also the writer, were at his funeral.

His brother, Nathan H. Jones, from whom most of the facts of this notice have been gathered, is a man of high moral character and much culture, being a very fine mathematician. Caleb P. Jones, notwithstanding his activity as a reformer, left considerable estate to his brother and sister.

The following lines, dedicated to his memory by A. J. Chris

man, are added:

Bending o'er thy dust, my brother,

O'er thy sad and lonely tomb,

I would lay a sweet wreath on it,

Flowers that memory bids to bloom.

HON. JOSIAH W. EVANS.

Naked as from the earth we came,

And rose to life at first;

We to the earth return again,

And mingle with the dust.-Watts.

Josiah White Evans was born October 2d, 1802, in Limerick township, Montgomery county. His father, James Evans, was a farmer, and well known throughout the county, once representing it in the Legislature. The Evans family is of Welsh extraction, and some of the earliest settlers of Limerick township were of that name. His mother was Charlotte Brooke, whose ancestors came from England about the year 1699 or 1700, and located a grant of about eight hundred acres of land in the upper part of this county, west of the Perkiomen.

Josiah W. Evans received a good common school education before he left his father's farm. All his acquirements beyond this were through his own unaided efforts. On March 4th, 1832, he married Miss Anna Hunsberger, of the same township.

He was a member of the congregation of Limerick Lutheran Church, and never severed his connection therefrom, although after coming to Norristown he regularly attended the Presbyterian church, of which his wife was a member. He first learned the trade of a blacksmith, and after completing his apprenticeship went to Pottsville and followed it for a short time, but becoming dissatisfied he returned to his father's farm. On the 11th of July, 1831, he came to Norristown and entered the Prothonotary's office as clerk to Jacob Fry, Jr., continuing in this position several years. He was appointed a Justice of the Peace by Governor Wolf on the 3d of May, 1832, and filled the office in connection with his clerkship. He entered

upon the duties of Prothonotary as principal, by appointment of Governor Porter, on the 7th of February, 1839, and in the following November was elected by the people to the same office, filling it three years longer, till the spring of 1843, when the same Governor appointed him Associate Justice of the

courts.

During the four years he filled the office of Prothonotary his brother James was his deputy, the latter continuing to fill that position through the incumbency of Josiah's successors, Dr. Jones Davis and Mehelm McGlathery, and then was himself elected to the office, in 1848, holding it three years.

At the conclusion of his first term of five years on the bench, Judge Evans was reappointed by Governor Shunk in 1848, and again chosen to the same office in 1851 by the people, the place becoming elective under the new Constitution. He died, however, before his term expired.

During or between his judicial terms he was for a period of two or three years associated with his brother Owen (who was the active partner) in the lime business on the Schuylkill below Norristown, the products of their kilns being sold wholesale in Philadelphia, and also shipped South. This business was very remunerative and successful.

He was a member of the Norristown School Board and of the Town Council for a number of years, as also clerk for the latter body.

Mr. Evans died in Norristown on the 7th of April, 1855, where he had lived continuously for twenty-four years. He left a large estate to his widow during her life, and also made a considerable bequest to a sister in straitened circumstances, the bulk of it to finally revert to his collateral heirs.

one.

His life was an even, uneventful, yet withal a very useful By nature unassuming, and shunning all display and prominence, he was truly a man of sterling character, ever filling with punctuality and fidelity all public and private trusts. In person he was over the medium stature, and of quiet, grave demeanor. His remains are interred in Montgomery Cemetery, and over them is erected a handsome marble obelisk bearing his name and age.

JACOB ADLE, JR.

The hand of the diligent shall bear rule; but the slothful shall be under tribute.Proverbs XII, 24.

Jacob Adle was born in Switzerland in the year 1800. When six years of age his father and mother, Jacob and Susanna Adle, seeing nothing before them but wars and invasions from advancing and retreating French and Austrian armies, concluded to emigrate with their one son to America, where quiet and industrious people might hope for peace and plenty.

Of the Swiss, after whose Republic our own is moulded, Goodrich, in his Universal History, remarks:

"The great charm of Switzerland, next to its natural scenery, is the air of well being, neatness and sense of property imprinted on the people and their dwellings. They have a kind of Robinson Crusoe industry about their houses and lands; they are perpetually building, altering, repairing or improving something about their tenements."

It was exactly this industry, frugality and care for home with which Jacob and Susanna Adle began life in Norristown in 1806, and they soon had a small dwelling of their own. A few years after settling here a daughter was born to them, who is still living with us and well known to our citizens as Mrs. Sarah Derr, relict of Franklin Derr, recently deceased. Susanna Adle died at an advanced age in 1852, and her husband, Jacob Adle, Sr., six years later, in 1858.

Jacob Adle, Jr., the subject of this notice, received a good education at the Norristown Academy, but only at intervals, as he was trained to industry from his earliest years, and expected to earn his living. For a long time, when young, he rode as post-boy to deliver the weekly papers, and probably carried the mail also. In due time he was apprenticed to a chairmaker, which business he learned. Some time after he married Sallie, daughter of Matthias Koplin, who for many years ran a flour mill in Norristown. Their children who survived infancy are: Theodore, now a master smith; William H., a machinist; Matilda, deceased; Anna, intermarried with Josiah Shaw, of Philadelphia; and Thaddeus S., watchmaker and jeweler. All except Anna now (1878) reside in Norristown.

Having, as we stated, learned his trade, Jacob Adle, Jr., be