gan chairmaking, and continued to follow it at the corner of Main and Barbadoes streets, Norristown, till about 1842, when he opened a grocery near by, which was successfully conducted for a number of years.

Jacob Adle, Jr., was a man of considerable mental culture, good judgment, and of great propriety of deportment. For several years he filled the position of member of Town Council with credit to himself and advantage to the public.

The wife and daughter of Jacob Adle, Sr., were members of the Presbyterian church. The wife and daughters of Jacob Adle, Jr., were Episcopalians.

Being a man of sobriety, frugality and industry, he accumulated considerable property, which enabled him to retire finally from business. This he did about 1866, but his health continued to decline, and he expired August 9th, 1866. He is buried in Montgomery Cemetery. His widow still survives him.

HENRY POTTS.

Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again.-Bryant.

Henry Potts, an extensive ironmaster at Pottstown, and associated with David Potts, of Warwick, Chester county, was born August 5th, 1797, in the town which his great-grandfather, John Potts, founded and called after his own name. After obtaining a good education he completed a mercantile training in Philadelphia, where he was first employed as bookkeeper or clerk, and afterwards engaged in the iron business, which had been the family calling for several generations. Subsequently he engaged in the manufacture of iron at the famous Glasgow Forge, near the Manatawny, north of Pottstown. In 1834, associated with John P. Rutter, he built Isabella Furnace, in Chester county, for smelting ore, which was worked into malleable iron at Pottsgrove Iron Works, Pottstown. He was also associated with his cousin, Hon. David Potts, Jr., in running Warwick Furnace, Chester county, which was founded

before the Revolution. In 1857 he retired from business, handing over his extensive works to his sons, Henry, George H., and Joseph, and his son-in-law, Edward S. Davies.

Henry Potts was married October 8th, 1819, to Isabella, daughter of Daniel Hitner, Sr., of Whitemarsh township, by whom he had several children.

He was held in high esteem all his life as a business man of integrity, uprightness, and public spirit. In 1857 he was elected the first President of the Pottstown Bank. He was also for several years Secretary and Treasurer of the Pottstown Bridge Company, and a member of the gas board of the borough, as also President of the Town Council. He was during his entire life a Whig or Republican, and strongly anti-slavery in his views, but being retiring in his habits never sought or attained any public position. He died at his residence, in his native town, August 31st, 1861, aged 64 years.

REV. THOMAS GIBBS.

As the life of a wicked man is not worthy of the name of life, so the death of a godly man is not worthy of the name of death.-Edwards.

Rev. Thomas Gibbs, of the Protestant Methodist Church, was born in the State of Delaware in the year 1799. Of nearly pure African blood, his father and mother, whose names were John and Deborah, had been reared in slavery. But his father, being a man of energy and sobriety, and his master favoring emancipation, he found means to buy himself, and afterwards his wife. Thomas was therefore born free, and when quite a young man came to Pennsylvania, stopping awhile at Hamorton, in Chester county.* He early acquired proficiency as a violinist or fiddler, and made considerable money attending parties in that capacity. When quite young he married a wife, who soon after died, leaving to his care two small children.

*In relating his habits then as hostler at a tavern and musician at frolics and sleighing parties, he said to the writer: "It was a mercy of God that I did not fall to drinking and go to perdition, as did so many others."

He went to Philadelphia and obtained employment as porter or store-helper. Here he got acquainted with Mrs. Sally Ann James, whose maiden name had been Berry. She, like himself, had been widowed by the death of her husband, Furman James, some time before. It was natural that he, a young widower, and she, a young widow, should sympathize with each other. The acquaintance therefore soon ripened into attachment, and on the 9th of August, 1827, they were married by "James Abercrombie, D. D., assistant minister at Christ Church, St. Peter's, and St. James'." So reads the marriage certificate.

Mr. Gibbs at this time was without book education of any kind, the fiddle being then his book, Bible, and constant companion. His wife, being almost a full white woman, and raised in Philadelphia, was well educated for one in her rank in life, besides well trained in the amenities of respectable society. Shortly after her marriage with Mr. Gibbs she fell into the currents of one of the then prevailing revivals, and according to the phrase then common among Methodists, "got religion." From that time her whole plans of life were changed. She saw the importance of the conversion of her partner, and did not long pray and labor for that end till she had the satisfaction of calling him "brother" as well as husband. At once she set about opening to his nature-darkened mind the world of letters. Being herself fond of books, she read to him in the evenings while he listened, and taught him also to spell and read, till he became a fair reader. She also instructed him in the use of the pen, so that he could write his name.

Very soon after his conversion he felt the deep obligation to lead other sinners to Christ, and so rented a cellar, fitted it up as a mission Bethel, and began to hold meetings for prayer and exhortation, which were thronged nightly and blessed to the awakening and conversion of hundreds. This was about 1835. The truth opened in his mind through the written Word, now in his hands, added to the fervor of the Spirit, as "a fire shut up in the bones," began to manifest a gift and power of exhortation, and it was soon plain to all who knew him that he was "called" to preach the gospel of peace. The

fiddle became an eye-sore to him, and was sold or given away, he entering upon a new life. A Protestant Methodist church was organized at Fifth and Gaskill streets, and Mr. Gibbs was there appointed and ordained to minister in holy things, which he did for several years.

Coming to Norristown shortly after the colored people of the town were organized into an African Methodist Episcopal Church, the denominational connection with which colored people were most familiar. They proceeded to erect Mount Zion Church edifice, west of Stony creek, and Mr. Gibbs, joining the connection, preached for them several years. Divisions arising among them, however, a considerable number of the membership of the church resolved to organize anew under the auspices of the Methodist Protestant Church, to which Mr. and Mrs. Gibbs had originally belonged. Accordingly about 1852 or 1853 they proceeded to organize "Israel Methodist Protestant Ebenezer Church," and erected a small stone building at Arch and Basin streets for a house of worship. Here Mr. Gibbs preached for a time, but finally took charge of a congregation in Philadelphia, to which he ministered till within a few years of his death, though he continued to reside in Norristown.

Notwithstanding Mr. Gibbs had become a somewhat gifted preacher, he never ceased to labor with his hands. He had taken up the business of a professional whitewasher, and enjoyed the common fame of being able to white a wall and ceiling with lime-wash without the fall of a single drop on the carpets. This brought him the best work of the kind in town and country. Mrs. Gibbs also being a capable, trusty woman, kept the refreshment stand in the ladies' waiting-room of the railroad depot at Ninth and Green streets, Philadelphia.

Both Thomas Gibbs' children by his first wife died in infancy, and he and his second wife had two children, John L., born April 5th, 1839, and died in 1844, aged 4 years; Sarah Ann, born January 1st, 1843, and died of consumption March 8th, 1869, aged 26 years. She also, as her mother had been, was for a long time the waiting-woman and refreshment seller in the ladies' room of the Norristown railroad depot.

By faithful industry and economy, therefore, the family were providing a moderate livelihood, and were enabled to buy for themselves a small home on Penn street, near Sandy, Norristown. But the death of their promising daughter preyed deeply upon the mind of the father, and seven months after her death he was taken with dropsy, and quietly passed away October 20th, 1869, aged about 70 years. He is buried in the cemetery of the First Presbyterian Church, of which his wife and daughter had become members.

In person Rev. Thomas Gibbs was above the medium size, with large, prominent eyes, which gave fluency of speech. He possessed the warm, earnest, social nature peculiar to his race, which gave him fervor in urging the motives of the gospel he preached. He was affectionate as a husband and father, and the latter married life of both Mr. and Mrs. Gibbs was a refutation of the frequent remark that second marriages are rarely happy. Mrs. Gibbs, now (1878) advanced in life, has survived her husband nine years.

HON. JOHN FREEDLEY.

Surely every man walketh in a vain show; surely they are disquieted in vain: he heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them.-Psalm XXXIX, 6.

John Freedley, a distinguished lawyer of the Norristown bar, third son of Henry and Catharine Isett Freedley, was born near Norristown in the year 1793. His father, the first noted one of the family, owned land in Whitpain and Plymouth townships, but came to Norristown about the commencement of the present century, and established himself in the pottery and brickmaking business at the rear of where the Montgomery House now stands. His brick and pottery works extended back to Washington street, and deep excavations, whence he got the material, remained at the corner of that street and Strawberry alley till within a few years ago. Henry Freedley, of German extraction, was a very industrious, enterprising business man, and accumulated means rapidly. In 1804 he'