IN THE NORTHERN LIBERTIES, FAIRMOUNT PARK COLEMAN-BARCLAY-FRANKS-PASCHALL-LEWIS -WHARTON

COODFORD is situated in the East Park at York and Thirty-third Streets near the Dauphin Street station of the Fairmount Park Electric Railway. The fine old doorway is reached by six soapstone steps and opens into a large hall with an entrance at once into front rooms on either side. Beyond these doors are square columns against the walls of the hall with crosspiece of detail work, but no stairway appears. This ascends from a large hall in the centre of the house reached by a door in the side. The stairway and halls are spacious and the rooms large, each with a fireplace with ornamental iron back and square bricks for hearth. In the front south room the tiles surrounding the fireplace are blue and represent Elizabethan knights and ladies. The cornices in the rooms are rounding, the boards of the floors an inch and a half thick and dowelled together. The doors have brass hanging loops instead of knobs and the woodwork, including mantels and wainscot, is in fine condition.

The ground upon which it stands was granted by William Penn, February 16, 1693, to Mary Rotchford, who deeded the tract of two hundred acres to Thomas Shute in the same year. At his death in 1754 it was sold to Abel James, a son-in-law of Thomas Chalkley and one of the consignees of the tea in the Polly which was sent

back to England. He sold it to Joseph Shute, son of Thomas, in 1756, and immediately afterward it was sold at sheriff's sale, twelve acres going to William Coleman, who built the house. He was a friend of Franklin, member of the Junto," a scholar, and an eminent jurist. Franklin says of him:

And William Coleman, then a merchant's clerk, about my age, who had the coolest, clearest head, the best heart, and the exactest morals of almost any man I ever met with. He became afterwards a merchant of great note, and one of our provincial judges. Our friendship continued without interruption to his death, upwards of forty years.

This in describing the members of the "Junto" which met on Friday evenings and was for mutual improvement. Every member must produce in his turn one or more queries on any point of morals, politics, or natural philosophy, to be discussed by the company, and once in three months produce and read an essay of his own writing, on any subject he pleased. Franklin says it "was the best school of philosophy, morality and politics that then existed in the province."

William Coleman was a member of Common Council in 1739, justice of the peace and judge of the County Courts in 1751, and judge of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania from 1759 until he died, aged sixty-four, in 1769. The mansion on the "East side of the river Schuylkill and west side of Wessahykken Road" shows him fond of study and retirement.

The executors of William Coleman sold the place to Alexander Barclay, Comptroller of His Majesty's Customs at the Port of Philadelphia. He was the son of

David Barclay and the grandson of Robert Barclay of Ury, the famous Quaker theologian and "Apologist."

He died in 1771 and the property then became the home of David Franks, the son of Jacob and Abigail Franks, and an eminent Jewish merchant. He was very prominent socially and a public-spirited man, the signer of the Non-Importation Resolutions in 1765, in which the signers agreed" not to have any goods shipped from Great Britain until after the repeal of the Stamp Act," a member of the Provincial Assembly in 1748, the register of wills, and a subscriber to the City Dancing Assembly. He married Margaret, daughter of Peter Evans, and has been thought to have deserted the faith of his fathers. This, however, is disproved by an affidavit he made before Judge Peters in 1792. The family was descended from Aaron Franks, the companion and friend of King George of Hanover, to whom he loaned the most valuable jewels in the crown at the coronation. The son Jacob came to New York about 1711, and his son David came to Philadelphia soon after 1738, a niece having married Haym Salomon, whose money joined with Robert Morris's in financing the Revolution.

David Franks was the agent of the Crown in Philadelphia during the troublous times and was made commissary of the British prisoners in the American lines until 1778, when he was detected in endeavouring to transmit a letter inimical to the American cause. His neighbour, General Benedict Arnold, in command of Philadelphia and living in the Macpherson mansion nearby, arrested him and threw him into gaol. He was deprived of his commission as commissary and compelled to re