MILESTONES. 77 



ing house. On it are four stones. The first, or No. i, seems 

 to be missing. It would be quite within the now thickly set- 

 tled portion of Chester. 



No. 2 is in front of the entrance to Senator Sproul's home, 

 " Lapidea." It has the initials I. W. upon it, which by Miss 

 Sharpless are said to be the initials of Isaac Weaver, a 

 schoolmaster of that vicinity, who taught her father in the 

 school house near by. Her father was born in iSii. What 

 connection, if any, Isaac Weaver had with this stone, bear- 

 ing such initials, is not stated. Its great size, very quaint let- 

 tering and general appearance would indicate it as no recent 

 stone, but a ver^- old one. It is two feet wide, five to six 

 inches thick and forty-eight inches high. 



Xo. 3 is a reproduction. The old stone was gone, and the 

 Colonial Dames had a stone cutter of Media find a similar 

 one, and cut in the " 3 M. to C," and re-erect it in 1915. It 

 is seventeen inches wide, four to four and a half inches thick, 

 and eighteen inches high. 



No. 4 is believed to be the original stone. It was found 

 near the blacksmith shop near Wallingford bridge and reset in 

 place. It is about thirteen inches wide, two and a half inches 

 thick and fifteen inches high. It reads " 4 M. to C." 



No. 5. This is the stone of greatest interest because of 

 the date of 1705 and initials " T. N." It stood until 1915 

 inside the wall of the Providence Meeting House. It was 

 then reset outside in the road, and the initials and date recut 

 or deepened. I have photographs of it both before and after. 

 The " 5 " is the correct distance to Chester. The initials of 

 " T. N." are presumed by some to refer to Thomas Nossiter, 

 who was a man of prominence and an early settler in that 

 vicinity. In fact, the road was laid out by a jury which met 

 at his house, according to Ashmead, who states, in his " His- 

 tory of Delaware County," page 652 : — 



" Seventeen persons composed the Grand Jury empanelled to look 

 oat a convenient highwaj- leading from Providence to Chester and the 



