London Grove Township
London Grove Meeting
The London Grove Meeting was established in 1714 at the home of John Smith in Marlborough. It wasn't until in 1724 that friends of the Marlborough meeting would have the liberty to build their own meeting house on a corner of London Grove Township. They proposed to keep the meeting house close to Marlborough so they can continue meeting every first day of the week. Over time the building was expanded, but then it was caught in the 1827 Quaker schism where the Orthodox Quakers parted ways from the followers of Elias Hicks.
The Pusey, Pennock, Swayne, Lamborn, Baily, Speakman, and Hayes families were prominent among the early members of the meeting.
Dingee & Conard Grow Plants
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"Alfred F. Conard was born in Philadelphia but raised in West Grove where he started a plant nursery. After the Civil War he and his partner Charles Dingee decided to specialize in propagation and sale of rosebushes for distribution by mail throughout the U.S. The Conard Jones Company was largely responsible for the popularization of roses as a flower of choice and for helping to establish the mail order business a few years before Aaron Montgomery Ward started selling general merchandise from Chicago. Conard died in 1906. His products came with a guarantee, another innovation for that time. The Conard Pyle Company still operates at 25 Lewis Road West Grove. The railroads in the region gave birth to an explosion of floral products exported throughout the country during the last quarter of the 19th century. Dingee and Conard's facility had three acres of greenhouses while another farm owned by the Chester County Carnation Society in Kennett Square shipped 200,000 carnations during Christmas of 1891."
- Mark Ashton, Chester County: A Modern History
Mark Sullivan, Journalist
Mark Sullivan (1874-1952) was the son of Cornelius Sullivan, an immigrant from Ireland who occupied the Laramore farm in London Grove from 1857 to 1865. He lived his life as a farmer and a mail carrier. Mark began writing at the age of 18 after getting a job at the West Chester Morning Republican. After saving enough money, he attended Harvard University, earning both. a bachelors and a law degree. He moved to New York to continue working at other newspaper and magazine companies. In 1919, he moved to Washington, D.C. where he was that city’s correspondent for the New York Evening Post. While there he and his wife befriended a neighbor in Herbert Hoover.
"Along the way he published 6,000 columns, usually under the rubric 'Mark Sullivan says.' Between 1926 and 1935 he published a five volume history of America covering 1900-1925. Dan Rather issued a condensation of it in 1996 calling Sullivan’s work a book that 'captured the era completely, sold well, and was widely acclaimed for its excellence.' He wrote an autobiography in 1938 titled 'The Education of an American.' In the same year he celebrated 50 years as a journalist by serving as editor for the day of the Daily Local News in West Chester, successor to the Morning Republican. In his final years he continued to write his column but did so from his parent’s 200 acre farm in London Grove where he was born."
- Mark Ashton, Chester County: A Modern History
Bibliography
Futhey, John Smith and Gilbert Cope. History of Chester County, Pennsylvania: With Genealogical and Biographical Sketches. (Philadelphia: Louis H. Everts, 1881): 237.
James, Arthur Edwin. The Potters and Potteries of Chester County, Pennsylvania. (West Chester: Chester County Historical Society, 1945): 44.