A few years ago, I was given an old book on Quaker history. Inside was the signature of the book’s owner: Randal Pratt. And I thought “Who was Randal Pratt?” Today, with a laptop and the internet, the answer is usually close at hand. So off I went in search of Randal Pratt.
Randal was descended from a long line of Pratts, starting with the emigrant, Abraham DePratt who came from France. Abraham’s son Joseph Sr. dropped the “de”, and bought a property in Edgmont on which he built a stone farmhouse, that survives today as the Colonial Plantation at Ridley Creek State Park. Joseph’s namesake son, Joseph Jr., purchased 250 acres along the Crum Creek in Marple in 1767, and named this farm Springton. His son David inherited the farm on his father’s death, and moved his large family there, including Randal, the tenth of eleven children of David and Lydia Hoopes. The farm bordered Gradyville road and so was an easy walk to his grandfather Pratt’s farm in Edgmont.
Randal’s mother died at the farm in 1836. That event cast a pall over Randal’s marriage to Mary Goodwin Lewis of Newtown in 1837, at the Quaker Meeting House. Randal brought his bride back to the expanded family farm, now 750 acres along Crum Creek, where they raised eight children. In
1860, the census records show Randal as a farmer in Marple, living with his wife and five children (ages ranging from 7 to 17), his 76-year-old father-in-law, and two young farm laborers.
Randal was industrious: in addition to operating the farm and adjacent mill, and reading Quaker history (over 900 pages!), he came up with an improvement to a horse rake which he patented in 1856. A newspaper account said that the rake “far exceeded any horsepower heretofore in use” and “was probably destined to supercede all rakes now in use.”
Randal died at age 64 in 1866, and is buried near his parents at Newtown Square Friends Meeting. His farmhouse, described in 1920 as “one of Delaware County’s historic homes”, was knocked down in 1931, when a dam was erected on Crum Creek, flooding the entire Pratt farm to create a water reservoir.
Randal, a man of learning, would probably be delighted to know that every time the local residents turn their faucets on, out comes pure fresh water from the reservoir named after his family’s old property, “Springton Farm”.
For more history on Edgmont Township, Delaware County, and membership information, please visit our Facebook group, “Edgmont Historical Society.”