4. A Media Wedding
It was the first wedding of a Ralph Forbes grandchild, and the entire family had made the trek from New England down to the Philadelphia area to celebrate Michael Paine’s wedding with Ruth Hyde at the Providence Friends Meeting House in Media, county seat of Delaware County and end of the trolley line out of West Philadelphia.
Providence was originally two townships founded by William Penn as he settled the land grant given him by Charles II , English King, intruder on the Algonquin homeland. A road was built to connect it with Chester, a possible port on the Delaware River, and a significant chunk, 625 acres, was bought by Thomas Minshall as farmland to supply food to the new City of Brotherly Love..
The home Minshall built by the side of the Providence Great Road was open to the community and later became the Friends Meeting House. It also became a haven for those escaping slavery on the Underground Railway. Their spirits whisper thanks to visitors in the basement that was their shelter to this day.
Ruth was the Quaker, guided by an inner light during her study at Antioch College, drawn to the North American seat of Quakerism in Philadelphia, seeking ways to serve, whether teaching children in gym class or building bridges between the nuclear powers stood off in the threat of mutual annihilation. Ruth was driven to do good.
She came from a family of actuaries, ministers and spies. Her father kept Nationwide on our side, her mother was about to find her calling as a Unitarian Minister, and her sister Sylvia was having trouble getting an upgrade to her security clearance at the Office of Naval Intelligence because her mother in law, Mrs. Hoke, co-published a journal with a member of the American Communist party.
What could go wrong?
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