John Charles Manton died on the 27th of September, 2025 after a long struggle with cancer. He was born at Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia in 1948. The third son of John Jackson Manton and Muriel Alice (Langan) Manton. He is preceded in death by his parents and brothers Robert and Kenneth. John was educated in the Philadelphia Public Schools, received his BS in Education from Millersville University, and a MS in Library & Information Science from Drexel University.  During his life, he was employed by the Free Library of Philadelphia as a librarian and as a rare book cataloguer at the American Philosophical Society. In addition to his work in libraries he was employed by several Philadelphia law firms and Insurance/Title companies where he learned about Session Laws, tracing deeds, and became familiar with old property atlases and maps, land title searching, older estate documents, and how to access court records. John’s love of history, particularly of the 1700’s and 1800’s used these skills to research families and old buildings for preservation nominations and to write and publish several books: Victorian Roxborough: an Architectural History (1983); A Splendid Legacy: Saint Timothy's Roxborough 1859-1984; Bygones: a Guide to Historic Roxborough-Manayunk (1990); and Frankford The Borough of Frankford 2020.  His research and writing created Cornerstones: a Guide to the Historic Sources, Sites, and Institutions of Chestnut Hill, Mount Airy, and Germantown, 1800-1920. He has also abstracted and indexed the interments of several Roxborough-Manayunk burial grounds, using public documents to reproduce records lost by fire and neglect. His skill as a calligrapher enabled him to reproduce those records in the same manner that the lost originals were created. Many of his handwritten volumes are available at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania on microfilm.

John was a man of passion for his ideas and thoughts which could sometimes lead to disagreements. Yet there was the other side of him that would literally have him bake a cake or more likely a French recipe to bring to a friend in need. His long endurance of his cancer and the associated treatments were cared for lovingly by the staff at Jefferson Hospital. He challenged them but embraced them and yielded to their care. To them he brought painted plaster castings gifts of sleeping babies or Norwegian Green Forrest men, symbols of the blessings of life and protection. With each visit he brought a medical log of the prior month’s experience that he wrote using pen and ink for his physicians in old English calligraphy. More than the cancer pain that he felt he complained about the loss of feeling in his fingers that was robbing him of his writing. As the illness progressed John could speak less but when he did in those quiet moments, he was grateful for the friends he had made during his life and the nurses and doctors that cared for him.

William Penn’s writings in Fruits of Solitude were a touchstone for John during his life. It is fitting then to remember the words William wrote after his first wife’s death:

Death is but crossing the world as friends do the sea; For they live in one another still….

This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friends and society are in the best sense ever present and immortal