Greys and was elected captain. Roberts Coles died (as did the other Confederate captain) during the Battle of Roanoke Island, February 8, 1862. Death Coles died, aged eighty one years, in his home (1303 Spruce Street in Philadelphia) on July 7, 1868. While devastated by his younger son's death fighting for the Confederates, Coles lived to see slavery abolished through President Lincoln's issuing the Emancipation Proclamation as well as ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. Coles also lived to see his elder son and namesake, Edward Coles, Jr., marry Elizabeth (Bessie) Mason Campbell, relative of anti-slavery founding father George Mason (descendant of his younger brother Thomson Mason) on February 25, 1868. Edward Coles Jr. became a prominent lawyer in Philadelphia, and a long-time vestry member of Christ Church, which still displays a plaque honoring his service on the south wall inside the nave. The Coles family grave at Woodlands Cemetery in west Philadelphia includes the final resting places of the former governor, his wife Sally, as well as their three children. His daughter Mary Coles (who never married) and Caroline Sanford founded the Church Training school for Deaconesses in Philadelphia in 1891, and served as its president as well as a faculty member. The school generally graduated 7 to 10 pupils per year (the highest number in residence was 30 in 1912-13), which were in great demand and served not only in hospitals and parishes in Pennsylvania, but throughout the United States and missions abroad. In 1895 Mary Coles secured the re-interment of her brother Roberts from the family cemetery at Enniscorthy. Edward Jr. and Bessie Coles were also buried at the new family gravesite. Legacy Coles was among the very few slaveholders who manumitted his slaves entirely as a testament to the republican ethos that was at the heart of the American Revolution and enlightenment. He is also noteworthy for his attempts to pressure Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Jefferson Randolph to work to end of slavery in Virginia and for James Madison to free his slaves. Coles County, Illinois was named for him, and more recently an elementary school on the south side of Chicago. During his lifetime, the Illinois legislature named the county seat of then-huge Pike County, Coles Grove. Coles Grove was renamed Gilead when it became the county seat of Calhoun County when Calhoun County was divided from Pike County. While a sign remains to signify Gilead