Tag: Pennsylvania

The Book “Our Pennsylvania”, part 3 – Tinicumn, Fort New Gothenburg, Pritnz

/ Emma C. Patterson

Scanning in retrospect in her mind’s eye a number of books on the history of Pennsylvania which this writer has perused more or less thoroughly in assembling the material for this column, few, if any, have for her the warmth of appeal that is contained in “Our Pennsylvania”. Written by our Main Line neighbor, Amy Oakley, and illustrated by her artist husband, Thornton Oakley, often referred to as “T.O.”, it somehow inspires in its readers the desier to traverse the roads the Oakleys have traversed, and to see the sights which they have seen. Certainly this will be done with a deeper understanding of the historic past, and a keen appreciation of the present, if these readers remember what Mrs. Oakley has written.

Nowhere, perhaps, is her deep-seated affection for her native state more manifest than in the chapter on “The Glorious Delaware”. Her pride in the history of “a waterway that, for the early settlers, was a thoroughfare comparable tot eh Saint Lawrence to the colonists of Quebec” is something that she communicates to those among her readers who call this general section of Southeastern Pennsylvania “home”. And from a purely practical point of view this chapter is a concise guide book to point of nearby historic interest accessible to the automobilist.

To most of us the City of Chester is a thriving industrial center famous for its shipyards. So modern is it that perhaps few among us realize as we drive hurriedly along its busy streets that it is the second oldest settlement in Pennsylvania, with still a few reminders in it of those early days in the middle 1600’s when it was called Upland. It was in 1644 that it was founded by the Swedes, just a year after Fort New Gothenburg was erected on neighboring Tinicum Island. “Here at Tinicum”, according to Mrs. Oakley, “were established the first court, church and schoolhouse in present Pennsylvania. The wedding of Armegat, the governor’s daughter, to Lieutenant John Papegoya, commander of Fort Christina, was the first marriage of Europeans within the borders of our State”.

In what is now known as Governor Printz Park the foundations of the fabulous Printzhof, the capitol-residence established by John Printz has been excavated, though nothing has been done in the way of reconstructing that historic building. This foundation with the original steps leading down to the river may be viewed by sightseers interested in the historic past of our great state.

One of the few surviving log cabins of those early New Sweden colonists stands in the borough of Prospect Park, not far from Tinicum. it is known as the John Morton Homestead and belongs to the Commonwealth, as does Governor Printz Park, Morten Mortenson, who arrived in America from Sweden in 1654, was the builder of part of this log cabin, to which was later joined a second log house constructed by his son, grandfather of John Morton, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

“As the birthplace of this distinguished Swedish descendant, whose vote, in June 1776 ‘with those of Benjamin Franklin and James Wilson swung Pennsylvania tot eh side of independence by a majority of one’, the building has become a national shrine.” A charming sketch of John Morton’s homestead, as made by Mr. Oakley, illustrtes this part of the chapter on the “Glorious Delaware.”

Other Historic point of interest in Chester are the Penn Memorial Stone, at the northeast corner of Front and Penn Streets. THis marks the first landing place of William Penn in October, 1682. The site of the residence of Robert Wade, where Penn spent his first night ashore, also has its marks. Wade was the first Quaker to settle in Pennsylvania.

Mrs. Oakley’s description of “Pennsburg”, Penn’s manor house built in 1683 and recreated in 1938 by Brognard Okie, should inspire many an automobilist to take Route 13 “which skirts the river from Philadelphia to the Trenton bridge, and has been known since 1677 as the ‘King’s Highway’.” After going through what was once known as “Penn’s Sylvania”, where centuries-old buttonwoods spoke to the Oakleys of a time long past, they came on this “crisp day of early December”, on an inlet of the Delaware where “thousands of ducks, southward bound, floated, rose on the wing, swerved, or settled amid a restless honking host . . . ”

Here in Falls Township, Bucks County, is Pennsburg, William Penn’s country home, built in 1683-1700, now administered by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. On the left, as the Oakleys approached the manor house itself, are “orchard, vineyard, kitchen and herb garden, ice house, office, smoke house, brew house . . . adjoining are ample kitchen and bakery with ovens so vast that it took two days to heat them. Food, as at Mount Vernon, was carried across an outdoor path to the lordly dining room.”

The description of the lovely interior of Pennsburg is fascination enough to lure any sightseer to this beautifully reconstructed mansion with its authenticated furnishings of the period in which William Penn lived there. “Wrought iron nails are visible in the wide-boarded floors, for which primeval oaks were sought”, according to Mrs. Oakley’s description, which continues: “Elegance marks the mansion furniture and the crimson brocade of window hangings . . . across the hall the wainscoted dining room, with refectory table and massive Dutch chairs . . . above the dining room is a guest room, impressive with canopied four-post bedstead and especially noted for its highboy, one of the original Penn pieces for which millionaires have offered fabulous sums.”

Pursuing their way upriver to Washington’s Crossing, the Oakleys came to the marker that commemorates the spot where Washington crossed the Delaware on Christmas night, 1776, the eve of the Battle of Trenton. on their way to Bowman’s Hill Tower, with its view of the New Jersey shore, they stopped to admire the recently restored Thompson-Neely mansion where General Washington discussed plans for an offensive with some of his officers.

Beyond Washington Crossing lies New Hope with its many old homesteads amid the beauty of the surrounding scenery. The settlement is now one of painters, writers and musicians, Here, too, is the quaint old Delaware Canal, construction of which was begun in 1827. Two sketches by Mr. Oakley, one of the “Delaware Canal” and the other of “Mules on the towpath” add further interest to this part of the chapter . . . “New Hope is among the chosen places to which an artist never says good-bye, but always au revoir,” Mrs. Oakley says of this lovely artist colony spot as she passes on to description of more distant spots.

So much of “our” part of Pennsylvania. Before the close of their book, the Oakleys have covered the length and breadth of the State by way of description and illustration. This brief resume of some of the early chapters has been given with the hope that some of the readers of this column may be inspired to see for themselves more of the lovely surrounding countryside and of the many historical sites and edifices in our immediate vicinity.

The Book “Our Pennsylvania”, part 2 – Old St. David’s Church, Wayne Family, old inns, Longwood and its gardens

/ Emma C. Patterson

A charming sketch of “Old St. David’s at Radnor”, where Amy Oakley’s grandmother came so faithfully with “her little brood” each Sunday, illustrates the chapter on “The Main Line and Valley Forge” in the Oakley’s book of “Our Pennsylvania”.

Few, if any, among the readers of this column have failed to visit this historic spot. To many it is a pilgrimage frequently made. Most famous of the many graves in the churchyard that surrounds the little stone edifice on three sides, is that of Mad Anthony Wayne, for whom our community is named. His “madness”, comments Mrs. Oakley, “consisted of fearlessness”. Standing but a few miles from St. David’s Church is “Waynesborough”, where Anthony Wayne was born in 1745. Begun by his grandfather in 1724, and added to in 1765, the original house is still occupied by a descendant of the Wayne famly.

Another old church in our immediate vicinity of which Mrs. Oakley writes and of which her husband has made a delightful sketch, is Radnor Friends’ Meeting House, “dominant above Ithan Creek” on Conestoga road at Ithan. Dating form 1718, this house of worship was used as quarters for officers during the Revolutionary War as well as for a soldiers’ hospital with food and fuel supplied by Radnor Friends. Since 1939 the structure has housed the Radnor United Monthly Meeting.

As the Oakleys traverse this general vicinity they recall the old grist mills once so abundant in the neighborhood. One still in operation is the Great Valley Mill established in 1710 on North Valley road in Paoli. On the estate connected with it are the famous rock gardens known to many of us as the property of Mr. and Mrs. Robert H. Colley. Other rapidly vanishing landmarks of the Main Line are the taverns which “once punctuated every mile of the coach road to Lancaster.” The Old Buch at Haverford, while still in good repair, is no longer an inn, nor is the General Warren at Malvern. The “hoary Sorrel Horse”, at Ithan, built in 1768, Mrs. Oakley recalls to our memories as an historic hostelry which often sheltered Washington and Lafayette. It is now a private house. The General Wayne Inn, which adjoins Merion Friends’ Meeting, still fulfills its original purpose.

Several pages of “Our Pennsylvania” are devoted to Valley Forge Park, site of the winter encampment of General George Washington and the Continental Army in 1777-1778. Even more familiar to most of our readers than the winter scene at Valley Forge is that of the blooming of dogwood there, which, according to tradition should begin on the tenth of May. It was from Valley Forge stock that the first pink dogwood was developed, according to Mrs. Oakley, “the white being a wide-spread native of the hills of Pennsylvania”. As all of us who have ever attempted a pilgrimage by automobile to Valley Forge in May recall, it is then that “cars from every state converge to see the glory of the hills bathed in clouds of pink and white”.

From the chapter on “The Main Line and Valley Forge”, the Oakleys pass on to one entitled “Vignettes of Chester County”. An exquisite full length sketch of the Mill at Chadds Ford with Howard Pyle in the foreground prefaces this chapter which is headed by a smaller sketch of the oldest house in Downingtown. This is a log cabin, said to date from about 1710, though many believe, Mrs. Oakley tells us, that “from its expert construction . . . it may have been erected still earlier by the Swedes, who introduced the log house with mortised corners into this continent”. Downingtown takes its name from an old grist mill, dating from 1739, owned by one Thomas Downing, a Quaker.

West Chester, linked with East Downington “by a road through rural pasture where contented Holsteins chew their cud in meadows beside the Brandywine”, is next on the Oakley itinerary. Originally a little village known as Turks Head, its well known tavern, West Chester “has been the seat of Chester County since 1786. It was two years later that it changed its original name to its later one, adopting the name of West Chester, since it was “west of Chester”. Among its present points of interest, Mrs. Oakley enumerates State Teachers College, Westtown School and Cheyney State Teachers College, founded by Quakers as an institution for colored youth.

On the east bank of the Brandywine is the Village of Chadds Ford, named for John Chad (original spelling), who established a ferry there in 1737. The original Chad homestead is the subject of a well known painting by a Chadds Ford native, Andrew Wyeth, son of N. C. Wyeth, the late distinguished illustrator and mural painter.

Among the illustrations for this chapter on Chester County is one of the quaint old octagonal school house at Birmingham Meeting, near Chadds Ford. This school building dates back to 1753. Like Kennett Meeting House, Birmingham Meeting was in the historic battle area. Nearby Kennett Square is a flourishing present day community known as the largest mushroom-growing area in the United States.

A description of Longwood concludes this Chester County chapter. According to Mrs. Oakley “it rivals Verailles as to gardens and fountains, while the conservatory in its vast extent and the glory of its floral contents seems unbelievable–the ultimate creation of a conjurer’s wand”. An interesting historical note in connection with Longwood is that the original land was conveyed by William Penn to George Pierce whose son built the house occupied by the present owner, though now doubled in size by the addition of a twin mansion. According to our historian, the “long wood”, from which the early Quakers took the name, has largely disappeared, but many of the rare trees date back to plantings made in 1800 by the Pierces.

Our own historic Delaware County comes next on the Oakley itinerary before they leave this general vicinity for more distant parts of “Our Pennsylvania”.

(To be Continued)

The Book “Our Pennsylvania”, part 1 by Amy Oakley, illustrated by Thornton Oakley, Bryn Mawr College

/ Emma C. Patterson

Although a number of contemporary reference books have been used from time to time in writing this column, so many of the others have been ancient tomes that this columnist thinks mostly of yellowed pages and frail bindings as she reviews in her mind the columns of the past two or three years. And supplementing old books have been time worn records, many written in faded ink.

By way of contrast we turn today to a book published only about a year ago by two of our Delaware County neighbors. “Our Pennsylvania”, by Amy Oakley, with illustrations by her well known artist husband, Thornton Oakley.

The Oakleys live at “Woodstock”, their lovely home on Spring Mill road where it is intersected by Sproul road. This book on their native state is dedicated to the memory of their parents, James Hunter Ewing, of Philadelphia, and John Milton Oakley, of Pittsburgh. In writing it they have traversed the length and the breadth of the Keystone State, so named, Mrs. Oakley explains in her preface, because this Commonwealth, holding seventh place geographically among the thirteen original states, was the “key of the federal arch.”

Large though the state may be, there is “no monotony to travel in Pennsylvania” in the opinion of the Oakleys. Not only are there famous historical shrines and “time mellowed architectural survivors of the years 1790-1800, when Philadelphia was the capital of the United States, “but forests cover approximately half of Pennsylvania’s area since the reforestation of the State. As the reader of any volume such as this might easily anticipate in advance of perusing it, one of the greatest problems of the author has been that of omission. “Exigencies of time and space” have not permitted a complete picture of the State either in the way of story or illustration. But as the reader closes the blue and gold volume on the delightful experience of traversing Pennsylvania with the Oakleys, he may well wonder not at what has been omitted, but rather that it has been possible to include so much that is vital in so limited a space.

Certainly that particular section of Pennsylvania which in a broad sense we may term “our own” has been described in pleasing detail. The first five chapters include those of “Historic Philadelphia”, “Modern Philadelphia”, “The Main Line and Valley Forge”, “Vignettes of Chester County” and “The Glorious Delaware”.

The first fourteen of Mr. Oakley’s illustrations have been made in Philadelphia. Others that follow are of Washington’s headquarters at Valley Forge, Old ST. Davids at Radnor, The Augustinian Chapel at Villanova, Radnor Meeting House at Ithan, Plymouth Meeting Electric Station and May Day at Bryn Mawr College. Still others that follow have been made in Delaware and Chester Counties. They show a wide diversity of subject and interest. Just as the text covers the past and the present in order to give a full and comprehensive word picture of Pennsylvania as it is today, so do the illustrations present both the historic and the contemporary.

For her chapter on “The Main Line and Valley Forge”, Mrs. Oakley writes, “Continuity is no less in evidence on the Main Line than in the City of Brotherly Love itself. Our common memories go back, through hearsay, not necessarily of our own but of neighboring families, to the days when the Old Lancaster road (now appropriately called the Conestoga road) was an Indian trail”.

A paragraph or two further along she adds, “The Main Line is no Styx; but it is a region where the inhabitants each feel in possession, like Saint Peter, of a key to Heaven. ‘All this and Heaven, too’ is the attitude of the confirmed Main Liners–among whom I am fortunate to be able to include myself, my Scotch forebears having settled, in 1757, on the farm where their descendant still dwells.”

Since the Oakleys are residents of Villanova it is natural that in enumerating Main Line colleges, some slight special emphasis should be placed on Villanova, founded in 1842 by the Augustinian Fathers who had been established in Philadelphia more than fifty years before their purchase of the farm then known as Belle Aire, in Radnor Township, Delaware County.

It has the distinction of being the oldest Catholic college in Pennsylvania, having been named “in honor of the Spanish Augustinian Archbishop of Valencia, canonized as St. Thomas of Villa Nova, who had, in 1533, sent missionaries to Mexico”. The school which began with 13 students now has a registration of approximately 5000. Its campus which now covers 166 acres has 28 buildings on it, the most conspicuous being the chapel itself, “recognizable from afar”, because “with twin steeples, like cathedral spires” it stands on such high ground. An exquisite sketch of this building features the chapter.

“May Day, Bryn Mawr College” has been chosen for the subject of a scene typifying the activities of that Main Line institution of learning where the “flag of scholarship flies as high as ever” and where “its wealth of events, intellectual, musical, artistic, held in Goodhart Hall, have won for it a leavening place in the life of the community”. And “the same may be said for Haverford and, eleven miles away, the college of Swarthmore”, Mrs. Oakley’s narration continues.

All three of these institutions, which were originally founded by Quakers, have the exchange of professors, and even of students, an innovation instituted during the War which has since proven so successful that its continuation is assured.

Preparatory schools, Mrs. Oakley mentions as a special feature of the Overbrook, Wynnewood, Haverford and Bryn Mawr area. Baldwin School shares with the College its Mrs. Otis Skinner Memorial Theater “erected to one well beloved on the Main Line”. To our own local high school Mrs. Oakley pays especial tribute when she writes “Lower Merion and also Radnor High School are second to none”.

In connection with Bryn Mawr College, the author of “Our Pennsylvania” reminisces of the days when Woodrow Wilson lived with his young family in a house on the grounds of the Lower Merion Baptist Church across Gulph road from the college. The man who was laterto become president of the United States during one of its most crucial periods was then a professor at Bryn Mawr. The churchyard which surrounds the Baptist Church is a non-sectarian one where many of William Penn’s descendants are buried. “In the churchyard also”, Mrs. Oakley writes, “are early Presbyterians who preferred to worship with the Baptists (where they were welcomed as members of the Board) than with the West Angicans at Old St. David’s”. And then in delightfully personal vein, the author adds, “My widowed grandmother was so faithful and so punctual at St. David’s, with her little brood, that the rector was known to delay beginning the service, in snowy weather, realizing her lateness must have been unavoidable”.

(To be continued)