![\"41_image01\"](\"http:\/\/radnorhistory.org\/archive\/articles\/ytmt\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/41_image01.jpg\")
<\/a>Here are the Wayne Estate houses, as they appeared when they were just completed, looking very trim and neat, but against a background strange to eyes of the present day. For most of our wide-spreading trees were slender saplings then, and our tall, thick hedges had not even been planted.<\/p>\nOther things are strange, too\u2026 the quiet streets free from automobile traffic with only the occasional horse and cart as the pleasure vehicle. Some show families sitting on their front porches, others are of young people on a tennis court or in groups on the lawn, and two are of a picnic at Valley Forge in August, 1890.<\/p>\n
As your columnist examines more closely the picture which she has chosen for illustration for this week\u2019s column, she asks, \u201cWhat did the young people do for entertainment and amusement in Wayne in 1890?\u201d And Mr. Schultz answers from the experience of his own youth.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen young persons went to a friend\u2019s house at night, they had to walk, carrying a lantern when there was no moonlight\u2026 the general evening\u2019s relaxation was to play cards, euchre, poker and the new game, bridge, just introduced. In summer, outside of the baseball club, many families had tennis courts. There were dancing parties at the Saturday Club house about once a month, and amateur theatricals occasionally in the Wayne Opera House. And then there were summer \u201chops\u201d at the Bryn Mawr and Devon Hotels.<\/p>\n
\u201cMrs. Kate Longstreth Sayen was always popular with the younger set,\u201d said Mr. Schultz. \u201cIt was she who chaperoned the large group at the Valley Forge picnic shown in the two pictures. She invited enough young people to fill two hay wagons. I was camera man with old style glass plates and a tripod. After climbing the old wooden observation tower and visiting Washington\u2019s headquarters, which had a small relic room in the rear of the museum, we all seated ourselves on the slope of Mt. Joy and opened the food and drink for supper. There was then (in August 1890) no State Park and only a few scattered ancient houses which had not been destroyed in the 1777 raid of Colonel Grey\u2019s British Cavalry, burning the iron forge of Dewees and Potts.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The following is one of the pictures taken on that August day of 1890. The background is a far cry from the beautifully kept park-like Valley Forge of today. And as we look at people of 60 years ago, so formally dressed for this picture, we cannot but wonder what they would have thought of the picnic attire of their grandchildren and great-grandchildren of today \u2013 the wind blown hair of our hatless girls and boys \u2013 their slacks and their shorts \u2013 their bare legs \u2013 their feet encased in flopping moccasins!<\/p>\n
Complete identification of all those at the picnic has been made by Mr. Schultz.<\/p>\n
So much for the hayride to Valley Forge Park in the big horse drawn wagons and for the picnic on Mt. Joy.<\/p>\n