CHAPTER XIV

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In 1699 the ebb and flow of the Delaware’s tide were slipping placidly by the City of Brotherly Love, when the founder of Dorminghurst first saw the sphere of his future labors. He was but five and twenty years of age, and the good ship Canterbury brought him hither as secretary of the Proprietor and Governor of Pennsylvania.

He was tall and athletic; a fine scholar, versed in Latin, Greek, French and Spanish. He was a member of the Society of Friends. Imbued with all the ambition of a young, vigorous and refined manhood, James Greydon prospered under the patronage of his benefactor, William Penn. He attended to all the official correspondence of the Colony of Pennsylvania, and to all the private accounts and business of the Proprietor of the Colony. He was a faithful steward to a good and liberal man. He attended all the meetings which William Penn held with the Indian tribes for the purpose of buying lands west of the Susquehanna. The details of these vast transactions rested in the able hands of James Greydon.

All that tract of land lying on both sides of the Susquehanna and the lakes adjacent, in or near the Province of Pennsylvania, was confined at this time by several treaties entered into with the Conostogas, the Shawnees, the Iroquois, the Susquehannas and the Onondagas,—all of whom loved Penn and his friends; so that the language of the treaty had these remarkable words of brotherly relationship:

“They shall for ever hereafter be as one head and one heart, and live in true friendship and amity as one people.”

When Penn was obliged to return to England in 1701, the management of his personal and real estate in the Colony was left to James Greydon. Greydon, therefore, had to receive the Indian deputations, as well as to superintend all the fur traffic with the tribes for the benefit of the proprietor’s estate. He could hardly escape becoming a large landlord by the opportunities thrust into his way in the routine of his duties.

However, the mere acquirement of riches was not gratifying to James Greydon. He not only wished to establish his family comfortably in the enjoyments of a large estate, but he cherished even more highly those graces of mind and body, which accompany the love of books and learning.

Consequently, a few years after his establishment in the Colony and his marriage to a daughter of a wealthy merchant, he consolidated his earnings into several large tracts of land between Philadelphia and the settlement of Friends called Germantown. He named the estate “Dorminghurst.”

The mansion was finished in 1728. At the start, the family occupied the beautiful spot for a summer resort. Many times its master rode from Philadelphia on his finely-bred horse to superintend the clearing of fields, the planting of fruit trees and the setting out of rare shrubs for landscape effects. His pride was aroused in laying out and adorning with hemlocks an avenue which was to be the grand approach to his mansion. While out in the wilderness west of the Susquehanna surveying his possessions, the beauty of the native hemlocks amazed him so forcibly that he gathered, with his own hands, one hundred young trees, and upon his return to Dorminghurst in the autumn had them re-planted for the glory of his own handiwork. Hawthorns, walnuts, hazels and fruit trees sent out by William Penn from England found appropriate spots each year for the embellishment of James Greydon’s home.

Nature had provided Dorminghurst with many attractive features. The primeval forest of oaks, elms and maples needed only the exercise of taste and the use of artistic judgment to convert the undulating natural landscapes into lasting impressions of the beautiful. To cull out the obtruding exuberance of the primitive woodland was a triumph of art. To create a vista of the rivulet, Wingohocking, crooking up a little valley, and to present expanding miles of swelling meadows over which grazed sleek cattle, sometimes resting under a lone magnolia or a group of beeches, were passions in the heart of a devotee of Virgil’s Georgics. The sloping of the ground in all directions from the site of the mansion-house allowed the broad avenue between the hemlocks to curve around each side of the buildings. One way a serpentine road descended through a dense wild-wood grove, and then meandered through the gully, giving perspectives or vistas through the shadowy treetops; the other way skirted enclosures for fruits and esculents on one side, and on the other passed broad lawns rising and falling in harmony ’midst the clumps of spruces, pines and firs.

The development of a family seat in the early Colonial times aroused all the latent energies and pride of its founder. All the true domestic instincts found gratification in first choosing a picturesque location and then unfolding plans for landscape gardening. Problems arose. The manufacture of the brick, and the hewing of the timbers, from off the proprietor’s own soil, the construction of a mill on the stream to grind his own grain, and the building of his smoke-house, brew-house, a place for his loom, his dairy, and his ashery, rounded out the domestic economy of a Colonial gentleman.

The realizations of every domestic felicity were found in these establishments. The capital sprung from the soil, and the labor bestowed brought forth bountiful fruits of the earth, which are sweet to all true men. These treasuries of a home and the securities for a future were sounder and more human than an up-to-date gentleman’s commercial assets which are artificial and sometimes of fictitious origin. No market quotations ruined the Colonial home.

After the needs of the home were supplied from the soil, from the spinning-wheel and loom and the dairy and the poultry-yard, the surplus could be traded for the small needs of money. The Colonist was supported by nature’s products direct from the soil; the man of the present is the offspring of artificial institutions of money and of corporations—the slave of vested rights, whose origins have mostly been the unearned increment.

But, aside from the domestic felicity of the Colonial families, the social phases of their lives were no less distinguished than their hospitable homes. After the mansion was built and the servants or slaves well ordered; after the smoke-house was full of meat; after the mill was full of grain; the home-made ale or cider in the cellar; the spinners and weavers busy at the warp and woof; the travelling shoemaker busy at the year’s foot-wear (made from the home-tanned leather), what could deter the natural social proclivities of these people? The cares of an artificial man were unknown. The dames had quilting and spinning-bees, while the men had hunting contests, which were decided by the best filled bags. Entertainment and hospitality shown to house-parties would last for days. The housewives vied with each other to see their husbands and families clothed in the finest textures of their own manufacture. Each household tried to produce the finest ale of its own brewing, and to establish reputations for its cakes, mince pies and doughnuts. The gossip of the neighborhood was exchanged by the housewives; the men traded horses and sheep and swine; they all danced, dined, played games and made merry; so, then, what more could they ask for pleasure?

Dorminghurst grew out of the forest under the influence of a master mind. The mansion was one of those plain, square, two-storied brick structures,—dormer windows for the attic rooms, and a detached kitchen in the rear (connected with the large dining-hall by a covered passageway). The office was built in line of the eastern elevation of the dwelling, and connected with the house by a covered way. The store-house, smoke-house, brew-house and bakery, besides the servants’ quarters and the stables, were all built of brick and formed a quadrangle enclosure and a court in the center. The doors of all buildings were massive oak and secured by the heaviest fastenings of iron. All windows on the ground floor had heavy shutters, and an underground, secret passageway led from the house to a door under the stables. The structures were enclosed thus to guard against Indian attacks.

A handsome porch and steps led up to the massive front door, which entered into the great hall that extended through the middle of the building. A double staircase, starting in the middle of the great central hall, met on a common landing, which led to the sleeping chambers. Large double parlors on each side of the hallway were connected by folding doors. The large, well-lighted front room on the east side was used as the library, and the large hallway to the rear of the staircase was used as the dining and living-room. All the apartments had vast chimney-places, commodious enough in the openings to receive huge logs of wood for good cheer in winter. Grotesque blue and white tiles, imported from Holland, embellished the massive brick-work of the chimney, and above the mantels were arched niches adorned with rare old china and heavy silver-ware, which on state occasions saw service at table.

The furniture of a Colonial house in 1730 partook, like the house itself, of simplicity, and in design was more useful than ornamental. Mahogany was little known in Pennsylvania, yet used to some extent in the West Indies; oak and black walnut served for the cabinet woods. Chairs in profusion were found only in the houses of the most substantial. Choicely carved chests-of-drawers, cupboards, high-backed chairs and tables found their way from Europe only by the grace of ship-masters, so that imported Colonial furniture was rare and expensive. However, each town of importance had its list of cabinet-makers and joiners who fashioned their handiwork after the design of articles imported and thus supplied the needs of the new country.

At Dorminghurst everything which was possible to be constructed from material found on the estate was made and fashioned right there. The timbers for the mansion and outbuildings were hewn in the forest, and the lumber for finishing the interior was sawed by hand on the spot. Any pieces of oak or walnut that were choice were saved and seasoned for the cabinet-work and for the furniture. Half a dozen skilled artisans were hired by the year and the workmanship put upon the doors, the wainscotting and the staircase was marvellous.

The front part of the great hallway had a lofty ceiling, and was lighted by windows in the second story.

The great double staircase flared out at the foot and ascended by graceful curves, thus forming an elliptical center space between the two banisters. The effect upon entering the well-lighted and lofty hallway was to command respect for the mansion. After passing between two massive and richly-carved newel posts, the elliptical opening between the two staircases had hall seats in comfortable nooks and the rear hall had a huge fireplace and mantel at the very end. Two massive oak settles, high in back, faced each other on each side of the chimney-place, and one could stretch out and lie down on either one of them and be comfortable. A lengthy oaken table with bandy legs stood in the center of the hall. Two long forms or benches without backs were on each side, and two massive, high-backed chairs were at each end of the table. A damask cover was on the table, and the floor was bare and scrupulously white. In entertaining company the great hall was in popular favor.

At this table James Greydon used to entertain his intimates, and he loved to sit and discourse upon topics of the day. He was a Latin scholar and scientific writer of no mean ability. In the ripeness of his attainments he produced a translation of Cicero’s “De Senectute,” which was the first production in America of classical scholarship. At Dorminghurst he collected, for a Colonist, a wonderful library of classical authors.

The well-lighted front room on the first floor was lined with shelves, on which rested shining lights of literature, to guide the effort and ambition of struggling genius in the wilderness of Pennsylvania. An untimely accident had crippled James Greydon, so that for thirty years of his latter life his time was spent almost entirely among his books and in his farming pursuits. He wrote valuable treatises on agriculture, for the then primitive Colonists, and collected precious editions of Cicero, Virgil, Seneca, Pliny and Horace, to say nothing of the lesser lights of Latin literature.

He also collected valuable editions of Greek writers on philosophy, history, verse and the drama. These were the most distinguished collections of classical works to be used at this early date for the benefit of American learning. James Greydon was one of the fathers of scholarship in the New World. He was in correspondence with many scholars and men of letters in Europe. He was the great friend and co-laborer of Franklin, who acquired his knowledge of Latin and Greek from Greydon’s hands.

The quadrant, of such benefit to mariners and explorers, was invented by an artisan under the encouragement of Greydon, at Dorminghurst.

The numerous pamphlets and treatises produced by Greydon on the science of agriculture and on politics were the products of Franklin’s press. Even the noted work of the translation of “De Senectute” which was printed by Franklin (to whom credit at the time was sometimes given for the authorship of the work) was performed by James Greydon.

But the crowning distinction for which Dorminghurst shall be known, was the reverence in which its master was held by the red men of the forest. Keen in the detection and appreciation of true manhood, the native instincts of the Indian shunned the commercialism of the grasping English office-holder; but the pure and simple line of conduct of the scholar and philosopher commanded the respect and esteem of those children of nature—the Indians. Deputations of the fierce Iroquois and the Shawnees and the Susquehannas travelled far and long to listen to the counsel and wisdom of the distinguished sage and philosopher of Dorminghurst. The Indians learned to trust his word and advice so well that his estate became, at length, the Mecca for an annual gathering of his forest friends, and the permanent abode of a few of the descendants of Altamaha.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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