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 “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 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 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 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 Dorminghurst grew out of the forest under the influence of a master mind. The mansion was 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 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 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 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 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 |