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.