This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Community Corner

Bryn Mawr 100: Harriton House

The historical landmark was the home of Charles Thomson, the secretary of the Continental Congress and designer of the Great Seal of the United States.

At 307 years old, has a lifespan triple that of some of the other Bryn Mawr 100 buildings—and unsurprisingly, a rich history.

"Of all [the Bryn Mawr 100 buildings], we're the oldest," said Executive Director of Harriton House Bruce Gill, who has been on staff at Harriton since it opened to the public in 1975.

The house now known as Harriton House was built in 1704 by Rowland Ellis, a Welsh Quaker. Ellis received 700 acres of land from William Penn in the 1680s, and called his estate Bryn Mawr, which means "high hill" in Welsh.

Ellis cultivated the land for a number of years, but sold the property in 1719 to a Maryland tobacco farmer, Richard Harrison, who changed the estate's name to Harriton.

Charles Thomson, Harriton's most famous resident, entered the picture in 1774 when he married Harriton's daughter and thus acquired the property. Thomson was an abolitionist, the designer of the Great Seal of the United States and the first—and only—secretary of the Continental Congress. (For more information on the Great Seal and its history, including commentary from Thomson, visit the Department of State's Great Seal fact sheet.)

After the Continental Congress dissolved in 1789, Thomson came to Harriton to live out the rest of his days as a farmer.

"He had always wanted to be a farmer and believed, as Jefferson did, that agriculture was the way of the future," Gill said.

Thomson farmed and became a beekeeper at Harriton. After he died in 1824, the property was rented by tenants for about 80 years, until descendants of Thomson's brother-in-law began the Harriton Guernsey Dairy in 1908.

The house was purchased by Lower Merion Township in 1969, at which point restoration work began to restore the house to the time period of Thomson's occupancy, 85 years after it was built. Harriton opened as a historical site in 1975.

Today, visitors can tour Harriton House as it was in Thomson's day. The Harriton Association is also home to a number of documents, letters and articles written by or about Thomson, and hosts events like and gardening programs, apple tastings, and blacksmith workshops throughout the year.

Many of the activities at Harriton House relate in some way to the history of the property: Thomson was a beekeeper at Harriton, for example, and he learned blacksmithing as a child, after coming to America from Ireland. His father died on the voyage, leaving him an orphan, and the ship's captain—who "wasn't a nice guy," Gill said—sold Thomson to a blacksmith for profit once arriving on shore.

And even fun events like the Father's Day Ice Cream Social connect back to Harriton's time as a dairy farm.

Each year, Harriton House sees about 5,000 visitors, Gill said, many of whom come through school groups or attend the annual Country Fair Day, which usually takes place at the end of September.

Each fourth grader in the Lower Merion School District visits Harriton House and hears the story of Thomson, Gill said. 

"They don't have a clue about Charles Thomson [when they come]," he said. But by visiting Harriton House, hearing the stories, and seeing what a blacksmith or woodturner does, "suddenly the story becomes real to them—it's not just something that happened a long time ago, but something they can do too."

Find out what's happening in Bryn Mawr-Gladwynewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Editor's Note: This is the seventh in a . Check back with Bryn Mawr-Gladwyne Patch for more profiles leading up to the Sept. 10 celebration.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?