The Graeme Park Commonplace Book

Saturday, October 5, 2013

Tour Horsham's Most Haunted House this Halloween

Graeme Park will be hosting its annual Haunted Moonlight Halloween tours on Friday, October 25 at 7:00, 7:30, 8:00, 8:30, 9:00 and 9:30 pm. The tours are $15/person and run on a first-come, first-served basis, so it is suggested visitors arrive approximately 15 minutes before the desired tour time to ensure availability. Light refreshments are included in the cost.

Ask most longtime Horsham residents what they know about Graeme Park, and they’ll tell you it’s haunted! Mysterious smells, muffled voices, footsteps on the stairs, and trouble with electronic equipment are just some of the things our staff and volunteers deal with regularly, but the stories and legends go back to the early 19th century.

On the surface, Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson, mistress of Graeme Park in the late 18th century, seemed to have it all. She was the granddaughter of the former Lt. Governor of Pennsylvania and the daughter of a prominent Philadelphia physician. She was well-educated and well traveled, a noted poet, and salon hostess who moved in elite circles and held her own intellectually with her male counterparts. She was however, unlucky in love and a victim of circumstances when she got caught up in the politics of the Revolution, and it all went wrong for her very quickly. Her possessions were sold at auction and she was at risk of losing her home. Rumors of her husband’s infidelity were spreading through Philadelphia and her very loyalty to the American government was called into question.

Did the events which haunted Elizabeth during her life prevent her from retiring peacefully after her death? Reports of her ghostly presence have been circulating since 1801, just months after her death, when her friend Betsy Stedman reported “passing her on the stairs” of the Keith House at Graeme Park. Could Mrs. Strawbridge, the 20th century owner of the house, have been mistaken when she heard “the rustle of her skirts?” Surely the pilots from the nearby Willow Grove Naval Air Station weren’t imagining things every time they saw mysterious lights over the pond?

Visitors will hear the details of these reports and many other, more recent and unexplained phenomena experienced by our staff, volunteers and visitors, and unearthed during paranormal investigations, interwoven with the story of Elizabeth’s life. Costumed actors bring to life the events which may contribute to Elizabeth’s unrest and relay some of the stories that have “haunted” the Keith House since the dawn of the 19th century on these candlelit tours.

Call 215-343-0965 for details.

Friday, October 4, 2013

Historical News and Notes: Famed Stables Join in Steeplechase

The following appeared in the October 4, 1919 Evening Public Ledger.

Many Outside Horses Compete in Contests at Normandy Farms

Many out of town entries from famous stables in the East contested in the hunt and steeplechase meet today at Normandy Farm, Gwynedd Valley, Pa., the estate of Ralph Beap[v]er Strassburger.

The event was the first of the sort ever held in the Penllyn district and replaced the intial meet of the season that was planned for earlier in the season by Joseph E. Widener.

The many out of town entries come chiefly from Long Island, Baltimore and Washington. Mrs. F. Ambrose Clark, of New York, entered several flat and steeplechase horses; several entries were by F. Ambrose Clarke, and others were sent by Bayard Tuckerman of Boston, and Sidney J. Colford, of New York.

Among the local entries were those of R. H. Toland, George D. Widener, Edward E. Marshall, of the Huntingdon Valley Farms; George Brooke, 3d, W. J. Clothier, A. J. A. Devereux, of Camp Hill; R. B. Strassburger, C. Mahlon Kline, R. Nelson Buckley, and E. M. Cheston.

The two most noteable events of the [day] were the Penllyn Steeplechase which brings the owner of the winner a piece of plate valued at $100: and the Normandy Plate Steeplechase, for a purse of $500 in money or plate.

The race committee, of which Alfred A. Biddle is chairman, included R. Sturgis Ingersoll, Albert L. Smith, Edward B. Smith, Jr., C. Mahlon Kline, R. H. R. Toland, Francis Boyer, J. G. Leiper, Jr., Welsh Strawbridge, and Edward E. Marshall.

Welsh Strawbridge, member of the race committee, was the owner of Graeme Park from 1920 until he and his wife Margaret donated it to the state of Pennsylvania in 1958.

The Libary of Congress has made historical newspapers from 1836-1922 available through their Chronicling America Series.

Normandy Farm still stands on Route 202 near the Montgomery County Community College. It has been developed as a hotel and conference center and the original home houses The Farmer's Daughter restaurant.

What Is It? Where Is It? (September): Doornails on the Keith House Door

We finished up September with another architectural feature of the Keith House for our monthly "What Is It? Where Is It?" post. Did you guess that the photo below

was a close-up of the doornails on the inside of the Keith House office door?

Have you ever heard the expression "dead as a doornail?" Early plank style doors generally had "battens" (horizontal boards) on the reverse side to help strengthen and stabilize them. Nails were hammered through the planks and battens to hold them together and the pointed end of the nail that stuck out through the other side would be bent over, or "cinched" or "clenched," thus rendering the nail "dead" or unable to be pulled out and recycled.

Hand-wrought square nails were both valuable (a lot of work went into forging them by hand) and more difficult to pull out then our modern round wire nails. For this reason, it was not uncommon for the colonists to burn down a building and sift through the ashes to recover the nails for reuse as it was easier than pulling them out and cheaper then making new.

The machines to make cut nails, which allowed nails to be produced faster and cheaper, were invented in the mid-1700s but were not very efficient or common until after the Revolution when America needed and wanted to break it's dependence on English nails.

The featured Keith House door is a reproduction based on what we believe was the original door. It is a paneled door with planks nailed to the interior. The nails on the inside are functional in that they serve to hold the two sides of the door together but they are also spaced out and arranged in a pleasing pattern which follows the lines of the rails and stiles (the horizontal and vertical pieces that surround the panels) on the exterior of the door. They do not protrude through the door, therefore they are only visible on the interior plank side and do not need to be cinched. There are those who believe decorative nails were used as a show of wealth, but experts at Williamsburg dispute this.