For reservations to experience “nkwiluntàmën: I long for it; I am lonesome for it (such as the sound of a drum)” by Indigenous artist Nathan Young, please go to https://nkwiluntamen.com/
Meet Jeremy, our new Historic Gardener. Jeremy brings a wealth of experience and a deep passion for nature to his role as a gardener. Prior to joining our team, Jeremy cut his teeth with the renowned Mercer Museum and the National Parks Service, where he not only honed his skills in horticulture but also instilled in himself a commitment to preserving historic grounds.
Beyond his professional endeavors, Jeremy is an avid outdoorsman who enjoys taking in the beauty of the natural world. Whether hiking Grand Teton in Wyoming or tending to a kitchen garden, he finds pleasure in connecting with nature.
In his role as historic gardener, Jeremy is committed to growing an accurate 17th century kitchen garden. While flowers are great to look at, a realistic kitchen garden on Penn’s plantation would have been used to grow food.
“I think it’s important when we talk about the kitchen garden to understand that there were at times up to 100 people living on this property, so it would have been incredibly important to be able to feed all of those people,” Jeremy says.
Although we do not know exactly what the garden looked like, Jeremy’s goal is to create an environment that facilitates learning for visitors. In the short term, that means making sure that he grows something to interpret. In the long term, Jeremy wants to leave the garden even better than he found it for the next generation to enjoy.
Meet Keli, Pennsbury Manor’s new Lead Interpreter. Keli is a former Pennsbury Manor intern who recently graduated from Messiah University with a degree in Public History.
The difference between public history and history, according to Keli, is that public history focuses on taking research that can be overly-academic and making it understandable for a general audience.
Keli reconnected with Pennsbury Manor when researching for a school project. She later switched topics to an archaeological expedition of a lost colony in Greece called Washingtonia.
Washingtonia was founded in 1829 as a community for Greek refugees by an American philanthropist named Samuel Gridley Howe. Howe was a Son of the American Revolution, and Greece’s own revolutionary aspirations inspired him to provide humanitarian aid.
The colony existed for just about 50 years and was not rediscovered until now. Keli is a talented videographer and is currently finishing a documentary about her expedition.
As she returns to Pennsbury Manor as a full-time employee, Keli is excited to get back to giving tours. She loves when visitors ask questions and thinks people should approach historic sites with a healthy amount of curiosity. She says that being a tour guide can be difficult when some visitors want to hear an uncomplicated history while the truth is more nuanced.
“I think the truth is hard. And I think it’s really hard for people to accept the truth, which is why I think it makes it so much more important to tell people the truth,” Keli says. “When you want to know about the site, you have to know the good, bad and the ugly.”
Her reverence for truth as a historian carries over into how she tries to live her life.
“Whether I like the truth or not is out of the question. I need to hear it if it makes me either a better person or it educates me.”
“I believe Black history is America’s history. I believe the story of African American Yardley is the story of Yardley Borough,” Ms. Shirley Lee Corsey says.
Ms. Corsey is Executive Director of the Gather Place, which is located within a former African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church on a quiet street along the canal in Yardley Borough. Ms. Corsey speaks in a tone that is both friendly and enthusiastic. She believes names reveal histories and tends to append honorifics to those she describes. One would never have guessed her career was in Computer Science the way her face lights up when telling stories about the past.
A.M.E. Church of Yardley was built in 1877 and served as a place of worship for the small surrounding African American community until the 1990s when one of its last congregants passed away. Soon after, the church was abandoned, and in the subsequent two decades, the church fell into disrepair.
Ms. Corsey renovated the church and repurposed it as the Gather Place Museum in 2022. The interior displays photos and newspaper articles preserving the legacies of Yardley’s Black residents.
photo credit: gatherplace.org
One of the photos on exhibition is of Ms. Shirley Lee Corsey’s family standing in front of the A.M.E. Church of Yardley in 1958. On the left are the preacher and his wife. In the center are two girls dressed in white. The shorter one is Ms. Corsey’s oldest sister Janice, and the taller one is her cousin Debbie. The little boy, to the right of them, is her brother Kevin.
Acquiring the Church
“I’m from this neighborhood, and I’m third generation. I’m one of 11 children. We were raised right here in Yardley,” Ms. Corsey says.
The Lee home, which was built in 1928, is 3 houses down from the A.M.E. Church. While Ms. Corsey and her family did not worship at A.M.E. Church of Yardley, it was ever-present in her life growing up. She remembers when she and her siblings were out playing her mom would command ‘You don’t go any further than that Church.’
After her parents passed away, the Lee house needed major renovations. Ms. Corsey volunteered to take on the job of fixing it up, and right before COVID, she acquired the home with her family’s blessing. When the pandemic hit, Ms. Corsey used her newfound isolation to dedicate herself to the project of renovating the house.
As Ms. Corsey was in Yardley more and more, she passed the old A.M.E. Church each time on the way to her home. The church was badly in need of repairs: its roof was damaged, its siding needed a fresh coat of paint, its A/C unit was not functional. In January 2022, her brother was working on a pandemic project of his own, collecting photos from their childhood, including the old church.
One day, he called her and asked if she would consider looking into becoming the conservator of the property. According to PA law, if you live within a certain distance of an abandoned property, you can apply to be a conservator and receive permission from the state to make repairs on a property that is considered unsafe.
“I think it was a higher-level calling,” Ms. Corsey says. “I think we’re all called to do something. It doesn’t have to necessarily be a religious calling. I believe everybody has a purpose.”
Ms. Corsey dug into the records and found that the church had no legal entanglements, the title never changed hands, and there was no debt, which is uncommon for old buildings. Ms. Corsey hired a lawyer who took the case to the Bucks County Court of Common Pleas, where she was awarded conservatorship. Attending in support were the children of the last members of the church.
“I wanted to make sure [the church’s] legacy stays,” Ms. Corsey says. “Because since the 1970s, the African American community has dwindled away, but this church will always be here as long as I have anything to do with it, even hopefully after I’m gone.”
photo credit: gatherplace.org
Black Yardley History is Yardley History
In September of 2022, the nonprofit Gather Place opened to the public with the mission to preserve the history of Black Yardley. However, many people are surprised to find that there is even a Black community history in Yardley to preserve.
“If I had a dollar each time since we’ve opened that someone came in here and said, ‘I had no idea this was here.’ And I know what they’re saying: ‘I had no idea that there was even a Black community [in Yardley].’ That’s why this project is so important,” she says.
Ms. Corsey likes to tell visitors about the history of her family, the Lees, and some other members of the Black community in Yardley, such as the Derry family.
The Derry family is the oldest known African American family from Yardley Borough dating back to Ms. Mary Derry, born in 1790, according to an 1850 Census record. Seven generations of the Derry family have lived in Yardley Borough. In fact, the Derry family is possibly the longest continuous line of not only Black Yardley residents but all Yardley residents.
Ms. Julia Derry Robinson Jacobs, a descendant of the Derry family, and her relatives were the last congregants of the A.M.E. Church of Yardley before Ms. Jacobs’ death in the 1990s. Yardley Borough’s first and only Black mayor, Mr. Edward E. Robinson, is the son of Ms. Julia Derry Robinson Jacobs.
“These are the stories that we love sharing. And people come in here and we talk, next thing they go, ‘Oh, I knew this one, and I knew that one.’ It’s a beautiful community experience and that is my mission,” Ms. Corsey says.
The Derry line in Yardley continues to this day. Ms. Helen Marie Mayo, a Derry descendant, and her husband Mr. Granville Mayo are both 90 years old. Their daughter, Susan Mayo Brown, takes care of them. Ms. Corsey wants to interview the last generation of people who belonged to the church, like the Mayo family, while they are still here. Her dream is to preserve and archive the footage for future generations. She calls the project “Generational Voices.”
Preserving “Generational Voices”
To do it right would require hiring professionals to record videos, edit the interviews, and create an interactive library for visitors to enjoy. This would take resources the Gather Place just did not have. However, Ms. Corsey is not one to let a dream slip away due to a lack of gumption. People she knows often call her a force.
“I believe I take it as a compliment. Not a radical force like I’m going to hit you on the head,” she jokes. “But it’s radical in that I think I’m driven.”
She heard about a National Historic Preservation grant specifically for non-active Black churches to fund programs and interpretation. Her project fit the grant’s description perfectly. This past fall, the National Trust for Historic Preservation awarded Gather Place a $75,000 grant to fund “Generational Voices.” Gather Place was one of 31 Black churches selected out 550 across the country that applied for a National Historic Preservation grant.
“I’m very proud that Gather Place nonprofit, headquartered at the A.M.E. Church of Yardley, is nationally known. That’s a beautiful thing,” Ms. Corsey says.
From acquiring her family home, to the pandemic, to receiving an auspicious call from her brother, to finding out nobody had a claim to the church, the confluence of events that led to Ms. Corsey opening the Gather Place has been serendipitous to say the least. However, she believes it was fate.
“Everything comes together in life when you get my age. Your professional skill, your passion, and your heart and your soul all come together,” Ms. Corsey says. “When you know it and you follow it, and it’s successful, that’s when you know it was meant to be.”
Pennsbury Manor has some new residents! We are pleased to introduce our members, volunteers, visitors, and the rest of the Pennsbury community to Michael and Roger, two oxen who are joining our team of animal ambassadors. Some of you may notice a resemblance to Bill and Red, Pennsbury’s former oxen team. That’s because Michael and Roger are related to them – we are glad to keep their family line going here at Pennsbury!
Michael and Roger round out our farm, which already has geese, sheep, horses, and of course a barn cat. All the inhabitants of the stables at Pennsbury are animals that William Penn would have had when he lived here. Penn would have used oxen on his farm to clear and plow his fields. Oxen are better suited to ploughing difficult ground as their cloven (or “split”) hooves give them better traction on rocky soil than horses, and they don’t tire as easily. Before the land could be plowed, they had to remove trees – and Michael and Roger were trained to pull logs in Maine before they joined us here. Just like some of us enjoy regular pedicures at the salon, Michael and Roger recently had a visit from the farrier who trimmed their hooves to keep them healthy and strong.
Trimmed hooves!In the farrier’s tilt table.
Michael and Roger won’t be ploughing any of Pennsbury’s 43 picturesque acres though – they are here to enjoy a life of peace and semi-retirement. They will be active members of our interpretive and educational programming where they will demonstrate team handling and ploughing in their beautiful handmade yoke from New England Ox Supply.
Michael and Roger modeling their handmade yoke.
Just like your pets at home, Michael and Roger have their own personalities. Now that they are settling in to their new home, their demeanors are starting to shine through. Roger is very serious and reserved, focused on the tasks our animal husbandry lead Carole gives him. Michael is the class clown – he likes to goof off, have fun, and test his caretakers’ limits. Roger’s horns point up whereas Michael’s are more spread out – see if you can tell who is who!
Caring for oxen takes a lot of work, which is why we are so grateful to Carole and our dedicated team of volunteers who help her. A typical day includes feeding, grooming, cleaning stalls, moving animals to new corrals, scheduling veterinarian and farrier appointments, and keeping watch on their overall health – it’s a very labor intensive job! There are a lot of costs involved as well. A bale of hay is $6 and 100 bales lasts 3-4 weeks. A gallon of fly spray costs $70 and Pennsbury animals use 7 gallons per season. Not to mention medicine, veterinarian appointments, farrier appointments for the hooved animals, and more. The yearly cost of caring for the animals is around $15,000.
That’s why we are asking for your support. The animals at Pennsbury Manor play an important role in the overall interpretation of William Penn and daily life in 17th century Pennsylvania. The Pennsbury Animal Fund helps provide for the ongoing care of the animals at Pennsbury Manor, maintaining existing animal programming, and developing new interpretive programming for our living collection of farm animals. Pennsbury Manor’s Animal Program is completely volunteer-operated and is supported solely by the Pennsbury Society, a non-profit 501C(3) support organization, and donations from our community.
If you would like to donate, please follow this link and be sure to indicate that you would like your donation to go toward the Animal Fund. You can also mail cash or check to 400 Pennsbury Memorial Road Morrisville, PA 19067. Better yet, you can come visit Michael and Roger in person, and drop your donation off in the Visitor Center while you’re here!
We hope you will continue to follow along on Michael and Roger’s journey by following us on Instagram and Facebook (@pennsburymanor) and by checking our website for new updates.
While colonists may not have bathed as often as most modern people, they still performed basic sanitary practices. Read on to learn about how 17th–century folk made soap.
1. Good clean fun!
From a chemical perspective, most modern “soap” available in drug stores is actually a form of detergent. Real soap, like the kind that would have been made in Penn’s day, is the result of a chemical reaction called saponification: when a fatty substance comes in contact with an alkaline substance.
2. Cheap as dirt…or soap!
Many working class colonists opted to make soap themselves because it made use of materials they already had on hand. Lye, the alkaline substance needed for saponification, could be made by pouring water over ashes from the fireplace. This was typically done in a special basin, called a leaching barrel or an ash hopper. For the fatty substance, colonists used animal fat left over from cooking or butchering.
3. Blood, sweat, and tears
The process of making soap was surprisingly dangerous and all around unpleasant. Once folks made their lye, they concentrated it by boiling it over a fire. Lye is a corrosive chemical so colonists had to work carefully to avoid burns. Next the animal fat had to be rendered, melted, and mixed with water. This process cooked any bits of gristle still clinging to the fat and prevented the finished product from going rancid. Due to the heat and odor involved, soap was made outside.
4. It only takes a taste!
Once the lye and liquified fat were combined, the soap was left to cool. Salt was optionally added to create solid bars of soap. One way to test the strength of the product was to perform a “zap test.” A person would lick the finished bar of soap, and if he or she felt a zap or a slight sting, the lye concentration was too strong and the soap should not be used on a person’s skin.
5. Ladies and gentlemen…don’t try this at home!
No one likes the taste of lye or the sensation of caustic burns, so authentic soap making is best left to the professionals. To create a similar experience at home, you can purchase a melt-and-pour soap making kit from a craft store or online retailer.
As days grow longer and flowers open, spring is a time for joy and new life! So our thoughts today turn to welcoming a new life into the 17th-century home. Parents had many important decisions to make, including what to name the infant.
Family-oriented Quakers often named their children after relatives, as was the case with Governor William Penn who was named to honor his father, Sir Admiral William Penn. Friends favored common English names like Phoebe or Catherine, and often looked to the Bible for inspiration. Popular monikers of the time included John, Thomas, Mary, and Ester. Along similar lines, “virtue names,” like Grace and Lettice were given to girls. Yes, Lettice! While the name may remind some people of salad, Lettice comes from the Latin word for joy. William Penn’s oldest surviving daughter was named Letitia, a variation of Lettice.
William Penn’s first wife was named Gulielma Maria Posthuma Springett. Gulielma (pronounced Goo-lee-al-ma) is the feminine of the French “William.” She was named after her father, William Springett. Posthuma means “after death” and sadly memorializes her father’s death, just two weeks before Gulielma’s birth.
If some of these Quaker names are unusual, then Puritan baby names are downright wacky! Traditionally more austere than their Quaker counterparts, some God-fearing Puritans chose to name their children after sin and suffering. After a difficult delivery, Puritan parents may decide to name their baby Joy-in-sorrow. English economist Nicholas Barbon was reportedly christened If-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-damned. No wonder he went by Nicholas!
Keep checking out our blog to learn more historic fun facts!
Sources
Fisher, David Hackett. Albion’s Seed: Four British Folk Ways in America (version Erenow). Oxford University Press, 1989. https://erenow.net/.
“Home.” Name Meaning, Popularity, and Similar Names. Accessed March 17, 2020. https://nameberry.com/babyname/Lettice.
Louis XIV, 17th-century king of France, is said to have only taken three baths in his entire life, but were colonists and other 17th-century folk really as filthy as some say?
The answer depends on how one defines clean. It is unlikely that colonists bathed on a daily or even a weekly basis. Some believed that stripping the skin of its natural oils left a person vulnerable to disease, not to mention that filling a washtub without the help of indoor plumbing was likely a laborious task. When her husband built her an outdoor shower, Elizabth Drinker, an 18th-century Philadelphia Quaker woman reportedly wrote in her diary “I bore it better than I expected, not having been wett all over at once, for twenty-eight years past.”
It is likely that Drinker simply refreshed herself with a damp cloth each morning, as was common practice. The English Housewife, a ladies’ instructional guide from the 17th century explains that “Rosemary water (the face washed therin both morning and night) causeth a fair and clear countenance.” Another instructional manual entitled The Accomplish’d Lady’s Delight in Preserving, Physick, Beautifying, and Cookery includes remedies for “A Water to take away wrinkles in the Face” and a “Dentrifice to whiten the Teeth.” Both these examples show that people cared about their appearances and practiced some forms of basic hygiene even if they were not bathing often. Furthermore, baths were thought to have therapeutic qualities. The English Housewife also recommends bathing in rosemary water to treat gout and infertility. Even if colonists were not bathing for hygienic reasons, they still had opportunities to clean their bodies. While colonists were certainly not clean by 21st-century standards. they tried their best with what they had available.
For more historical fun facts, keep reading our blog!
Works Cited
Ferryfarmandkenmore, /. “’Not Having Been Wett All Over at Once, for 28 Years Past’: Bathing in Early America.” Lives & Legacies. Historic Kenmore, March 26, 2015. https://livesandlegaciesblog.org/2015/03/25/not-having-been-wett-all-over-at-once-for-28-years-past-bathing-in-early-america/.
Little, Becky. “Why Pilgrims Arriving in America Resisted Bathing.” History.com. A&E Television Networks, November 21, 2019. https://www.history.com/news/american-colonists-pilgrims-puritans-bathing.
MacCausland, Beth. “Spring Cleaning: Hygiene in Colonial Times.” Graeme Park. The Friends of Graeme Park, April 8, 2017. https://www.graemepark.org/spring-cleaning-hygiene-in-colonial-times/.
Markham, Gervase. The English Housewife. Edited by Micheal R. Best. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1986.
Woolley, Hannah, Active 1670, and Elizabeth Robins Pennell Collection. The Accomplish’d lady’s delight in preserving, physick, beautifying, and cookery: containing. London: Printed for B. Harris and are to be sold at his shop, 1675. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/75320945/.
The ongoing Covid-19 quarantine has inspired folks to get creative, especially when it comes to cooking. As the lines in the grocery store grow longer and it becomes more difficult to procure fresh produce, many are reaching to the back of their cabinets for non-perishables. To learn how people preserved food in William Penn’s time, read on!
1.Get salty! (and a little bit smokey!) The practice of curing meat has existed for thousands of years and continues even today. Since water leads to mold, colonists would pack their meat in salt to draw out excess moisture. Meat was also smoked because the process further dehydrated the meat while adding flavor. Penn himself enjoyed smoked beef, pork, venison, and shad, a type of fish. Though the governor opted to purchase his smoked meats from local Swedish settlers, it is unlikely that Pennsbury Manor had a smokehouse on property.
2.In a pickle! The acid in vinegar brine prevents bad bacteria from growing, so pickling was another common method of food preservation in the colonial era. The Whole Duty of a Woman, an instructional guide from 1696, contains numerous pickle recipes. Aside from the classic cucumbers, the book lists instructions for pickling mushrooms, artichokes, oysters, and even blackberries!
3.Pile on the sweet stuff! In preparation for the colder months, fresh fruit was often candied or made into preserves like jam and marmalade. Boiling the fruit in a sugar syrup prevents rot because the natural waters in the fruit are slowly replaced by the sugar syrup. Though tasty, these foods were best consumed in moderation. Catherine Cotton’s 1698 recipe for “Pippins at Christmas Time” calls for a half pound of hard cooking apples, which are then stewed in a whopping pound and a half of sugar!
For more historical fun facts keep reading our blog!
March is Women’s History Month! A time to celebrate the accomplishments of women’s rights activists past and present, from suffragette Susan B. Anthony to author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. One author who will not be celebrated is Gervase Markham, compiler of The English Housewife, an instructional guide for 17th–century women. Peppered between recipes and remedies, Markham offeredsexist views on the ideal English wife that readers today may find laughable. Here are three of his most outrageous pieces of advice.
1. Remember ladies, you are not as smart as a man!
The first chapter of The English Housewife deals with colonial medicine. Since there were few doctors, a proper wife needed a working knowledge of folk medicine to care for her family. But Markham reminds his readers not to overestimate their abilities because “the depth and secrets of the most excellent art of physics is far beyond the capacity of the most skillful woman, as lodging only in the breast of learned professors.”
2. Have opinions? Keep them to yourself!
According to Markham, a woman’s most important attribute is her modesty. This modesty extends not only to her outward appearance but her inward temperament. The ideal wife is pleasant and agreeable at all times. She refrains from criticizing her husband, for “uncomely language is deformed though uttered even to servants, but most monstrous and ugly when it appears before the presence of a husband.”
3. If you’re a terrible cook, don’t bother getting married!
A staunch supporter of traditional gender roles, Markham believed that a woman’s place was in the home, including the kitchen. His book contains countless recipes for cakes and pies, as well as an overview of home brewing, then considered to be a feminine domain. Markham explains that a woman who is ignorant of her domestic duties “cannot then perform half her vow; for she may love and obey, but she cannot serve [her husband] with the true duty that is to be expected.”
Thankfully, The English Housewife represents just one person’s idea of the perfect colonial wife, and not all women actually lived up to these ridiculous standards. Check out our blog for more examples of awesome colonial women!
Source: Markham, Gervase. The English Housewife. Edited by Micheal R. Best. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1986.
There was no shortage of bad advice in colonial times, particularly when it came to medical care. Medical cures in the colonial era often seem hard to stomach for modern readers. Listed below are three cringeworthy cures from the 17th and 18th century.
1. Stomach ache? Eat some lead! One Mrs. Joseph Meader was assured by her local physician that swallowing leaded bullets would relieve the pain in her gut. Some doctors believed the heavy lead from bullets could expel intestinal blockages. According to a letter from 1724, this treatment reportedly worked, but the account is highly suspicious. With no medical schools or public hospitals, it was difficult for colonists to distinguish qualified medical professionals from charlatans.
2. Keep your eyes peeled! Given the gruesome treatment prescribed to Mrs. Meader it’s no wonder many colonists took medical care into their own hands. One popular theory relied on little more than a person’s eyes to guide medical practice. Sympathetic medicine was the idea that a plant’s outward appearance could signal its medical use. Given their resemblance to the human skull, walnuts were considered a cure for cranial ailments while saffron was given to a patient sallow with jaundice.
3. When in doubt, drain some blood! Galenic or humoral medicine was in direct contrast to sympathetic medicine. Followers of this ancient theory believed the body was divided into four humors, each defined by a quality: hot, cold, wet, and dry. All illnesses allegedly resulted from an imbalance in these humors. According to Galenic medicine, the warm and searing pain of a fresh burn could be contracted with “snow water”, aka melted ice. While this may seem like good advice, galenic medicine also recommended blood letting to relieve the body of excess heat and inflammation.
For more fun facts, keep reading our blog.
Sources:
Gifford , George E. “Botanic Remedies in Colonial Massachusetts, 1620–1820.” Medicine in Colonial Massachusetts 1620-1820 , 1980. https://www.colonialsociety.org/node/1215.
Markham, Gervase. The English Housewife. Edited by Micheal R. Best. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1986.
Shryock, Richard Harrison. Eighteenth Century Medicine in America. Worcester.: American Antiquarian Society, 1950.
