Grumblethorpe was the home of the Wister family in the present-day Germantown section of

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

, who lived there for over 160 years. It was built in 1744 as a summer residence, but it became the family's year-round residence in 1793. It is a museum, part of the

Colonial Germantown Historic District The Colonial Germantown Historic District is a designated National Historic Landmark District in the Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Germantown and Mount Airy, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Mount Airy neighborhoods of Philadelphia, Penns ...

History

18th century

Grumblethorpe was built as a summer residence in 1744 by Philadelphia merchant and wine importer John Wister, when Germantown was a semi-rural area outside the city of

. It eventually became the family's year-round residence when they withdrew from the city during the

Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 During the 1793 yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia, 5,000 or more people were listed in the register of deaths between August 1st and November 9th. The vast majority of them died of yellow fever, making the epidemic in the city of 50,000 peop ...

. It has a stone and oak facade and was known as "John Wister's Big House". It has lower-ceilinged rooms than those at

Cliveden Cliveden (pronounced ) is an English country house and estate in the care of the National Trust in Buckinghamshire, on the border with Berkshire. The Italianate mansion, also known as Cliveden House, crowns an outlying ridge of the Chiltern Hi ...

Loudoun Loudoun () is a parish in East Ayrshire, Scotland and lies between five and ten miles east of Kilmarnock. The parish roughly encompasses the northern half of the Upper-Irvine Valley and borders Galston parish, Galston Parish (which encompasses ...

, and

Stenton Stenton () is a parish and village in East Lothian, Scotland. It is bounded on the north by parts of the parishes of Prestonkirk and Dunbar, on the east by Spott and on the west by Whittingehame. The name is said to be of Saxon derivation. T ...

, other historic houses in the area. The stones for the house were quarried on the property and the joists were hewn from oaks in Wister Woods, also owned by the family. The original section of the Grumblethorpe Tenant House was built as a dependency. The Wister family lived in the house for over 160 years. Diarist Sally Wister subsequently lived there from 1789 until her death in 1804. Because it was built on the fertile soil of the region, Grumblethorpe's garden was highly productive. It was primarily a working farm, and it dominated Philadelphia's horticultural trends for nearly two centuries from 1740 to 1910. The land was a prime source of marketable crops and animal husbandry from the 1740s to the 1870s, and it decreased in practical use only when the farmstead grew smaller in the late 19th century.

American Revolutionary War

In September 1777, the house was the scene of events in the

Battle of Germantown The Battle of Germantown was a major engagement in the Philadelphia campaign of the American Revolutionary War. It was fought on October 4, 1777, at Germantown, Pennsylvania, between the British Army led by Sir William Howe, and the American ...

. While the Wisters were staying in another home, British General James Agnew occupied the house as his headquarters during the battle. He was wounded and died in the front parlor, where his blood stains can still be seen on the floor.

20th century

In the 1960s, the house was restored and refurnished to match the original period, removing an early 19th-century Georgian-style façade, and now serves as a museum. The gardens are also being restored. Grumblethorpe was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

in 1972. It is a

contributing property In the law regulating historic districts in the United States, a contributing property or contributing resource is any building, object, or structure which adds to the historical integrity or architectural qualities that make the historic dist ...

of the

, which has been designated a

National Historic Landmark A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a National Register of Historic Places property types, building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the Federal government of the United States, United States government f ...

References

External links

Official Grumblethorpe page
at

Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks The Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks (aka Landmarks) founded in 1931, maintains and preserves four historic house museums in the region around Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. These are: * Grumblethorpe * Hill–Physick–Keith ...

website * * *
Painting of Grumblethorpe
{{Authority control American Revolutionary War museums in Pennsylvania Historic American Buildings Survey in Philadelphia Historic district contributing properties in Pennsylvania Historic house museums in Philadelphia Houses completed in 1744 Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Philadelphia Georgian architecture in Pennsylvania Germantown, Philadelphia Wister, Philadelphia 1744 establishments in the Thirteen Colonies Wister family Historic house museums of the Pennsylvania Germans