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Manuscript Group 291
HOPE LODGE COLLECTION
1920 - [ongoing], & undated


Hope Lodge was built in the 1740s by prosperous Quaker gristmill operator Samuel Morris. In 1776, William West bought the mansion to serve as his retreat during Philadelphia's inevitable invasion by the British. Henry Hope, owner of the Amsterdam and London banking firm of Hope, Incorporated, purchased the mansion as a wedding gift for his ward, James Watmough. In gratitude, Watmough named the mansion Hope Lodge after his benefactor. In 1832, Jacob Wentz, a tenant farmer, purchased the property. The mansion served as a farmhouse from 1832 to 1921 when Keasbey and Mattison bought the property with the hopes of expanding the adjacent limestone quarry. In 1922, however, the Lodge was purchased by William Degn who restored and furnished the mansion in the then popular Colonial Revival style. In 1957 the mansion was acquired by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission together with a remarkable collection of furniture and furnishings from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Today the site is used to interpret both the Eighteenth Century context of the mansion as well as the early Twentieth Century Colonial Revival movement.

This collection represents the textual materials physically held by the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission's Hope Lodge historic site. For further information on current holdings and access provisions, please contact the Hope Lodge Site Administrator at 553 Bethlehem Pike, Fort Washington, PA 19034, (215) 646-1595, FAX (215) 628-9471.



PA State Archives Hours, Directions, & Fees Research Topics Online Catalog Land Records