Hovenden House, Barn and Abolition Hall

Hovenden House, Barn and Abolition Hall

Maulsby-Corson-Hovenden Barn in 2011. Abolition Hall is on the opposite side.
Location 1 E. Germantown Pike,
Plymouth Meeting,
Whitemarsh Township, Pennsylvania
Coordinates 40°6′10″N 75°16′41″W / 40.10278°N 75.27806°W / 40.10278; -75.27806Coordinates: 40°6′10″N 75°16′41″W / 40.10278°N 75.27806°W / 40.10278; -75.27806
Area 9 acres (3.6 ha)
Built 1767, c. 1794, 1856
Built by Samuel Maulsby (house & barn)
George Corson (Abolition Hall)
Architectural style Federal
NRHP Reference # 71000713[1]
Significant dates
Added to NRHP February 18, 1971
Designated PHMC November 18, 2000[2]

Hovenden House, Barn and Abolition Hall is a group of historic buildings in Plymouth Meeting, Whitemarsh Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. The house is located at the northeast corner of Germantown and Butler Pikes, opposite the Plymouth Friends Meetinghouse. Northeast of the house is the stone barn, and attached to the barn's east wall is the 2-story carriage house known as Abolition Hall. Part of a 9-acre farm, the three buildings are contributing properties in the Plymouth Meeting Historic District.[3]

The property was a station on the Underground Railroad. Abolition Hall served as a meeting place for abolitionists, and later as an artist's studio.

History

Hovenden House, from the Plymouth Friends Meetinghouse, c. 1906.

A 2-story stone house was built at the corner of Germantown and Butler Pikes in 1767.[4] Samuel Maulsby (1768–1838)[5] purchased the house on 126 acres (51 hectares) in February 1794,[6] and estabished quarries and a lime-making business.[7] He enlarged the house into a 3-story, 14-room, Federal-style dwelling, and is presumed to have built the stone barn and carriage shed.[3] His daughter Martha married George Corson (1803-1860) in 1832.[8] Maulsby died in 1838, and the couple purchased the farm from his estate the following year.[3] George and his brothers bought the quarries, and founded what became G. & W.H. Corson Company - Lime Merchants.[9]

Abolitionism

Abolition Hall (left) and barn (right), c. 1906.

Corson was one of the founders of the Plymouth Meeting Anti-Slavery Society in 1833.[8] But it was the couple's friendship with Benjamin Lundy – publisher of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society's weekly newspaper, The National Enquirer (1836-38) – that inspired them to actively participate in abolitionism.[8] They turned their property into a station on the Underground Railroad, providing food and shelter to hundreds of escaped slaves.[10] A local free-black man, Dan Ross, acted as "conductor," leading the fugitives by night to the next station[11] — likely the Thomas Atkinson Farm in Upper Dublin, Pennsylvania, about 7 miles (11.3 km) away.[12] The route continued through Bucks County, New Jersey and New York, and to eventual freedom in Canada.[13] In some instances, Corson hid people under a wagonload of hay and drove them to the next station.[3]

It was a federal crime to assist an escaped slave, and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 increased the penalties to six months in prison and a $1,000 fine. The Plymouth Friends Meeting had permitted abolitionist speakers to use their meetinghouse for decades, but, in the heated political climate of 1856, permission was refused.[14] Corson's response was to enclose his open carriage shed and build a meeting room above it.

"[Corson] determined to build a hall, over which he could have control. He made quite a large one and furnished it well with seats, warmed and lighted at his own expense. And now we can see how convenient it was for the lecturers to make his house their temporary home. As time wore on more and more neighbors and friends were attracted to the meetings to hear the eloquent and earnest men and women who pictured the atrocities of slavery."[14]

Abolition Hall could hold up to 200 people,[11] and was used for meetings of the Plymouth Meeting Anti-Slavery Society and for lectures by prominent abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass,[15] Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Lloyd Garrison and Lucretia Mott.[16]

In late 1860, as George Corson lay near death from consumption, Rev. James Miller McKim paid tribute to him at a meeting of the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society: "... a truer-hearted and more devoted friend to the slave is not to be found within the bounds of our Society."[17]

Artist's studio

The Last Moments of John Brown (1882–84) by Thomas Hovenden, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The couple's daughter, Helen Corson (1846-1935), trained as an artist at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She also studied in Paris, and exhibited at the Paris Salon, 1876, 1879 and 1880.[18] She met Irish-born painter Thomas Hovenden (1840-1895) in France, and they were married at the Plymouth Friends Meetinghouse on June 9, 1881.[8] They moved into her late father's house, and raised two children, Thomas Jr. and Martha.

Hovenden succeeded Thomas Eakins as Professor of Painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1886.[19] He specialized in genre scenes of rural life, using his neighbors, often African Americans, as models.[11] He converted Abolition Hall into a studio,[3] and the moral causes that had been championed there inspired some of his works.[20] His most famous painting – The Last Moments of John Brown (1882–84), Metropolitan Museum of Art – depicts the radical abolitionist John Brown kissing a baby as he is led to the gallows. Hovenden was elected a member of the National Academy of Design in 1881, and an academician in 1882.[19] He died in a train accident in August 1895. Rev. William Henry Furness gave the eulogy at his funeral, and Eakins and Samuel Murray were among the pall bearers.[21]

Helen Corson Hovenden was noted for her portraits of children and pets.[22] The couple's daughter, Martha Maulsby Hovenden (1884-1941), a sculptor, later used Abolition Hall as her studio.[8]

The trio of buildings was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971.

Historical marker

A Pennsylvania state historical marker was dedicated at 4006 Butler Pike (in front of the barn) on November 18, 2000:[4]

ABOLITION HALL
The Antislavery meeting hall here, opened
in 1856, brought many leading abolitionist
speakers as guests of George Corson and
his wife, Martha Maulsby Corson. Built
over a carriage shed, the hall could ac-
comodate up to 200 visitors. The family's
1767 homestead here had already long been
a station on the Underground Railroad.
Later, 1881-1895, Abolition Hall was the
studio of son-in-law Thomas Hovenden, who
painted "Last Moments of John Brown."[23]

Subdivision

In early 2016, a subdivision was proposed that would re-route Butler Pike between Hovenden House and the barn, and develop the bulk of the property as a 48-unit townhouse community.[24][25] Following vocal opposition, an April 25, 2016 public meeting on the proposed subdivision was cancelled.[26]

References

  1. ↑ Staff (2010-07-09). "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service.
  2. ↑ "PHMC Historical Markers". Historical Marker Database. Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission. Retrieved December 10, 2013.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 "National Historic Landmarks & National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania" (Searchable database). CRGIS: Cultural Resources Geographic Information System. Note: This includes Nancy Corson (April 1969). "National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form: Hovenden House, Barn and Abolition Hall" (PDF). Retrieved 2012-04-21.
  4. 1 2 "Abolition Hall (Thomas Hovenden) Historical Marker," from Explore PA History. NOTE: The article gets some of the dates wrong, and mistakes the barn for the carriage house.
  5. ↑ Maulsby-Albertson Family Papers, from Swarthmore College.
  6. ↑ Montgomery County Deed Book #9, page 180.
  7. ↑ Limestone was burned in kilns to produce lime, which was mixed with sand to create mortar.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 Hiram Corson, M.D. "George Corson," The Corson Family: A History of the Descendants of Benjamin Corson, Son of Cornelius Corssen of Staten Island, New York. (Philadelphia: H.L. Everett, 1906), pp. 112-17.
  9. ↑ Cold Point Historic District, from LivingPlaces.com.
  10. ↑ Thomas Hovenden: American Painter of Hearth and Homeland, Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, 1995. ISBN 1-888008-00-8.
  11. 1 2 3 Ron Avery, "Plymouth Meeting Quakers Hid Slaves – It's A Shrine Of The Underground Railroad," The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 19, 1995.
  12. ↑ Annette John-Hall, "An underground story no more," The Philadelphia Inquirer, December 14, 20012.
  13. ↑ William J. Switala, Underground Railroad in Pennsylvania, (Stackpole Books, 2001), pp. 160-61.
  14. 1 2 Theodore Weber Bean, "The Corson Family," History of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Volume 2, (Unigraphic, 1884), pp. 1036-37.
  15. ↑ Melia Bowie, "Historical marker for a carriage shed called Abolition Hall," The Philadelphia Inquirer, December 10, 2000.
  16. ↑ Helen Reichart Mirras (December 1969). "National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form: Plymouth Friends Meetinghouse" (PDF). Retrieved 2015-06-18.
  17. ↑ Hiram Corson, p. 120.
  18. ↑ "Helen Corson Hovenden," from Art Price.
  19. 1 2 "Thomas Hovenden, 1840 – 1895," from National Academy of Design.
  20. ↑ Lee M. Edwards, "Noble Domesticity: The Paintings of Thomas Hovenden," American Art Journal:19 (1987): 5-38.
  21. ↑ Ernest Pfattiecher, "Thomas Hovenden," The Book News Monthly, vol. 5, no. 25 (January 1907), p. 305.
  22. ↑ Martha Hovenden and Her Dog (1888), from Woodmere Art Museum.
  23. ↑ "Abolition Hall," from Waymarking.
  24. ↑ Sydelle Zove, "Underground Railroad site threatened," The Philadelphia Inquirer, April, 20, 2016.
  25. ↑ Subdivision sketch plan for Whitemarsh Corson Estate, from Hidden City Philadelphia.
  26. ↑ Michael Bixler, "Historic estate and Underground Railroad station under threat in Plymouth Meeting," Hidden City Philadelphia, April 20, 2016.
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