Quaker minister and artist Edward Hicks painted Peaceable Kingdom over one hundred times in the mid-19th century to commemorate the transfer of thousands of acres of Lenape land to William Penn. His most famous version, now in the permanent collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA), depicts ferocious beasts lying down with lambs and little children. In the far distance, on the banks of the Schuylkill River, colonists and Lenape gather under a tree. This idyllic image, based on Quaker pacifism and the Bible, mythologized the founding of Pennsylvania. A more realistic painting would have shown Penn’s agent, William Markham, in 1692, purchasing all of what is now Montgomery County in exchange for bars of lead, guns, and an assortment of tools.

Quaker Aristocracy

Thomas Lloyd, a Quaker from an aristocratic Welsh banking family, purchased a sizable portion of the 40,000-acre Welsh Tract from Penn in 1692, covering parts of present-day Montgomery, Chester, and Delaware Counties. The tract enabled Welsh Quakers to have a community where they could speak their own language and live by their own laws. Lloyd’s property, which became known as the Greenhill Estate, was bordered by Lancaster Avenue (known then as Lincoln Highway) to the north, Haverford Road to the south, the Indian Creek Water Basin to the west, and what is now City Avenue to the east. 

Educated at University of Oxford, Lloyd quickly rose through the ranks of local politics, becoming deputy governor for Pennsylvania under William Penn until 1693. As a committed pacifist, Lloyd opposed the introduction of a militia into the province and was the most powerful and popular leader in the state during this period. Following his death, 118 acres of his land were sold to David Price who built a stone house, known for 269 years as the Old Homestead. Price added adjacent land until he owned 300 acres, including what is now Morris Park and Overbrook on the Philadelphia side of City Avenue, which he leased to farmers. Greenhill Estate became known as Greenhill Farms Plantation. At its peak, it contained 2,000 acres, extending across City Avenue and into what is now Overbrook.

Elites Flee the City

When millions of impoverished immigrants started to arrive in Philadelphia in the late 19th century, the city’s elite cast an eye on farmland just outside the city limits with little interest in growing crops. Israel Wistar Morris, a wealthy broker and merchant, relocated his family from Philadelphia to Greenhill Farms. In the spirit of Marie Antoinette, Morris and his family maintained a mansion while leasing out their farmland. The family had indentured servants and enslaved people in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Morris’ son, Wistar Morris, who served as director of the Pennsylvania Railroad, president of the Board of Pennsylvania Hospital, and trustee of Haverford College, built a large stone mansion 300 yards west of the Old Homestead. 30 years later, a mansion was no longer enough. 

In the 1890s, Wistar Morris erected an unreasonable facsimile of a Scottish castle designed by Mantle Fielding. Morris wasn’t alone in his embrace of the Gilded Age. Industrialist Henry C. Gibson had recently moved an entire castle, brick by brick, from Scotland to Wynnewood. Meanwhile, hundreds of Welsh Quakers transitioned to the Anglican Church, which allowed them to swap simplicity for flamboyant displays of wealth.  When Morris died in 1891, he donated Morris Park to the City of Philadelphia. The original Overbrook Golf Club, founded in 1900, was located on 90 acres leased from the Wistar Morris Estate. Around that time, portions of the Green Hill Estate began to transition into the middle class suburban community of Penn Wynne. 

Roaring Twenties

Charles Morris Wood, the great, great grandson of the devout Israel Morris, took the former Quaker enclave to a new level of glitz when he erected and managed the Greenhill Farms Hotel in 1919. Designed by architect Horace Trumbauer, the Colonial Revival hotel was a high end residential hotel for the Blue Book crowd. It became a fashionable place for tea, dinner, dancing, and private parties. 

Champagne flowed freely at the hotel through Prohibition, as did scandal. It was here that a stockbroker, the 1920s version of Bernie Madoff, was whisked from his hotel room in silk pajamas to Sing Sing Correctional Facility after embezzling over $1 million from New York society women. In 1931, the hotel made national headlines again when a guest defended his sister’s honor with a 12-gauge, double barreled shotgun. Following his acquittal, MGM made a movie based on this sensational murder, Unashamed, starring Robert Young. Warner Bros. released its own version, Two Against the World, starring Constance Bennett. 

The End of an Era

The original Welsh Quaker founders of the Greenhill Estate would have been horrified, but not surprised, at the moral and financial failings of their descendants. Forced to sell off their assets, the “castle” was sold to Friends’ Central School for $1 (plus a hefty mortgage) in 1925.  Greenhill Farms Hotel was bought by the Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1939 for $550,000. In 2015, it became a luxury residential apartment complex, The Palmer, preserving Horace Trummbauer’s design. The Overbrook Golf Club was sold for $500,000 in 1940 to the developer of Lankenau Hospital. In 1962, the Old Homestead was demolished to make way for The Greenhill Apartments which were built on a 22-acre tract that date back to the original land grant. The eastern part of the estate, from 66th Street to 72nd Street in Philadelphia, was developed throughout the 20th century with a mix of homes, leaving only a small portion of the original estate intact. 

However, if the original Quaker founders of Greenhill Farms were to visit today, they would be relieved to discover their faith is alive and well at Friends’ Central. The school uses its ornate mansion, built in the Victorian era, as the main building of its 28-acre campus of their Middle and Upper School which includes an arboretum, nature trail, and a pollinator garden. Students and faculty enter though a porte cochere.

While the historic mansion’s opulence is a far reach from traditional Quaker values, there is no denying its architectural significance. Students and teachers are surrounded by authentic Tiffany leaded glass windows, vintage chandeliers, beamed ceilings, carved wooden walls, and original tiled fireplaces. “We light two of the fireplaces in the front hall in the winter to provide warmth on cold days,” said Grant Calder, Friends’ Central history instructor and archivist. Raised in the Quaker tradition, Calder is not surprised that Jewish students form a substantial and influential minority in Quaker schools in and around Philadelphia for over the last half century. “Quakerism and Judaism have a lot in common,” he said. “Both share core values, emphasizing the importance of community and the pursuit of peace and social justice, as well as not requiring an intermediary between the individual and God.”

If you go, visit Morris Park at Woodcrest Avenue and 66th Street, which has been fully restored by the Friends of Morris Park. It contains branches of Indian Creek, part of the Cobbs Creek Watershed, and currently has picnic areas and two miles of safe and maintained trails for hiking, biking, and bird and wildlife watching.

The author would like to thank the staff of Lower Merion Historical Society and Friends’ Central School for their assistance with researching this article.

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