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Estates in Overbrook
Part of
Overbrook

    Author
    John L. Puckett
    1700–1900

    Arriving in the mid-1680s, Welsh Quakers held the original patents in the Western Liberties. The descendants of these immigrants maintained sizable estates in the 18th and 19th centuries that evolved into the modern Overbrook.

    Arriving in the mid-1680s, Welsh Quakers held the original patents from William Penn in the Western Liberties, which Penn had acquired from the Lenape Indians. The descendants of these immigrants maintained sizable estates in the 18th and 19th centuries that evolved into the modern Overbrook. These estates belonged to the Williams, George, Morris, Jones, and Pleasanton families. 

    Western Liberties

    The Liberty Lands were created to make good on William Penn’s promise to award 10 acres of land in “the great towne” of Philadelphia for every 500 acres of country land purchased. As the City of Philadelphia was restricted to 1,280 acres, Penn compensated for his promise by creating the “Liberties,” “areas of free land” where purchasers of large tracts of Pennsylvania land could claim properties. The lands William Penn acquired from the Indians west of the Schuylkill River to Cobbs Creek were designated the Western Liberties. Arriving in the mid-1680s, Welsh Quakers were the first property holders, with large tracts located in what today is the Overbrook section of Philadelphia.[1] The Northern Liberties encompassed land between the city and Germantown and Frankford.[2] 

    Williams and George Estates

    Edward Williams purchased the tract of land on which the future Overbrook Farms would stand from William Penn’s patent holder, the First Welsh Company, in 1693. On his estate, Williams cultivated corn, wheat, and other grains. The farm passed to two generations of Williams’s heirs and in 1786, by marriage, to the family of Amos George. The “Georges Farmlands” (several tracts of farmland owned by different family members) remained in the George family until 1893 (see map plate 26 and map plate 27) , when they were purchased by representatives of Drexel & Co., which orchestrated the development of Overbrook Farms.[3]

    Morris Estate

    In 1799, the broker, commission merchant, and widower Israel W. Morris inherited from his deceased wife “Greenhill Farms,” a sizable estate that dated to a 1681 grant from William Penn to the Welsh Quaker Thomas Lloyd in what is now Lower Marion Township. Over the next century the estate expanded as it passed through two other families before Israel Morris’s inheritance. Morris subsequently acquired land from the George family that extended the family’s holdings to include Indian Run (Indian Creek on some maps) and its immediate environs in Overbrook.[4] Wistar Morris, whose estate appears on an 1892 G.W. Bromley map, was the last of the Morris estate-holders in Overbrook.

    Jones Estate

    In 1701 David Jones, a member of the Third Company of Welsh and the first Jones to arrive in this country, acquired 286 acres of Overbrook land in a grant from William Penn. A large tract of this original grant, from 56th Street southwest along Woodbine Avenue to 64th Street, south to Jefferson Street and northeast back to 56th Street, was held by the family in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.[5] Rea and Miller’s 1849 map of Blockley Township shows Jones family holdings in Overbrook. By the late 19th century, the family had sold off its holdings above the Pennsylvania Railroad; Lewis Jones appears in a 1911 atlas published by J.L. Smith as a property holder adjacent to the Pennsylvania Institution for the Blind.   

    Pleasanton Estate

    By the 1880s Captain Alfred Pleasanton owned an estate purchased by his father, the Civil War general Augustus J. Pleasanton, just to the east of the Jones Estate. In 1896, the family sold 26.3 acres of the estate to the Pennsylvania Institution for the Instruction of the Blind, which relocated its campus from 20th and Race streets to a new building at the Overbrook site in 1899.[6] After 1897 and Captain Pleasanton’s death, the remainder of the estate was sold. One of the new occupants, James J. Mitchell used the property to stable horses; the last occupants, the Stuarts, farmed it and sold vegetables to their Overbrook neighbors.[7]

    Neighborhoods
    Overbrook
    Themes
    City of Homes
    [1] Tello J. d’Apéry, Overbrook Farms: Its Historical Background, Growth and Community Life (Philadelphia: Magee Press, 1936), 1–2, 6; William Bucke Campbell, “Old Towns and Districts of Philadelphia,” Philadelphia History 4, no. 5 (1942): 97–98.
    [2] Campbell, “Old Towns and Districts.”
    [3] d’Apéry, Overbrook Farms, 1–2, 6.
    [4] Ibid., 3–19.
    [5] Ibid., 28–30.
    [6] Elizabeth Willoughby, Overbrook School for the Blind (Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2007), 21. 
    [7] d’Apéry, Overbrook Farms, 32–33.

    Continue reading Overbrook
    Map of Blockley Township Including All Public Places, Property Owners, etc., 1849
    Estates in Overbrook

    Arriving in the mid-1680s, Welsh Quakers held the original patents in the Western Liberties. The descendants of these immigrants maintained sizable estates in the 18th and 19th centuries that evolved into the modern Overbrook.

    Landscapes in Overbrook

    Mill Creek, Indian Run, Morris Park, and City Line are notable historical features of the Overbrook landscape.

    Overbrook Farms

    Overbrook Farms, an elite turn-of-the-20th-century suburban development notable for its curvilinear streets and late-Victorian and early-modern houses arose in the quadrant of 59th to 66th streets between City Line and Woodbine Avenues. The project involved more than 50 architects; its hallmarks were (and still are) spacious late-Victorian and early-modern houses arrayed on curvilinear streets.

    Commerce in Overbrook

    From the late-17th to the mid-19th century, Overbrook was home to agricultural estates and water-powered mills. By the turn of the twentieth century, it was a residential section of the city dominated by Overbrook Farms, with business activity concentrated along 63rd Street above Lancaster Avenue.  

    Railroads and Trolleys in Overbrook

    From the mid-19th century onward, the Pennsylvania Railroad’s “Main Line” trains spurred the development of affluent suburbs just northwest of the City of Philadelphia. Overbrook’s residential development benefited immensely from the railroad’s passage through West Philadelphia to the central city. Electric trolleys arrived in Overbrook in 1895.

    Institutions in Overbrook

    Throughout the late 19th century and early 20th century, houses of worship and benevolent/charitable institutions played a role in the Overbrook section.