"MILL GROVE" IN 1835, SHOWING THE MILLS ON THE BANK OF PERKIOMING CREEK, THE FARMHOUSE, AND THE OLD SMELTING WORKS (BUILT BY SAMUEL WETHERILL), THEN IN DISUSE.
After a water-color painting by Charles Wetherill, son of Samuel Wetherill, and uncle of William H. Wetherill, the present owner of the estate.
"MILL GROVE" AS IT APPEARS TO-DAY.
The above from photograph by, and this published by courtesy of, Mr. W. H. Wetherill.
Audubon thought nothing of walking to and from Philadelphia when no conveyance was at hand, but to-day the railroad brings the traveler within a mile and a half of his old farm. Not far to the south, beyond the present railway station of Protectory, lies Valley Forge and the wooded hills where Washington's ragged veterans passed in log huts the ever memorable winter of 1777-8. Audubon fancied that his father had made the acquaintance of General Washington at that date, but this was eleven years before the place had come into the possession of his family, and at that time Captain Audubon was sailing the seas (see [Chapter II, p. 32]). Equally fanciful also was the idea that his mother had once lived there, which he expressed in a letter (quoted in full in [Chapter XXXIII]) written from New York on February 10, 1842, to young Spencer F. Baird, at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The naturalist was assuring his young friend that the slow but beautiful "Little Carlisle" was to be preferred to "Great New York, with all its humbug, rascality, and immorality," and added: "It is now a good long time since I was young, and resided near Norristown in Pennsylvania. It was then and is now a very indifferent place as compared with New York; but still my heart and my mind oftentime dwell in the pleasure that I felt there, and it always reminds me that within a few miles of that village, my Mother did live."
The soil of this farm region is of a dark red color, owing to a friable shale which outcrops everywhere. The high, wooded bank of the Perkioming abounds in caves, scooped out by the hand of nature or man, as well as in great pits and shafts, for deep down under its shale, "Mill Grove" was rich in minerals, particularly the sulphide of lead, associated with copper and zinc, to reach which many excavations have been made. The lead mines of this farm are said to have been famous in Revolutionary times, and have been worked sporadically for a hundred years; if traditions are trustworthy, many a winged bullet that laid a Red-coat low in the War of Independence was a messenger from "Mill Grove." In some of the old conveyances, which go back to the time of Penn, the place was commonly designated as the "Mill Grove Mines Farm." It is recorded that the original tract of two thousand acres, extending from the Schuylkill to the Perkioming as far as the mouth of Skippack Creek, was sold to Tobias Collett by William Penn in 1699 for fifteen shillings. We shall soon see that the mineral wealth which "Mill Grove" was supposed to hide beneath its rugged slopes was a source of no little trouble to the Audubons, the Roziers, and their successors for many a year.
At the foot of the declivity towards the west, half hidden by foliage, stood a picturesque stone mill, at a point where a solid rampart had been thrown across the stream to divert its power to the use of man. Hard by was the miller's house, which antedates the mansion, and which was built and first occupied by James Morgan, who came into possession of the property in 1749. It was this old mill site, originally distinct from the farm, that gave the name to the place. Behind the gristmill an extensive sawmill, built over the mill race, was also in operation. Today the dam is broken through, and the great mill wheel of wood and iron, twelve feet in diameter and fifteen feet wide, has come to rest after turning for more than a century.