Famous Colonial Houses

by Paul M. Hollister

One of Maxwell’s six-pounders spoke, and a ball passed in the front window of the Chew house, through four partitions and heaven knows how many British, and out a rear window. The battery hammered at the steps, the windows and the door, while snipers fired at the flash of a rifle from the upper stories. Infantry charged across the lawn and was beaten back, artillery punctured but did not dislodge. Reed was all for chasing the rest of the retreating British toward the city, but Knox said it was against the rules to leave an enemy fort in the rear. “What!” Reed exclaimed, “Call this a fort and lose the happy moment?”

Cliveden

A daughter of the Quincy house saw the beginning of the Revolution. Mount Vernon was the home of its chief figure. From the Jumel Mansion he retreated to Westchester when the Continental army suffered its first major reverse. In the Kendall house at Dobbs Ferry he conceived the campaign which was to end the war, and there finally he saw the British evacuate the United States. Five houses in America punctuate the Revolutionary career of Washington, and the fifth is the house where the cause of freedom entered the dark hours, the period of terrible ordeal.

Cliveden was built in 1761 on “the worst road in America,” the main street of Germantown. The village, whose houses dotted some three miles of the street, was already becoming a fashionable summer retreat for prominent Philadelphians, and William Chew, the attorney general of the province, made Cliveden large enough for a family that totalled fourteen children, with the appropriate retinue of servants and household pets. The house is three stories high, as severely rectangular as a mill, with a plain extension built to the rear, and a further detached addition connected only by an underground passage. It might easily have been commonplace, but the dapple-gray native stone of which it is built is interesting, the doorway, to which you ascend by a flight of six stone steps, is dignified and inviting, and dormer windows, fat chimneys, and stone urns strike notes of real character on an otherwise plain roof. It makes no great bid for beauty, but its aspect of substance is as honest as a Philadelphia lawyer—and that is what William Chew was.

Although he became chief justice of Pennsylvania under the crown, he was no more of a loyalist than his position required. As a model of astute straddling, where can you cite a statement which quite compares with his decision, rendered in answer to the question: What is to become of those who meet the mandates of the crown with armed resistance?

“I have stated,” he answered, “that an opposition by force of arms to the lawful authority of the King or his Ministry is high treason, but in the moment when the King or his Ministers shall exceed the authority vested in them by the Constitution submission to their mandate becomes treason.” The same tolerance he showed toward the uprising of the colonies he showed to their leaders in Philadelphia, and you may take it from John Adams’ diary that he was a rare and upright judge of food as well as of treason.

“Thursday. Dined with Mr. Chew, Chief Justice of the Province, with all the gentlemen from Virginia ... and many others. About four o’clock we were called down to dinner. The furniture was all rich. Turtle and every other thing, flummery, jellies, sweet-meats, of 20 sorts, trifles, whipped sillabubs, floating islands, fools, etc., and then a dessert of fruits, raisens, almonds, pears, peaches, wines most excellent & admirable. I drank Madeira at a great rate & found no inconvenience in it.”

However much the members of the Continental Congress enjoyed his hospitality in 1775, they could no longer endure his presence as chief justice in Philadelphia in 1777, and in August of that year he and Governor John Penn were arrested and escorted to Burlington, New Jersey. Within a month Washington had met the British in force at the Brandywine in a doubtful effort to check their march on Philadelphia, and had been defeated. For a fortnight he played hide-and-seek with Howe on the banks of the Schuylkill, and if the countryside had been as communicative to him as it was to the enemy, the enemy would not have marched, as he presently did, unmolested into Philadelphia. Howe placed his major force at Germantown, and Washington came in as near as he dared and sat down to watch and wait. Strategically, the Revolution was a distinctly suburban war. With Philadelphia, the national capital, in the hands of the British, and winter coming on, American morale was quoted at .001, with no sales.

On the night of October 2–3, the American forces marched quietly down the main road toward Germantown, with flanks thrown out, on the right to the Wissahickon ravine, on the left to the old York pike. Dawn brought Sullivan of Maine into contact with the enemy. The enemy retreated, gaining speed as he scampered down Mount Airy into Germantown, with Sullivan, Conway and Reed at his heels. Colonel Musgrave, of the Fortieth Regiment of the British, saw the retreat coming, and with one hundred and twenty men swarmed into Cliveden, closed the shutters on the lower floor, barred the doors, and prepared to stand. Washington himself was in the pursuit, and he ordered Maxwell and four cannon to the ground across the street from Cliveden, where Upsala now stands. A thick fog had gathered, making it nearly impossible to determine where the enemy was, or in what strength. The utmost confusion prevailed. One of Maxwell’s six-pounders spoke, and a ball passed in the front window of the Chew house, through four partitions and heaven knows how many British, and out a rear window. The battery hammered at the steps, the windows and the door, while snipers fired at the flash of rifles from the upper stories. Infantry charged across the lawn and were beaten back, artillery punctured, but did not dislodge. Reed was all for chasing the rest of the retreating British toward the city, but Knox said it was against the rules to leave an enemy fort in the rear. “What!” Reed exclaimed, “call this a fort and lose the happy moment?”

It was in effect a fort, but it was as truly the happy moment to leave the fort to be cleaned out later and press the British retreat. For the American wings had not driven the British back (the American left wing failed because General Stephen was drunk), and the British, unopposed, marched obliquely toward the center of the fighting at Cliveden. Thus the battle became, instead of the conflict of bow-shaped forces, the meeting of two great arrowheads, and the point where the arrows met and the sparks were flying thickest was the lawn of the Chew house. Smith of Virginia, a colonel, set out for the house with a flag of truce to demand Musgrave’s surrender, and was shot from a window. Major White, one of Sullivan’s aides, tried to set fire to the house, and a shot from a cellar window killed him. Musgrave hung on. Every minute that passed brought British troops nearer, and increased the odds against the Americans.