pilgrimages of the Montgomery County Historical Society on September 16, 1896, the Pennsylvania Society, Sons of the Revolution, June 17, 1899.

In the year 1900, one hundred and forty-four acres of the original tract came into the possession of the Honourable Samuel W. Pennypacker. An addition has been built to the northward but the original appearance has been preserved as well as many of the features within. Furniture, household, and farm implements from the early settlement abound, and the place is a veritable museum showing the life of the people through many generations.

This is the story of Pennypacker's Mills, the only headquarters of General Washington remaining in the name of the family which owned it at the time of his occupancy. Important and interesting events have followed one another since the seating of Peter Pennypacker in 1747. The present owner was Governour of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, from 1903 to 1907.

HORSHAM, MONTGOMERY

KEITH-GRAEME-FERGUSSON-SMITH-PENROSE

NSEPARABLE from the very atmosphere of every old house is a pathos which every person feels whether they be fully conscious of it or not. It is the pathos of the generations of human lives lived therein.

It is a sense of the human tragedies

and comedies that have there been enacted in the continuous drama of existence, the tragic side, perhaps, being the more apparent. The sum total of all the follies and frailties of the men and women who have dwelt within its walls, their graces and virtues, their joys and sorrows, their loves and hates-all these we grasp by a kind of intuitive perception.

Of no old house can this be said more truly than of Graeme Park. Its successive owners have had careers of unusual dramatic interest. Sir William Keith, the scion of an ancient Scottish family, by a freak of fortune became Governour of Penn's Colony in 1717, his personality and conduct having strongly commended him to those who controlled affairs. His geniality and generally amiable qualities of character made him at once popular with the people and always kept him so. At first he was acceptable to the Proprietaries, but his sympathies falling naturally with the people and, in time, being arrayed against the Proprietary interests, he was superseded by Governour Patrick Gordon, in 1726.

In 1718 Sir William Keith bought a tract of twelve

hundred acres in Horsham Township, Philadelphia, afterward Montgomery County, at a spot about one mile northwest from the present Doylestown and Willow Grove Pike, some nineteen miles from Philadelphia, a place then looked upon as the outermost edge of civilisation. The Doylestown Pike was built expressly for his convenience. The land was mostly in timber and the nearest approach hitherto had been by Old York Road, which had been surveyed in 1711.

Sir William began to build in 1721 and, it seems, finished his house in 1722, as the old weather-vane of wrought-iron bears that date cut in stencil after the initials W. K. The house is over sixty feet long, twentyfive feet wide, and is three storeys in height. The walls are of rich brown field stone carefully laid and fitted, and are more than two feet thick, while over the doors and windows, whose dimensions are thoroughly characteristic of the date of erection, selected stones were laid in flattened arches. At the north end of the building is a great hall or drawing-room, twenty-one feet square, with walls wainscotted and panelled from floor to ceiling, a height of fourteen feet. The fireplace in the hall is faced with marble brought from abroad, while in the other rooms Dutch tiles were used for the same purpose. On each floor are three rooms. Stairs and banisters are of heavy white oak and all the other woodwork is of unusual beauty executed in a simple and vigorous design.

Quarters for the servants and various domestic offices were in separate buildings, that have now disappeared, leaving the whole of the hall for the use of its occupants. Lofty sentinel sycamores in front of the mansion indi