Read this terrific article...this isdefintely a time of great articles about one of Lower Merion's beloved treasures because Kathy O'Loughlin has done not one but TWO articles in Main Line Times for the History page (link provided to second one), one from Cheryl Allison, and even a blurb in the Bulletin!

Harriton House spans the ages
The historic farmstead hosted hundreds of families for its annual plantation fair.
By Bonnie L. Cook
Inquirer Staff Writer

On a crisp fall day recently, a few of His Majesty's Scottish foot soldiers appeared to set up camp on the lawn of Harriton House in Bryn Mawr.

There to reenact colonial times, in long skirt, vest and white blouse and apron, was 10-year-old Emily Morris of Merion. Her father, infantryman Rob Morris, 43, hovered nearby.

"I'm a camp follower," the little girl said. "I'd do the cooking and cleaning, and putting up and taking down the tent."

Leapfrogging 229 years to become laundress for a regiment that fought the colonists in 1778 might seem a tall order when you actually attend elementary school in Merion.

But it was all part of the recent Harriton Plantation Fair, in which hundreds of area families came to learn about the historic place and its times, while enjoying the more modern pursuits of pony riding, face painting, and browsing white elephant tables.....The stately stone farmstead that visitors see today started in 1704 as a three-room house built by Welsh Quaker Rowland Ellis.

It sat on 700 acres, part of William Penn's land grant to Welsh Quakers seeking religious freedom in the New World in 1680.

But Ellis, a Pennsylvania assemblyman and overseer of Penn Charter School in Philadelphia, couldn't make it as a subsistence farmer; in 1719, he sold the property to Richard Harrison, a tobacco planter from Maryland.

Harrison married a local woman named Hannah Norris and became a successful tobacco farmer at Harriton, using 11 slaves. Their daughter, Hannah Harrison, inherited the farm in 1774 and married Charles Thomson, best known for the 15 years he spent as secretary to the Continental Congresses and their successor, the Congress of the Confederation.

In April 1789, Thomson was dispatched by Congress to tell Gen. George Washington that he had been elected president, ensuring Thomson's place in history.

Charles Thomson: Harriton's famous resident
By By KATHY O’LOUGHLIN

Charles Thomson was a man of many talents.

He served as the secretary of the Continental Congress.

He designed the Great Seal of the United States.

He attested to the Declaration of Independence as an official resolution of Congress.

He taught Latin and Greek at Quaker schools in Philadelphia.

He worked as a rum distiller.

He was an avid beekeeper.

He was a farmer who experimented with new agricultural techniques and crops.

He was an ardent abolitionist.

He completed the first translation of the Bible from Greek to English to be published on the North American continent, a four-volume work.

And what is probably of most interest to Main Line history buffs, he was Harriton House’s most famous occupant.

Charles Thomson had a long span of time in which to do all this -- he lived to 95.

Inside Today's Bulletin
Harriton Fair Keeps Historical Home Bustling
By: Bradley Vasoli, The Bulletin
10/01/2007

Teems of area residents and history buffs came to the Harriton Plantation Fair Saturday, gazing upon the idyllic land and supporting the memory of an important American revolutionary.
Directors of Harriton House, the main dwelling on a former plantation on 500 Harriton Road in Bryn Mawr, put on the fair each year to raise money for and awareness of the home of Charles Thomson, the only secretary to the Continental and Confederation Congresses.
"We exist to tell the story of this place and to keep it alive," Bruce Gill, curator of Harriton House, told The Bulletin.

Nearly 2,000 families walked onto the erstwhile plantation Saturday to listen to rustic music, horseback ride and buy locally grown produce and other small items like books, china and toys.

Farmers living at Harriton House since William Penn granted the once-698 acre property to a group of Welsh Quakers in 1682 have grown a variety of crops with famed success, particularly tobacco. Nothing is grown commercially on the old farming grounds anymore, but it does retain a 40-ft.-by-90-ft. plot for community gardening, which Gill expects will expand threefold in the coming years.