Our guest blogger, George Detwiler, is back with another story from the Audubon area: This home at the corner of Pawlings Road and Lark Lane was part of a large farm owned by Aaron Weikel in the early 19th century. When we moved into our home on Owl Road in 1953, the barn for the… Read More »The Weikel Family and Shannonville
We have a guest blogger today. This post was written by HSMC Board member and volunteer, George Detwiler. One of the more colorful characters associated with the history of Betzwood and the Shannonville/Audubon area was William Levi “Buck” Taylor. Buck was born on November 15, 1857 in Texas. His grandfather was one of those killed… Read More »Buck Taylor, King of the Cowboys
This is a watercolor painting of the Wetherill Mansion. It was painted by local artist, illustrator, and educator Lois Rapp (1907-1992) around 1938.
This week we have a guest blogger: our own trustee and regular volunteer, George Detwiler! Audubon Elementary served the children of Audubon almost continually for 90 years after it’s opening in 1929. It opened with only four classrooms. Entrance was through the large front door facing Egypt Road, and the first thing you saw when… Read More »The Audubon Schools
In Lower Providence Township, sits the small private Wetherill cemetery, where the man who probably penned the Declaration of Independence is buried. Timothy Matlack was born in New Jersey to a Quaker family in 1730 and came to Philadelphia as a young man. When war began with Britain, Matlack declared himself a patriot and was… Read More »Timothy Matlack, Free Quaker
On Thanksgiving Day in 1950, just as families in Lower Providence were sitting down together to enjoy the holiday, a huge explosion occurred. Three thousand feet of a natural gas pipeline that ran from Texas to New York were destroyed in the blast. The Times-Herald reported the explosion on the day after (November 24) and quoted the… Read More »Pipeline Explosion in Audubon
Yesterday morning, before we opened to the public, I opened a box from our archive to describe the contents. I never know what I’m going to find when I do this, and this box was quite a surprise. It contained papers concerning the Wetherill family, a family which began a white lead business in Philadelphia… Read More »A Montgomery County inventor and explorer