Historic Quaker Houses of Delaware County, PA
The Massey House
Four-Phase Constuction: 1696, 1730, 1780 and 1860
Built by Thomas Massey and Family
Broomall, PA
Above: The Massey House. The house’s additive, multi-part construction shows the tradition of attaching a new section against an existing one. Image source: Wikimedia.com
The Massey House is one of the oldest English Quaker homes surviving in Pennsylvania, with its earliest section dating to 1696. The house was built by Thomas Massey, an English Quaker who arrived in Pennsylvania as an indentured servant in 1683. The house began as a modest brick dwelling on land granted to him by William Penn. The 1696 portion is among the few surviving examples from that early period of settlement.
Over the 18th and early 19th centuries, the house was enlarged several times by Massey's descendants, who remained on the property for generations. Today, the building is preserved as a museum and interpreted to show life in colonial Pennsylvania.
Images source: John Milner Architects
Image source: Chester Monthly Meeting Men´s Minutes, 1681-1721, Ancestry.com
Thomas Massey was born in Cheshire, England. He was a Quaker who came to Pennsylvania in 1683 as an indentured servant to Francis Stanfield. When he was 20 years old, in 1683, he sailed to Philadelphia from Chester, England on the ketch Endeavor After completing his term of service, Thomas was granted 50 acres of land by Stanfield and another 50 acres directly from William Penn.
In 1692, at age 29, Thomas married Phebe Taylor, a 22-year-old woman he had met during the voyage to America. The couple went on to have seven children. Their eldest son, Mordecai Massey, inherited the family home. The property stayed in the Massey family for more than two centuries, until 1925.
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