The township of Edgmont in Delaware County is one of the first regions to be settled and farmed by English Quakers in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth-centuries.
starting with the emigrant, Abraham DePratt who came from France. Abraham’s son Joseph Sr. dropped the “de”, and bought a property in Edgmont on which he built a stone farmhouse, that survives today as the Colonial Plantation at Ridley Creek State Park.
Joseph Pratt had the most horses, cattle, and sheep in Edgmont. Many of the Pratt’s descendents can be found in the local area today.
There are twenty-five early farmsteads, along with an eighteenth-century mill village, within Ridley Creek State Park.
Many of the structures constructed on these original family farmsteads still survive today and are among the earliest existing buildings in Delaware County
Twenty five origmal farmsteads along with the eighteenth-century Sycamore Mills village are contained within Ridley Creek State Park, (see map 3) This collection and concentration of colonial, English agricultural architecture is unparalleled in the mid-Atlantic region. The farmsteads and their buildings represent more than 300 years of rural agricultural activity dating back to the establishment of the province of Pennsylvania.
today it is the most intact farmstead in the park.

dates from 1715

The Lower Rawle farmhouse is a superb specimen of l8th century domestic architecture. Built in three sections, c. 1715, 1750, c. 1770, the house is virtually unchanged. The interior contains almost all of its original woodwork.

 

 

 

 

Image source: Nicholas Santoleri