History

Rowland Ellis had emigrated from Merionethshire Wales to escape religious persecution. Shortly after receiving his land grant, Ellis built a log cabin on the property and returned to Wales to settle his affairs leaving behind Thomas Owen to begin clearing the land. Ellis finally received the deed to the property in 1702 and immediately set about building residence. Completed in 1704, the substantial fieldstone house has a t-shaped floor plan with distinctive flaring eaves and tall brick chimneys in what has become the classic early Pennsylvania style. The first-floor configuration of Great Hall and Parlor restored in the early 1970s and surviving original closed-string staircase show stylistic elements from this early period.

Ellis had only a small subsistence farm at Bryn Mawr, describing in a letter to his son-in-law that he had approximately 15 acres under cultivation in the middle 1690's, mostly in wheat, oats and Indian Corn. Although he hoped to have as many as 40 acres under cultivation in the near future, he was not successful. By 1719, Ellis, looking to give up agriculture for academia and the pursuit of his Quaker ministry, sold his estate to Richard Harrison. Rowland Ellis did not venture far after selling Bryn Mawr, settling in Plymouth (now Plymouth Meeting) where he passed away in 1731. He is buried at the Plymouth Meeting Friends Burial Ground.

The Harrison Family and Slavery

In 1729 the Harrisons joined the Radnor Monthly Meeting of Friends (Quakers). Although Richard played very little role in either Meeting business or public affairs in the area, his wife, Hannah, was regularly named a representative to the Philadelphia Quarterly and Yearly Meetings of Friends.

At the time of Richard’s death in 1747, the Harrisons had four living children, sons, Thomas and Samuel, and daughters, Hannah and Mary. Harrison left property in Chester County and around Norristown to each of his children. The Harriton property went to his wife. She stayed there until 1760, a year after her son Thomas died. In that year she moved to a small estate in Northern Liberties owned by her brother and rented Harriton to a series of tenant farmers. In Northern Liberties, Hannah lived with her unmarried children Samuel and Hannah, Thomas’s children, and the enslaved people she owned. She died in the summer of 1774, a few months after her son Samuel and more than 10 years after her daughter Mary. Her only surviving child, Hannah, inherited most of the property, including Harriton. Hannah married politician Charles Thomson a month after her mother’s death. During the next 15 years the Thomsons lived in Philadelphia while Charles served in the American government. They returned to Harriton when he retired in 1790 and lived there for the rest of their lives.

Enslaved People at Harriton

From about 1720 to 1760, Harriton was the site of a tobacco plantation that relied on more than two dozen enslaved people to do the physical work in the house and fields. There is very little documentation of the enslaved people who worked at Harriton, but there is enough to give us an idea of the number of men, women, and children and the names of at least a few of them.

We can estimate the number of people from Richard Harrison’s 1747 estate inventory, which put the value of his enslaved people at 690 pounds. The inventory is only a summary that does not include the number of people, but it can be compared to a detailed inventory of the estate of Mary Chew who died the same year. The Chew inventory shows her owning 55 people in Pennsylvania and Delaware, valued at 1,359 pounds, or a little less than twice the value of Harrison’s people. If the valuations were at all comparable, then Harriton would have had between 25 and 30 enslaved people at the time of Harrison’s death.
We know the first names of 13 people who were enslaved by the Harrisons. The earliest name we see is Jack, probably between 10 and 15 years old, who was sold by Hannah Harrison in 1749 for 29 pounds to Samuel Morgan of Radnor, Pennsylvania. Given his age, Jack must have grown up at Harriton and had parents or other relatives still living there at the time of his sale.

The other 12 names were listed in Hannah Harrison’s 1772 will, with notes as to which of her heirs would get each person. The group consisted of four men, three women, four girls, and one boy. The children were almost certainly the offspring of the adult slaves, but no relationships are indicated in the will.

To her son Samuel she left three men, Grigg, Peter, and Toby; three women, Beck, Deb, and Moll; a lad, Peter; and a girl, Sal. She also left instructions that Grigg and Beck were to be freed on her son’s death. To her daughter, Hannah, she left a man, Jerry, and a girl, Dinah, and to her two granddaughters she left girls Poll and Celia.

Grigg and Beck were probably freed shortly after Samuel Harrison’s death in 1774.
Moll and Peter were working for Charles and Hannah Harrison Thomson in Philadelphia in the early 1780s. They were probably still enslaved as late as 1783 since in that year Thomson was taxed for owning a man, but they were freed shortly thereafter. Moll continued to live with the Thomsons until her death at Harriton in 1790. We don’t know what happened to Peter, or to any of the other people owned by Hannah Harrison in 1772, with the exception of Grigg and Beck.

Grigg

When Grigg died at Harriton in 1801, he had lived most of his more than 80 years either there or elsewhere with his owners, the Harrison family. He had been born on the Harrison tobacco plantation in Maryland, and as a young boy had been the personal servant to Hannah Norris Harrison at the time when her husband, Richard, moved the family and the people he owned to Harriton. As an adult Grigg worked on the Harrison farm, clearing land, tending the tobacco fields, caring for livestock, and doing the other physical labor needed on the large estate. At some point he married Beck, also owned by the Harrison family. We don’t know if they had any children.

In 1760 Grigg and Beck moved with Hannah Norris Harrison to Northern Liberties, and in 1772 Grigg, Beck and 10 other people were listed in her will as part of the property she was leaving to her heirs. By the terms of the will, Grigg and Beck were to be set free upon the death of Hannah’s son Samuel, an indication of the special relationship they had with Hannah. Samuel died in 1774, making it likely that they became free shortly thereafter. They appear to have stayed in Philadelphia and maintained connections with Harrison’s daughter, Hannah Harrison Thomson, although they did not work for her as servants. In 1794, Charles Thomson prevailed on his wife’s nephew, Joseph Parker Norris, to take care of Grigg and Beck because they were no longer able to work to support themselves. Thomson periodically sent them money and inquired after them. After Beck died in late 1797, Thomson extended an invitation for Grigg to return to Harriton, and it was here that he died on September 24, 1801. On the day of his death, Thomson noted in his daybook that Grigg did not know his age, but “he remembered that he waited on his mistress when his master moved from Maryland.”