801 Merion Square Rd, Ardmore, PA

Back in 2010 I wrote a post about my maternal great grandfather, William Ross Harper.

He was born in Thomas County, Georgia in 1874. He married Virginia Jeanne Sims Stapleton in 1894. They had 4 daughters and 1 son. The son, William Ross Harper, Jr., died when he was a year old.

William's first wife died shortly after their last child was born in 1902. Somewhere around 1905 he remarried and his new wife and the four girls moved to Philadelphia, PA.

One of the daughters, Eleanor, was my mother's mother. I never knew her as she died a month before I was born. The only thing, really, that I knew about my mother's mother's side of the family was that they were from the South and they were wealthy.

A couple of years later, April of 2012, I got a notification that I had a comment on the post of William Ross Harper. All of a sudden I had a new found second cousin who knew a lot about that side of my family. Our grandmothers were sisters! We corresponded back and forth, and I was thrilled to hear all of her stories. She told me about this "big house" as we now call it, just outside of Philadelphia that William lived in.

I knew that Paul and I were going to the Philadelphia area in April for a 90th birthday party for Paul's aunt. I got in touch with my cousin to see if she had an address for the "big house." I wanted to see it. She didn't have an exact address but she knew it was in Ardmore, a suburb of Philadelphia.

I knew that Paul didn't like to go looking for places that we really have no idea of where they are, but I thought that we could look in one of the libraries around there and maybe find a City Directory and find the address.

Who knew that Philadelphia didn't have city directories?

We spent most of the day that we were driving home trying to locate this house. We found several other houses that he lived in before moving to the "big house."

We actually found the house on Merion Square Rd, but we didn't have a house number. One house on the street was not a private home. It was owned by the Philadelphia Motherhouse of Deaconesses.

After we got home we started doing some research and I found two articles written by The Lower Merion Historical Society.

One of them said:

Its new owner, William Harper, a Philadelphia musician, lived at "Skylands" until 1952 when he sold it to Joseph Newton Pew, Jr. The next year, Pew donated the property to the Philadelphia Motherhouse of Deaconesses, who nearly doubled the size of the residence with northeastern additions.

The other one said:

The Skylands mansion was built in 1928 on a 16-acre site for William Wood and his family. The house was originally named Stonecroft. Wood was involved in the woolen industry and did quite well for a time until the Depression hit and his business began to crumble. In 1938 the couple were so broke they put their house up for sale.

Two years later it was purchased by William Harper and his wife, who breathed life back into it. Known for their entertaining skills, the Harpers’ house was filled with music from two grand pianos in the Great Hall and dancing in the third-floor ballroom. They even had individual members of the Philadelphia Orchestra perform at the home, according to a 1999 Main Line Times history page.

In 1952 the Harpers sold the mansion to the Pew family for $100,000, even though the original cost of the home was closer to $500,000.


There were also pictures, the most impressive being this one.

Paul and I have entered all of this in our Family Tree Maker.  I really love doing this, even though it is a lot of work and can sometimes be very frustrating.

I wish my mother were still alive and of sound mind.  It would be so much fun to show her all of this and talk with her about it.