Penrose-Strawbridge House

This structure is was originally part of Sir William Keith's Fountain Low Estate which he established in 1720 when he was Lt Governor of Pennsylvania under Hannah Penn, the widow of William Penn, and may have been the first structure that Governor Keith built here. Keith was a popular governor and also the 4th Baronet of Nova Scotia. Always short of funds, he stranded a young Ben Franklin in London without promised papers of introduction, then died in poverty in the Old Bailey.

Renamed Graeme Park, the estate became home to his grand-daughter, Elizabeth, called the most learned woman in America who had her heart broken by the son of the same Mr. Franklin. The farm became an encampment for several Revolutionary War armies including that of Mad Anthony Wayne, and is rumored to have been a place that General Washington was fond of visiting - until Elizabeth delivered a letter demanding his surrender. After surviving a threat from the new Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to confiscate the estate, Graeme Park was sold to a Quaker farmer, and his family, who worked and improved it till it was "one of the most valuable farms in Eastern Pennsylvania". This family made major additions to the farmhouse in 1810, 1830, and 1858.   

In the 20th century the property was purchased by a retired stockbroker and his young wife, a gentleman farmer and horse breeder, a man who set an altitude record in a balloon and won 16 steeplechase races and was said by his wife to have broken every bone in his body doing it. They saw nearby fields first turned into an test field for aviation pioneer Harold Pitcairn, and then saw that field expanded by the US Navy onto their own land to accommodate jets after World War II.