People/Organizations | Horsham Preservation and Historical Association

Morris and Mary Penrose

Not much is known of Morris Penrose. He was born on March 14, 1860, the second child of Abel and Sarah Penrose. Morris never married but did become the fourth generation of Penroses to farm Graeme Park. His sister Mary Penrose married William Carothers on April 16, 1913. Carothers was 23 years older and died two years later. Mary returned to Graeme Park following his death. She died in 1953. When Morris’ father Abel Penrose died on July 10, 1893, his will directed that the property could be purchased by his two sons, Morris B. or William Penrose, either jointly or individually,...

Samuel Carpenter

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Samuel Carpenter Samuel Carpenter was born in Horsham, Sussex, England. He was baptized in the Church of St. Mary’s in Horsham on November 20, 1649. He purchased 5,000 acres of land from William Penn, probably on August 4, 1684. 4,200 acres of this lie in what is now Horsham Township, which was established as a municipal entity by a vote of the people in 1717 and named after Carpenter’s birthplace. Carpenter was the youngest son of John Carpenter, the Sheriff of Horsham, who was murdered while on duty in Horsham on August 9, 1671, and his second wife Sarah (maiden name unknown). Samuel...

Howard T. Hallowell

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Howard T. Hallowell Howard T. Hallowell, a native of Horsham, founded the Standard Pressed Steel Company, now known as SPS Technologies. Mr. Hallowell was born on June 30, 1877, at Hallowell, Pa. Hallowell was working as a draftsman at the American Pulley Company in Philadelphia in 1900 when he witnessed an industrial accident where a brittle cast iron shaft hanger broke. He designed a better hanger from pressed steel and patented it in 1901. The Franklin Institute of Philadelphia115 awarded Hallowell the John Scott Legacy Award for this same invention in 1906. In 1903 Hallowell left...

Justinian K. Hallowell

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Justinian K. Hallowell The village of Hallowell was at the intersection of Governor’s Road and the Doylestown-Willow Grove Turnpike in Horsham Township, Pa. It was one of five small villages that made up the township. The area became a crossroads after the 1830s when the turnpike north of the area became a public road. Justinian Hallowell, born in 1855, established the Hallowell Hotel in 1880 and at some point a post office also called Hallowell. The following information is according to My Genealogy Hound, and based on a family biography published in the Biographical Annals of Montgomery...

William and Hannah Penrose

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William and Hannah Penrose William Penrose is the second generation of Penroses to own and farm Graeme Park. William Penrose, the third child and second son of Samuel and Sarah Penrose, was 19 when he moved with his parents from Richland Township to Graeme Park in 1801. His older brother, Abel, remained in Richland. His older sister, Gainor, would marry Richard Jarrett (son of Jonathan and Hannah (Mather) Jarrett) of Horsham. He married in 1810 at age 28 to Hannah Jarrett (daughter of William and Ann (Lukens) Jarrett), also of Horsham. William and Hannah moved into a new home – a large...

Governor Sir William Keith

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Sir William Keith Sir William Keith (1680-1748) was the deputy governor of the province of Pennsylvania under William Penn’s widow, Hannah Callowhill Penn. “Keith was descended from that great feudal family of that name, the head of which, for about six hundred years, was Marischal to the King of Scotland, in ancient times sitting with the Constable at the monarch’s right hand in Parliament.”89 William Keith was the eldest son of Sir William Keith of Ludquhairn, and was born at the family home of Boddam Castle, near Boddam in the extreme north east of Scotland. He studied at Marischal...

Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson

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Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson Dr. Thomas Graeme acquired what was to become Graeme Park in 1739 sort of from his mother-in-law Lady Ann Keith (see Graeme Park timeline). The estate, then called Fountain Low, was pretty much wilderness with a large building which may have been sitting vacant due to Governor Keith’s and Lady Anne’s never ending financial problems. Dr Graeme, over time, transformed the estate by adding gardens, a 300 acre deer park, and converting this building into the beautiful, colonial mansion we know today as Keith House. The Graemes used Graeme Park as a summer retreat...

Dr Thomas Graeme

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Dr Thomas Graeme Dr. Thomas Graeme (October 20, 1688-September 4, 1772) was the son-in-law of Sir William Keith, and the prominent port physician of Philadelphia. He purchased the remainder of what had been Sir William Keith’s Fountain Low Estate in Horsham. Graeme transformed what was likely a failed attempt at a brewery/distillery in the middle of the forest into a working farm and country estate. Dr Graeme was born at the family seat at Balgowan, in Perthshire, Scotland, October 20, 1688. Dr Benjamin Rush described him as “”a person of excellent education and agreeable manners...

Henry Pratt McKean

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Henry Pratt McKean This article is based on History of Talamore by Dr James Hilty 100 except where otherwise noted. Henry Pratt McKean, born January 12, 1866, was the great great grandson of Thomas McKean, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and grandson, on his mother’s side of George Mifflin Wharton, a prominent Philadelphia attorney. Buoyed by inherited wealth and high social status, H. P. McKean became a financier, clubman, skilled horseman, and widely known “gentleman” socialite in New York, Washington and London100. He was a descendant of Samual Carpenter through his Wharton...