Clovercroft Chronicles

This past fall, I led a hike into the 200 acres of woods behind Don Guanella that are our newest Delaware County Park. The woods were working farms, an active tannery and whetstone factories and quarries from the first settlements in Marple in the 1680s until about 1960 when the Archdiocese stopped leasing the land to a local farmer and demolished several old farmhouses on the tract. Since that time, Mother Nature has reclaimed the tract and it is now entirely wooded. There are remains of what once was, concrete slabs with hooks, stone piles that were once a farmhouse and a large stone retaining wall, but much of their history is now a mystery.

A woman who grew up at the Rhoades home on the property, Mary Rhoads Haines (1819-1905), wrote a memoir, Clovercroft Chronicles, with details of that Marple farming community that breathes life into the ruins remaining in these woods. Historian Samuel Fitch Hotchkins summarizes a portion as follows:

“In Clovercroft Chronicles … one may see how simply the industrious country people of Pennsylvania lived in earlier days. An old German woman spins flax in a sunny kitchen. and a spinning-wheel makes music while the flies sing a chorus. and a child makes “knotty threads on a small implement given her for a plaything.” Colored refugees, who had come above Mason and Dixon’s line. were often employed as good workers. The early morning brought rural charms of birds and light. as the stars melted away before the rising sun. while a country maiden made her cakes in the porch. under a shady sycamore, with a Carolina rose on a

whitewashed smoke-house to complete the picture, and wheatfields in sight promising a good harvest.

The spring-house was attractively picturesque, and its luscious cream refreshed the body. Farm work kept the men busy in spring-time when machines were unknown. April showers and cherry blossoms, and pleasant family meals brightened the day, and evening brought cheerful conversations, and news, and Scripture Psalms to introduce the night. Winter had its own charms; and work-baskets showed industrious and useful toil, while poetry, travel, and general literature enlivened the old Marple homestead of the Rhoads family on the Springfield Road, which seems to long for the old times to come again so well described in Clovercroft Chronicles.”

Search for her Chronicles at the free Internet Archive. Chapters 15 and 16 contain the Marple memories.

For more on the history of Marple, visit the Marple Historical Society website and Facebook page, and join the Society to keep up to date on coming events: www.MarpleHistoricalSociety.org