Cedar Grove Collection

Cedar Grove was constructed by Elizabeth Coates Paschall, an eighteenth-century Philadelphian widow seeking a summer retreat. Her husband had been a Quaker dry-goods merchant and she took over his business following his death in 1742. In 1748 she bought fifteen acres in the Frankford area, four miles outside of the city. Construction on the house was completed there in 1750, yielding only two rooms but executed with a high level of craftsmanship and including luxury features such as a marble mantelpiece and several windows. Two years later, Elizabeth Paschall added an additional room by extending the second floor over the kitchen. She also installed and maintained a medicinal herb garden through the 1750s.

Elizabeth Paschall left Cedar Grove to her daughter Beulah after her death in 1768. It was subsequently passed down to a niece, Sarah Paschall, in 1795, the same year as her marriage to Isaac Wistar Morris. The couple undertook a remodeling effort four years later. They added two new rooms and replaced the roof, doubling the size of the original house. Both the Paschall and Morris families were well-established Philadelphia Quakers. Witness to the family’s active role in the community, Cedar Grove saw much activity as a site for formal and informal occasions.

In the 1840s, Cedar Grove was left to Isaac Paschall Morris, the son of Isaac and Sarah. It was then inherited in 1869 by his daughter, Lydia Thompson Morris, who would be the last inhabitant of Cedar Grove. She left the house in 1888 for Compton, her family’s country seat in Chestnut Hill (now the site of Morris Arboretum). Cedar Grove was left empty until 1926 when Lydia Morris decided to move it to Fairmount Park. The project of dismantling in Frankford and reconstructing on the west side of the park took two years. With the donation of Lydia Morris’s family furnishings collection, Cedar Grove retains its historical character as an example of the Colonial Revival movement in America. It is cared for by the Philadelphia Museum of Art.