Page:Architectural Review and American Builders' Journal, Volume 1, 1869.djvu/45

 1868.] The Perm Treaty-Ground and a Monument to William Penn. 25 particularizing about these men-of-war was to show why he should have certain points connected with the main subject of our present inquiry freshly in recol- lection. He felt assured that these vessels, on the stocks, covered the pre- cise location of the treaty tree ; which location, from the projection of the porch of the Vandusen homestead, the width of the front garden, the abrupt descent of the steps outside, on the bank adjoin- ing the road, and the width of the road itself, immediately on the opposite side of which stood the treaty tree, he fixed at from twenty-five to thirty -five feet, and most likely thirty, from the present southern line of Beach street. He re- membered the proposition of some of the neighbors to Matthew Vandusen, Sr., to place a permanent support under the great bough of the tree, and Matthew, Sr.'s, chagrin at the fall so soon after- wards ; and he also remembers the clam- bering of the goats along the trunk and the great horizontal bough ; but insisted that the size of the woody part of the tree had been much overrated, the stem near the ground not exceeding in bulk the size of a hundred-gallon puncheon, or say four feet diameter, and the great branch not surpassing the diameter of the bilge of a flour barrel, nor keeping that dimension beyond fifteen to eighteen feet from the trunk. The children of Matthew Vandusen, Sr., were, in order of birth, Nicholas, Matthew, Jr., who lived in the Fairman Mansion till he was about of age, John, two or three daughters, and Washing- ton, who was the youngest of all. Washington Vandusen, who was a little child when his father died, a few years after the fall of the elm tree, lived on in the old homestead, wherein he was born, with Susanna Till, a spinster, an old friend of the family, who took boarders there, until he was nearly of age, say IT or 18, and she had to leave it, on account of its demolition. After he married, Susanna Till went to live with him. Washington was a little child A or 5 year-s old when the tree blew down, and but two or three years older when his father died. Mr. Tees remembers the old buttonwood whose limb had been converted by Col. Eyre, the father of Franklin, into a belfry ; but thinks it stood rather farther away from Beach street than did the Treaty Tree. Mr. Tees agrees with Mr. Vandusen in regard to the location, size, position and arrangement of Fairman's Mansion, and of the Treaty Tree, with respect to the line of sight from it, and says that the line of the easterly or upper end of the mansion coincided al- most exactly with the westerly or lower side of the treaty monument, the south- easterly corner of the cellar wall being within a foot or two of the gate leading into the monument enclosure. He be- lieves, in fact, that the whole of the foundation, cellar walls, ovens and all are there undisturbed beneath Beach street pavement. Col. Eyre, out iu the revolution, was the father of Jehu and Franklin. Manuel Eyre, the Colonel's brother, had also a son Manuel. The descent of the prop- erty east adjoining the Vandusen or Treaty plot was from the Colonel to Jehu, Jr., from him to the present owner, Mary, from whom it will pass to the 3 r ounger members of the family. These names are given for the benefit of those who majr have in future to consult and weigh the evidence of documents. Mr. Tees remarks that the river road had no actual existence as marked on our illustrations from the old surveys and descriptions. Eyre's house and others were properly located on the northerly line of Beech street, east of Fairman's Mansion, long before Beach street existed, except on paper. The road swept out of Beach and Hanover intersection, as represented, to run be- tween the mansion and the river, but immediately swept into it again, as rep- resented by the dotted lines of the present street, by a curve exactly like the former.