The Quaker Settlers of Brandywine Valley

The ruins of a two-story home built by the Green family.

National Park Service

The initial settlers in Brandywine Valley were primarily the Greens, Hicklins, and Newlins. In the late 1600s, they and their ancestors were all members of the Society of Friends (Quakers) in their home countries of central England (Wiltshire) and Ireland (County Armaugh). Their religion and kinship would prove to be important factors in the historical development of the Valley. They were lured here by William Penn who, by permission of the King, had surveyed the Valley and offered the opportunity of inexpensive ownership of large amounts of land, a privilege the settlers did not have in Europe where land was owned by the Crown or the villages they lived in. Religion was another concern as Quakers were vastly outnumbered by the dominant churches in England and Ireland and were considered heretical. Contrast the settlement patterns in this area with New England, for example, where villages were set up along the lines of the European model where people farmed land provided and owned by the village. The prospect of owning and farming land and accumulating wealth, which could be passed on to your children (a practice known as generational farming), was a key motivation to make the months long trek across the Atlantic Ocean to the New World.

People often ask about the distinctive features of Brandywine Valley and how they came to be. The answer is that most of the houses and barns that remain in the Valley reflect 18^th and 19^th century early generational farming patterns. For example, in or about 1721, Robert Green purchased all of the land in the Park on the North side of Beaver Valley Road in Pennsylvania. As his sons became of age, he began carving up and transferring sections of his land for his sons and grandsons in plots that were economically sufficient at the time to support a family. Their farms, houses and barns, including their original fence line boundaries, remain on the north side of Beaver Valley Road in Pennsylvania, reflecting the boundaries set for them in the 1815 Orphan’s Court division of Green’s property. Nicholas Newlin purchased 800 acres on both the north and south side of Beaver Valley Road in PA where his descendants later settled. William Hicklin purchased 180 acres of land at 502 Beaver Valley Road in Delaware. His house (1725) still stands today. In 1801, he, like Robert Green, began dividing his lands among three sons; the fourth of Hicklin’s sons did not receive any land, suggesting that further division would not have been economically viable. These farms survived for another 50-60 years or so but ultimately proved too small to be economically viable in the later part of the 19^th and early 20 Centuries.

In the beginning of the 20^th century, William Bancroft and his Woodlawn Trust began buying up and preserving virtually all of the Brandywine Valley properties, allowing many of the 18^th and 19^th century structures and their original farm boundaries to survive as they were two centuries ago.