‘Founding Brothers: Associations, Societies, and Clubs’

    

Historic Peachfield, once the home turf of John Skene, the first Freemason in the New World, hosts inviting programs that educate in early American culture. One of these events in the New Year will feature a Brother Mason well known about the apartments of the Temple.

Bro. Erich Huhn is Secretary of New Jersey Lodge of Masonic Research and Education 1786, and Junior Deacon of The American Lodge of Research in New York City. Also, he is a Ph.D. candidate, specializing in nineteenth century American Freemasonry, at Drew University.

From the publicity:

February First Sunday

Founding Brothers:

Associations, Societies,

and Clubs

Sunday, February 2

2-4 p.m.

Presented by Erich Morgan Huhn, a presentation on how colonial and early republic society was made up of myriad associations, societies, and clubs that sought to bring order and to form an important foundation from which modern society was built.

Peachfield is a restored country plantation house originally built in 1725, with an addition erected on the west side on the home completed in 1732. The name “Peachfield” comes from the property’s first settler, John Skene, the first Freemason resident on record in the colonies, who purchased the 300-acre property in the late seventeenth century. Upon Skene’s death in 1695, Henry Burr purchased the property. 

Later, Henry built the east portion of the home in 1725. His son John Burr built the west portion in 1732. The home remained in the Burr family for 200 years. In 1931, Norman and Miriam Harker purchased Peachfield. The house had virtually been destroyed by fire two years earlier. They engaged the services of R. Brognard Okie, a well-known Philadelphia architect, to restore the home in the colonial revival style which became popular in the early 20th century.

Three years prior to her death in 1965, Mrs. Harker bequeathed Peachfield and its surrounding 120 acres of land to The National Society of The Colonial Dames in The State of New Jersey. Now used as the Society’s state headquarters, the Dames of New Jersey have honored Mrs. Harker’s wish to keep the property as it “ has always been,” and have maintained Peachfield as a house museum.

Surrounding farm lands adjacent to the house are still farmed as they have been for more than 300 years.

Located at 180 Burrs Road, Westampton, New Jersey.

The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America in The State of New Jersey, founded in 1892, maintains two museum properties: Peachfield in Westampton, New Jersey and the Old Schoolhouse in Mount Holly, New Jersey. We invite you to visit and learn about New Jersey’s Quaker roots and heritage at both of these historic sites. Both are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

It’s not easy envisioning New Jersey as having Quaker roots, but I leave that to the historians.

Bro. Erich will appear at the lectern of The ALR the following month, on March 31, to give what I’ll surmise will be a related talk on Alexis de Tocqueville in a double bill with Bro. Chris Ruli, who will discuss Lafayette and Freemasonry, but more on that later.