User:GhostRiver/strawberry

Judge William Lewis
Sometime in the 1850s, William Coxe erected a stone English barn house near the Laurel Hill Cemetery and the Woodford mansion in what is now Fairmount Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. That house, called Somerton, was acquired by Charles Thomson, the secretary of the Continental Congress, by 1774. Somerton was raided and ultimately destroyed by the British Army during the American Revolutionary War, purportedly under the orders of William Howe, 5th Viscount Howe. The Thomson family abandoned the property upon hearing of the incoming raid and did not return.


 * purchases land 1783
 * completes mansion 1789
 * dies 1819

Judge Joseph Hemphill

 * purchases property 1821
 * adds Greek Revival wings 1828
 * dies 1842

George Crock

 * 1846 sold by Harriet Coleman
 * acquires new name
 * sold to city 1867

Fairmount Park Commission

 * deal closes 1871
 * various phases of occupation

Restoration

 * Committee of 1926
 * Historic Strawberry Mansion opens 1931
 * 2009 additional restorations
 * Banquet Room mural project
 * reopens may 2013
 * Historical Marker ceremony October 2013