A version of this article was published in the Summer 2021 Narberth Borough newsletter.
Edward ap Rees (later anglicized as "Price") stepped off the boat from England in the summer of 1682, the deed from William Penn in hand which granted him 156¼ acres covering much of today's Narberth and adjacent Lower Merion. He felled the forest (or took advantage of land already cleared by the Lenape) and on this spot in 1690 built "a small severe stone dwelling a story and a half high…in those pioneer days a structure demanding respect". From his holdings, he donated a parcel to build Merion Meeting House. Over time, ap Rees increased his acreage to 205¼ acres and a barn, orchard, mill pond and meadow joined the house between present-day Dudley and Grayling.
Click the farmstead's features to read descriptions quoted from Narberth's Historical Prelude.
Ghosts on a Narberth Map
The features of the Edward ap Rees farmstead are mapped based on their description in Narberth's Historical Prelude , written by Carden F. Warner in 1905. Warner's family was among "original [1887-88] purchasers of lots in Narberth Park or vicinity", at 214 N. Essex, so it's possible that then 6-year-old Carden knew the old buildings. Click the farmstead's features to read Warner's descriptions of each. Although Warner locates its features with reference to modern streets and addresses, they must be approximately situated unless and until more information comes to light.
In addition, "the creek just north of Haverford avenue", in which stood a large water-wheel, is positioned as the stream channeled under the railroad embankment opposite 102 Dudley Ave. Given that the N. Wynnewood Avenue train tunnel predates (1879) the demolition of the Price farmstead, the embankment may have been built up over this already existing feature.
The Price farmhouse: “it had to go”
Ironically, it was Price's great-great-grandson's town-building plans that doomed the 200-year-old house. Edward Rees Price's sale of 2-acre lots from his neighboring estate beginning in 1883 helped kick off the suburbanization of Lower Merion. The land immediately surrounding farmhouse and barn had passed out of Price hands by 1838, and in 1887 was sold to the Real Estate Investment Co., which wasted no time in laying out streets and starting construction. Their July 28, 1888 ad in the Philadelphia Record faux-apologized "We are very sorry that we are compelled to destroy this old land-mark, but, as usual, it stands in the centre of one of the avenues and it had to go."
If carried out as described, the house was demolished the following Monday, July 30, 1888, after 198 years.
References
"The Price Plantation" in Carden Warner, Narberth's Historical Prelude (1905): "Using the avenues to locate it, it can be said to have stood on the south east corner of Forest and Windsor avenues or upon the site that Mr. A. H. Mueller's home now occupies." [117 Forrest] Further, the newspaper ad states: "…it stands in the centre of one of the avenues…"
Read more on the location at Ghosts on Narberth Corner.
"Mr. Sharpless", whose diary Warner credits for his descriptions of the Price farmstead, may be his contemporary Alfred Davis Sharples (1844–1919), grandson of Stephen Paschal, who purchased the property from the Price family in 1838 and gave it to his mother Ann Price Jackson. The Sharples Family Papers, including "a farm diary", are preserved at The Chester County History Center. Return
Updated February 15, 2025.