I. Introduction
From its beginnings in the early eighteenth until the turn of the twentieth century, Stenton was a farm, a "plantation." Its "mansion house" survives remarkably intact from its earliest period, and remains the core of the interpretation of the site. In contrast, almost nothing remains of the essential material facts of the agricultural activities that occupied the time, thoughts, and energy of those who lived and worked at Stenton through the latter nineteenth century. The engagements of those people with the land, and with domestic and wild animals and plants, were regular and vital. Today, the barn and its collection of tools survive as the principal vestige of this key aspect of the history of the Stenton.
Further, as much if not more remains to be both discovered and understood about what happened on the property outside the main house, as what went on inside its brick walls. Such basic information as the specific chronology of land acquisition and sale by James Logan’s descendants at Stenton has yet to be established, for example, and an organized, easily accessible gathering of primary sources relevant to activities on the estate remains to be undertaken.[i] Enormous gaps remain in the primary scholarship of Stenton's agricultural history, including the economic role of the income, if any, that the "plantation" provided the Logans through the generations. Stenton, of course, is hardly alone among historic sites in the relative lack of information about the activities and events in its landscape. As suggested in the Cultural Landscape Inventory for Stenton’s Colonial Revival Garden, the ideology that informed the creation of many houses museums, Stenton among them, led to an emphasis on decorative gardening that was rarely, if ever, the primary landscape use or interest of the owners of these properties in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
While a lengthy, scholarly study of the site before 1900 is a desideratum, a number of published sources and a select group of primary documents can provide direction in establishing themes relating to Stenton’s landscape and augmenting its interpretation. The current period of interpretation – the first three generations – provides a basic thematic structure for interpreting the landscape that can easily be augmented by themes relevant to the history of the site as a museum under the NSCDA. The "real stuff" of Stenton's landscape history provides opportunities for richer interpretation to a variety of audiences, and the potential for a broader understanding of the relationship of people of the past to the land they inhabited and on which they depended for subsistence.
For the purposes of the interpretation of Stenton, the generations of its owners epitomize fundamental ideas in the history of American landscape and plant and animal use. One idea in particular is common to the first three generations of Stenton ownership: scientific engagement with plants. Each generation manifests this broad idea differently, and with the particular interests of its era. Equally important are the specific historic processes and life ways associated with agriculture and gardening at Stenton, which, made tangible and even participatory for the visitor, could add enormously to the "real stuff" experience of Stenton as a historic site.
II. James Logan: The Grandee's Estate and the Mentality of the Virtuoso
In his 1957 James Logan and the Culture of Provincial America, Frederick Tolles quotes James Logan's assertion that he intended to build Stenton as "a plain cheap farmer's stone house," but that the failure of his quarries forced him to build a grand mansion of brick as "the model and disposition naturally drew on ornament." Tolles aptly notes that "it pleased Logan to picture himself as a simple countryman on a Sabine farm, but he deceived no one, not even himself. He was, of course, a provincial grandee . . . ."2 In this brief passage, Tolles indicates two key facets of James Logan's relationship to his estate: first, its expression of Logan's social and political status, and second, its place in Logan's intellectual life.
While James Logan may have become a "provincial grandee" by the time he moved to Stenton, he certainly was no such thing when he arrived in the Pennsylvania colony as William Penn’s secretary. The funds that allowed him to purchase land and build his grand brick mansion did not come from the inherited wealth of large land holdings passed down intact in the highest echelons of British society through primogeniture. Instead, Logan's money came from the very middle class business enterprises that were the basis of most substantial mid-Atlantic fortunes made in the eighteenth century: trade, and shrewd, speculative land investments. The money gained from these sources allowed Logan to create for himself a status marker of the British gentry: an estate. As Tolles notes, Logan realized in 1711 that his ambitions were never going to be realized within the relatively rigid social and economic structure of the British Isles proper.[3] Thus, Logan can be construed (and interpreted) as an early and substantial example of an individual who took advantage of the relative freedom of New World’s social and economic conditions to change his status. In crudely simplistic terms, his life is a manifestation of what was to become the American dream. More important for the interpretation of the estate at Stenton today, Logan created a suburban country estate to both signal and reinforce his social and political status in the colony – an American cultural ideal that persists to the present.
The elements of Stenton's landscape during James Logan's lifetime can be expected to have reflected a model of a gentleman's estate as he understood it, and as it reinforced (and one might argue reified) his status within the society in which he lived. As it would in a very different way for his grandson, agriculture at Stenton, like the plan of his house, undoubtedly had political implications for James Logan in addition to providing food for his family (in the eighteenth-century meaning of the term). Although this may never be corroborated, one can assume with a reasonable degree of certainty that the features of the property would perform analogous functions to portions of the house itself. For example, the walled garden in front of the house was intended to act as a people filter much as the hall on the other side of the front door did. Whatever was planted in that yard served an ideological purpose as much as a functional, or aesthetic one.
It is perhaps as important to note what the Stenton landscape was not as much as to note what it was. As observed in the Colonial Revival CLI, there is no evidence that James Logan was particularly interested in gardening per se, and early secondary sources, including Deborah Logan herself, are conspicuously quiet on the subject of an extensive, decorative Stenton garden. This is not to say that there was no decorative or flower gardening at all at Stenton, but unfortunately very little is know about it. This is a subject that strongly merits further investigation in primary sources. The question of aesthetics in the landscape is a related matter, and one that deserves a brief digression, because it bears a relationship to the house itself. James Logan's aesthetic interests can be assumed to be strongly individual, but not far outside of the social conventions that informed his life and the restrictions that living in the colonies presented. While Logan commissioned portraits of himself and other family members, he was not a patron to artists as those at the top of the social hierarchy in the British Isles would have done. There is no evidence that he was interested in the latest in aristocratic architectural taste in Britain, and in fact, no strong evidence that he was interested in aesthetics except as a branch of philosophy and as an expression of his identity. In this he was also very much in keeping with what would become the norm for Americans.
As Tolles's reference to the "Sabine farm" suggests, the life of Logan's mind (so to speak) is a key element in understanding the context that informed James Logan's relationship to Stenton. In respect to the landscape, Logan was hardly alone in keeping the Virgilian ideal of rural retirement (and those of related Roman authors) as a model. Certainly, this ancient model informed Logan's choice to create Stenton as much as his ambition to create and support his social and political position. In fact, these two elements cannot be separated, since the ancient authors on the subject of country life informed the ideology expressed in British upper class estates. Logan's estate was in fact closer to the ancient model in one important respect: in contrast to the relationship of many Virginia planters to their estates, Logan was in rural retirement from the local city, Philadelphia, and his activities of negotium there, rather than from London.
While his mental dialogue with the ancients is key to understanding Logan's relationship to Stenton and the landscape, so is his actual dialogue with the moderns. While his corn experiment and correspondence with Linnaeus are not specific to Stenton as a site, the interests of the virtuoso can be assumed to have informed his relationship to plants there in some fashion. Again, further primary research and analysis is strongly called for here. Letitia Wright wishfully asserts in her article the “Colonial Garden at Stenton Described in Old Letters,” that Stenton's garden was important "for it was there that men like John Bartram . . . and Abraham Redwood . . . received the inspiration which prompted them to establish gardens which became noted the world over."[4] In this, she of course confuses the process with the product, but the role of Logan's science in affecting the relationships of people to plants in the New World is significant.
Bibliography
Unfortunately, very little published work has been done that effectively links British class questions and estate-making in the mid-Atlantic. Of limited, but some referential use both geographically and because of some of the analytical failures of the author is Barbara Wells Sarudy's
Gardens and Gardening in the Chesapeake, 1700-1805 (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998). For essential factual information that is pertinent to the establishment of Stenton, Tolles, however, remains the best published source.
One of the most useful summaries of the ancient Roman writings on country life that were so important to Logan, his contemporaries, and his successors, can be found in the “Ancient Roman Villa” chapter of James Ackerman’s The Villa: Form and Ideology of Country Houses (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), particularly pp. 39-42. Edwin Wolf II’s discussion of James Logan's scientific activities in The Library of James Logan of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: the Library Company of Philadelphia, 1974), pp. xxxii-xxxiii, is very brief but pithy. In the same vein, Tolles’s description of the same subject and his interactions with John Bartram, found in his “Quaker Virtuoso” chapter, is useful. A concise and useful source on Bartram’s plants is the “Bartram’s Garden Catalogue of North American Plants” issue of the Journal of Garden History 16:1 (Spring 1996).
Another generally informative source with tangential relevance is Neil Harris's The Artist in American Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966). While somewhat simplistic, his early chapters on Americans disinterest in aesthetics can be helpful in understanding James Logan’s frame of reference.
WILLIAM LOGAN: Collection and Cross-Atlantic Travel of Species, Development of Experimental Agriculture
Generally, much less information on William Logan's life, his business, and activities at Stenton is available than for both his father and his son. Relatively speaking, however, almost as much information seems to be available about his activities relevant to the landscape at Stenton as there is for his furnishings. In terms of the understanding of the Stenton landscape, he forms a bridge between the two generations, sharing qualities with both his father and his son. Like his father, he was a merchant. Like both his father and his son, he was a political figure, albeit a relatively minor one. Like his son, he was interested in progressive agriculture.
Two key ideas can be associated with William Logan. The first, the inter-Atlantic and intra-colonial trading and collection of species, is closely related to James Logan's scientific interest in plants, and specifically New World plants, as it is epitomized by his experiments on corn. The second idea that can be associated with William Logan, progressive agriculture, was to become one of his son’s greatest interests, if not his obsession.
In contrast to both his father and his son, no published biography exists for William Logan. Remarkably, the most thorough investigation of William Logan's plant importing and trading is Letitia Wright. Unlike her wishful claims about James Logan's garden, her discussion of William's transportation of plants is thorough and documented, charting his place in the trans-Atlantic and intra-colonial movement of plants among the elite. James Logan was not as engaged in this pursuit as some of his better-known associates, including John Bartram and Peter Collinson, although William was a participant in the activities. For example, Wright notes that he ordered fruit trees and flowers from England, and sent plants and animals to English botanist John Blackburne. Wright does not remark, of course, the parallel relationship between the Philadelphia merchant's movement of trade goods around the globe and the movement of natural commodities of this sort, and thus the close relationship between science, colonialism, and mercantilism.
Wright, the prime mover in the creation of Stenton's Colonial Revival garden in the early twentieth century, makes no mention of William Logan's agricultural activities or interests because it does not support her narrative about Stenton. Frederick Tolles's brief discussion of Logan's life in his Meeting House and Counting House (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1948; pp. 218-219), however, addresses this theme to the exclusion of Wright's. He only briefly notes Logan's agricultural activities, however, and gives little detail.
Bibliography
As for all the Logans, much primary research remains to be conducted for William Logan. Letitia Wright's "Colonial Garden at Stenton Described in Old Letters," both relies and extensively quotes his correspondence, which is to be found in the collection at HSP. Tolles does note a few other sources, including Carl R. Woodward's Ploughs and Politicks; Charles Read of New Jersey and His Notes on Agriculture (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1941), which gives some detail about Logan's activities, such as his "Dutch recipe" for steeping and brining seed grain.
GEORGE AND DEBORAH LOGAN: Progressive Agriculture as Nationalist, Political Exercise
Of the three Logan generations that inform the interpretation of Stenton, the most abundant information relevant to landscape activities is associated with George and Deborah Logan. Published material about their activities there is more available, particularly a number of tracts on agriculture written by George Logan.
Broadly speaking, the sources on George and Deborah Logan demonstrate the theme of the pervasiveness of nationalist politicization in the era of the new republic. Equally, they make it clear that George and Deborah Logan were fervent if not extreme in many of their views. The personality who deemed it fit to launch his own foreign diplomatic mission was also a rabid Anglophobe and a champion of the yeoman farmer who wished to eliminate the merchant class. Interestingly, all three of these ideas were directly related in his (and probably Deborah's) mind, as this passage (pp. 17-18) from his published 1800 Letter to the Citizens of Pennsylvania, on the Necessity of Promoting Agriculture, Manufactures, and the useful Arts demonstrates:
Although Logan's views were extreme, they were not that far from many of his contemporaries, including Thomas Jefferson, as Jefferson's well-known championing of the yeoman farmer as the foundation of American society in Notes on the State of Virginia demonstrates. Logan's insistence on wearing home-spun linen epitomizes the drive to national self-sufficiency that was a goal for many, in part for the economic reasons that Logan states. And he was very much of his era in linking nationalist rhetoric with subjects that might not be anticipated today, as examination of early American journals such the Columbian Magazine easily demonstrates. The citizens of the fledgling United States, like George Logan, were self-consciously forging their new nation by adapting ancient models and modern politics, and the rhetoric that accompanied this venture was ubiquitous.
Bibliography
Like his grandfather, George Logan is the subject of a biography by Frederick Tolles --George Logan of Philadelphia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953) – which remains the best published factual summary. In addition, Tolles published a separate essay on Logan and his agricultural interests, “George Logan and the Agricultural Revolution” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 95: 6 (December 1951): pp. 589-596. Tolles's sunny tone tends to underplay the extreme nature of his views, but the article nonetheless summarizes the pertinent facts and offers generally good analysis. The published memoir of Logan edited by Francis Armat Logan and based on the manuscript by Deborah Logan, Memoir of Dr. George Logan of Stenton (Philadelphia: The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1899) does contain valuable information, but should essentially be considered a hagiography.
Relatively little has been published on progressive agriculturists per se. There have been two studies of the PSPA. The earlier, by Stevenson Fletcher (The Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture, 1785-1955 [Philadelphia: PSPA, 1959]) is less useful than Simon Baatz's Venerate the Plough: A History of the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture, 1785-1985 (Philadelphia: PSPA, 1985); Baatz characterizes Logan's relationship to his fellow members. For comparison, Tamara Plakins Thornton's work on the interests of the members of the Massachusetts Society, Cultivating Gentlemen: The Meaning of Country Life among the Boston Elite, 1785-1860 (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1989) is of interest.
Stenton was the theater for Logan's drama of national self-sufficiency through agriculture and small-scale manufacturing on the farm. His experiments on crop rotation and related matters such as manuring and livestock feeding were also published. The farm diary (original at HSP) from the 1810s documents almost daily activities at Stenton, and provides the most detailed picture of the activities of those who worked there on the property for the Logans, including the names and salaries of these workers. This is a particularly fruitful source for understanding and interpreting the patterns of work of those who farmed Stenton for the Logans, and is arguably the best starting point for research into this subject. It should also be noted that there are a number of entries in the diary in Deborah's hand, indicating the nature of her role in this venture.
Logan was among the founding members of the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture, the second such American organization, after the Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agriculture. These associations of "gentlemen farmers" may have had little direct contemporary impact on the unproductive methods of the "practical farmers" to whom they sometimes addressed themselves, but in the long term they brought about real change and improvement in agricultural practice in the United States.
Real Stuff: Incorporating the other part of Stenton's History
The challenge in translating some of these themes creatively and constructively into the interpretation of Stenton is substantial. It is difficult, of course, to create a "real" historic experience for historic material that does not survive, and for which little or no evidence survives about specific physical location. There is great potential for creating a real experience for different visitor audiences that integrates elements of the history of the site outside, but must be approached differently from the interpretation of "real stuff" of the house itself and its contents. While a conservation approach must be taken to safeguard the long-term condition and survival of the historic objects in the collection, the ephemeral nature of plant material itself provides opportunities for visitor experiences of a different, but still genuine sort if it is approached creatively. A core theme through the Stenton generations is investigation and with plant material. Literal historic recreations are to be avoided, but real experiences with plants can evoke the historic relationship between humans and the landscape at Stenton, from cross-breeding experiments to studies of the effect of different types of nutrients on specific varieties and species.
Another clear way to expand Stenton's interpretation is to investigate the lives and activities of those who worked on the farm. As noted above, the Stenton farm diary is an excellent beginning point for further research to enrich this interpretation. This expanded interpretation of the "other" folks who worked the Stenton farm would presumably be linked to expanded interpretation throughout the site.
Notes:
[1] See the Stenton HSR for a map of lots purchased by James Logan.
[2] Tolles, James Logan . . . (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1957), pp. 186-7.
[3] See his chapter, “London and a New Beginning,” in James Logan, pp. 76-88.
[4] In Papers Read Before the Site and Relic Society of Germantown [Germantown Historical Society] 2: 1 (1916): p.6
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