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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

The Extent of Simon Hadley's Land

Autumnwood (in blue) and the
Hadley-Dennison House (in red)
Many of the investigations I do these days are instigated by questions posed to me by readers and/or interested and curious folks. Sometimes these are deep or deeply personally-related questions, while other times they may be seemingly lighter, quick questions. However, sometimes even "quick questions" in the category of "maybe of no interest to anyone other than me" can lead to deeper understanding of a subject. This happened recently when I was asked if a certain neighborhood was ever part of a particular person's holdings. I knew of the person (and had even done a post mentioning him), but hadn't actually tried to figure out exactly where his property had been until prompted by this inquiry.

To be more specific, the neighborhood in question is Autumnwood, located on Little Baltimore Road just west of Valley Road (circled in blue in the illustration). The question posed to me was, "Was what's now Autumnwood once part of Simon Hadley's land?" Hadley's was a name that had come up a few times many years back on the blog, including in a 2011 post about the Hadley-Dennison House -- the oldest part of which was built by Simon Hadley in 1717. In looking at the area today the answer seems obvious, but on a closer inspection, maybe not so. Yes, the Hadley-Dennison House sits only about 100 yards north of the edge of Autumnwood (circled in red in the illustration), but there's a pretty clear line of demarcation there. So, did the Irish Quaker's land extend south to include the modern development, or was this part of a neighbor's farm?

First, let's circle back a bit and review, and see how we got here. Simon Hadley was born in Ireland in 1675, and in 1712 emigrated to America with his wife Ruth. Unsurprisingly, as members of the Society of Friends, their first destination was Pennsylvania and they initially settled in Chester County. However, they soon made their way to Delaware and in September 1713, Simon purchased a 1000 acre tract from William Penn, Jr., son of the Proprietor. He also bought more land a few years later, but the area we're concerned with now was all part of that original 1000 acres. I knew of the 1000 acres back during the writing of the 2011 post, and that they extended into Chester County, but I didn't know much beyond that.