The Long and Convoluted History of Sugar Loaf Hill Farm -- Part 1

What I believe to be a close approximation 
to the original four Nivin tracts

Over the years here on the blog, we've seen that there are many different paths that the story of a 
property can take. It can go centuries being owned by just a few families, or it can change hands many times. It can start as one big tract and get broken up, or start smaller and get built up. It can be owned by people whose names you know, or by smaller and lesser-known families. In this story, we have pretty much a little bit of everything. This is a farm that has been mentioned in passing a few times before, always with the "I'll have to look more into it later" caveat. Well, it's now later.

The farm in question is often known as Sugar Loaf Hill Farm, although it's unclear when that moniker was attached and by whom. My best guess is sometime in the mid-19th Century, which will be much later in our story (in the next post). That's because the really interesting stuff took place a century or more earlier, and while I don't have every detail nailed down just yet, I think I have a pretty good idea of what happened and when. Our first question though, is where. 

This particular property was both built up, and then later broken apart. The tract lies on the north side of Hercules Road, and at its greatest extent, very generally, stretched from about McKennans Church Road on the west to about halfway down Hercules Road to Lancaster Pike. It then extended up and over Lancaster Pike, over to almost Old Wilmington Road, stepped south and west a few times, ending up on McKennans at about McKean High School. At its largest, the farm included about 420 acres, but it didn't start out that size. Quite confusingly, at the point where I had first jumped into the stream (a few sales in the late 1760's/early 1770's) the property was being sold as four separate (but presumably contiguous) parcels -- of 200, 39, 102, and 80 acres. It was unclear whether they had been acquired simultaneously or cobbled together over the years. I still haven't found all the answers, but I do have enough to piece the story together.

It all starts with a man named William Nivin (sometimes Nivins, sometimes Nevin, sometimes Niven, sometimes Nevan, sometimes different spellings in the same document), who at first I thought was buying the land in 1770. That didn't make sense for a reason I'll get to momentarily, but I eventually realized that he was actually buying it back from the man (William Montgomery of Chester County) to whom he had sold it just a few years prior. We'll circle back to these transactions, but the reason that the idea of Nivin just coming on the scene in 1770 didn't seem right is because of the item seen below -- it's a datestone on the main farmhouse in one of the four parcels. In the format usually used for such things, it shows the first initials W and M, last initial N, and the date 1730. Seemed fair to assume this was William Nivin.

Datestone on the main Sugar Loaf Hill Farm house, with a
date of 1730 and the initials of William and Margaret Nivin

Things got a little confusing next, but I'll just cut right to the chase and tell you we're dealing with two William Nivins -- father and son (but don't worry, it'll get more confusing again later). The elder William had married the former Margaret McKnight (the "M" in our datestone), and the earliest deed I could find in the relevant area was in 1732, when he bought 102 acres from Charles Symons (or maybe Tymons -- I can't tell the difference between the letters or find another reference to either name). The land lay on the west side of what was called "a small branch of Guest's Run", which we know today as Hyde Run. Since it uses the waterway as the eastern boundary it doesn't explicitly state this, but I believe this borders more land already owned by Nivin's family. For one thing, we have a datestone from two years earlier, but the better evidence comes from a 1761 document.

This item documents a transaction between Jannet and William Nivin, dealing with the 200 and the 39 acre tracts. Therein it explains that the land had been owned by a David Evans (does not specify how he obtained it), who died intestate (without a will), leaving behind his children -- William, Jannet, David, and John Nivin, and Mary McMechen. Note here that the name of "Nivin", in all its variations, derived originally from "Evans". At that point the sons sold their shares in the land to their eldest brother William, who is the William, Sr. in our story. The girls were "settled by their father the said David Evans in his life time". When William, Sr. died he passed the land to his son William, Jr., the second party in the 1761 transaction. However, the actual sale to William, Sr. had been "since lost or mislaid", so this 1761 indenture seems to be Aunt Jannet just tidying things up with her nephew William.

Beginning of the 1761 sale from Jannet Nevin to her nephew
William Nevin, of Jannet's share of the family land

As a bit of a side note, I mentioned above about deeds in "the relevant area", because casting a wider net quickly gets very confusing. I think there were other William Nivins, and at least one (maybe our William, Sr.) bought 200 acres from the Pennsylvania Land Company between Pike Creek and Middle Run. It seems to be the farm directly north of Griffith Lewis', as described in the recent Crawford-Rankin Farm post. This was purchased in 1725, but there are several other purchases in White Clay Creek and Mill Creek Hundreds in the 1720's and 1730's. This leaves several possibilities for explaining the 1730 datestone we see on the home later known as Sugar Loaf Hill. Also in need of explanation is the fact that as far as I can tell, the house is on the father's (David Evans) land east of Guest/Hyde Run, not the parcel on the west side purchased by Nivin in 1732.

My best guess is that William and Margaret moved onto the western portion of his fathers' farm in 1730 and built a new home. When the adjacent land across the run became available two years later, he snatched it up. I should also note that to my admittedly amateur eye, the datestone seems to be in an odd place. It's not in the more traditional spot at the top of the gable, nor is it even centrally placed. Instead, it's in a seemingly random spot next to a window. This makes me think it was placed later, perhaps moved from an older house or repositioned when an addition was built.

Beginning of the 1761 sale of  just over two acres, from William Nevin
to the trustees of Red Clay Creek Presbyterian Church

Whatever the case, as previously mentioned the house and farm passed from William, Sr. to William, Jr., who was party to several sales in the 1760's and 1770. He sold a little over two acres on the southwest corner of his land to Red Clay Creek Presbyterian Church in 1761. In 1766 it appeared that he sold all four tracts to George Cochran for five shillings, but I'm fairly certain it was a one year lease. Then, a month later, Nivin does actually sell the farm to William Montgomery for 750 pounds. However, four years later he buys it back for 790 pounds. The Nivin and Montgomery families were close, so these were not transactions between strangers. There must have been some strategic and/or financial reason for the sales.

In the end, William Nivin, Jr. did own the property until his death, whenever, exactly, that might have been. Honestly, the records and family trees for the Nivins are so all-over-the-place that I can't be sure, but I think he may have died in late 1781. In 1789 his son-in-law John Rowland and daughter Isabella sold the entire property to a fellow you might have heard of before  -- John Dickinson. Rowland had purchased the land the previous year at a sheriff's sale, but the deed book in which that appeared seems to be missing. The property is not fully described in the 1789 sale, but is when the Penman of the Revolution's heir sold it in 1812, four years after his death. Dickinson was a very wealthy man, and there's no reason to think that this was anything but another rental farm for him. He may have never even set foot on the property for all I know.

In 1789, the late William Nivin's son-in-law John Rowland sold
the farm to the wealthy (by then Wilmingtonian) John Dickinson

As an interesting side note, the "heir" who sold Dickinson's farm was Albanus Logan of Philadelphia, who was married to Dickinson's daughter Maria. Logan belonged to a very prominent Quaker family, and grew up in his family's estate called Stenton, in what is now the Logan Section of the city (in the Upper North, near LaSalle University and Germantown -- it was named for Albanus' grandfather and builder of Stenton, James Logan). I just watched a show where a historian called James Logan "the most powerful man in the history of Philadelphia". Then, around the time of the Battle of Germantown in October 1777, Stenton was used as a headquarters by both Generals Washington and Howe (not at the same time, although now I'm picturing an Odd Couple type sitcom). Also, Philadelphia's Logan Square (or Circle) was named James Logan.

But returning now to MCH, one notable aspect of the 1812 sale is that it's the first time that the property is described as being one tract of 430 acres, instead of the four separate parcels it had been. That makes sense -- it had been the Nivins who separately acquired the four pieces. Once Dickinson came along, he didn't care how they got there, they were just all his. In 1812, Logan sold the farm to Joseph Johnson of New Garden Township, Chester County. It doesn't seem like Johnson was ever a significant presence in the community here, but he was significant in that it was he who finally broke up the Nivins' former lands. We'll get to his dealings, and much more, in the next post.