Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society
History Quarterly Digital Archives

Source: January 1982 Volume 20 Number 1, Pages 35–36

Notes and Comments

• Growing Tobacco at Chesterbrook Farm
• A Letter from Beverly Sills
• DiOrio is Club Banquet Speaker

Page 35

Growing Tobacco at Chesterbrook Farm

While, as noted in the preceding issue of the Quarterly, Chesterbrook Farm was primarily a stock farm, in July 1881 its fifteen acre field of tobacco was described by the West Chester Dally Local News as "one of the best in the state". It was further reported that some of the leaves produced on the farm "measure 28 inches long and 14 inches wide". (Local : 7-20-1881)

Earlier in the year, in June, it was noted, "A. J. Cassatt, Tredyffrin, is planting on his elegant farm in that township 80,000 plants of tobacco. He has already set out 65,000." (Local : 6-12-1881)

In the following year, Cassatt "employed a well-known tobacco raiser of Lancaster County to take charge of the culture of tobacco on his farm in Tredyffrin". In 1882, it was reported, "Mr. Cassatt proposes to plant 50 acres with the 'weed' and is now manuring his ground very heavily for that purpose." Also included on the farm were "a number of tobacco houses for curing and stripping the tobacco in". (Local : 2-9-1882)

A Letter from Beverly Sills

We would like to share a note received from Beverly Sills after she had received a copy of the July issue of the Quarterly, with the article about her appearance in the Berwyn Theater.

Page 36

DiOrio is Club Banquet Speaker

The speaker at the annual banquet of the Tredyffrin Easttown History Club, held last November at the Trinity Church in Berwyn, was Eugene DiOrio. An historian and the author of the beautiful book Chester County : A Traveller's Album, he commented on some of the problem she encountered in preparing and publishing his book. The presentation also featured a number of his slides of historic and scenic Chester County, and was most enthusiastically received.

The previous year's banquet speaker, Dr. Robert E. Carlson, of the History Department at West Chester State College, incidentally, has also recently published a book, Chester County Bibliography, A compilation of material, pertaining to Chester County "to identify the sources of information ... available to those interested in all facets of our county's past", it includes more than 185 references tomaterial in the Tredyffrin Easttown History Club Quarterly!

Also recently published, by the Green Valley Association in Birchrunville, is a book entitled Penn's Woods: 1682-1982, a comprehensive survey of trees 300 years old or older that were here when WilliamPenn arrived, and are still standing today in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and the eastern shore of Maryland.