Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society
History Quarterly Digital Archives

Source: October 1987 Volume 25 Number 4, Pages 154–155

In Memoriam : Edward H. TenBroeck

Virginia Wilson

Page 154

Edward H. TenBroeck, a member of the History Club for many years, died on May 17, 1987, at the age of 91.

Born July 5, 1895 in Philadelphia, he was graduated from the University of Pennsylvania as a chemical engineer in 1917. He then joined the U. S. Army as a 2nd Lieutenant, and served as a riflery instructor with the Coast Guard at Fort Monroe, Virginia. At the end of World War I he worked for the DuPont Company, and for Griscom Russell, before joining the Atlantic Refining Company. He retired from Atlantic in 1960 after a career of more than thirty-five years.

He was very active in the Church of the Good Samaritan in Paoli, where he was confirmed as a member when he was 12 years old and was a member longer than any other parishioner. He had also been a Sunday School teacher, and had served on the vestry for many years. He was also a member of the Great Valley Historical Society, and of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Although he was born in Philadelphia, went to school in Philadelphia, and worked in Philadelphia, as a boy he came out to Tredyffrin to spend his summers on the Bontiou Farm which his father had bought as a summer place, and ran as a farm. Here Ed found his true home. He and his younger brother Philip delighted in the country life, and Ed always loved to reminisce about those early days in the true country as it was. He loved to tell how the boys would ride their bicycles to the station in West Philadelphia, put them aboard the Paoli Local (paying 5 cents apiece for the bikes), and ride to the Berwyn station, and from there ride their bikes down the hill and coast across the valley to the farm.

Page 155

Ed always enjoyed Valley happenings, and delighjted in telling stories of those days. One of his favorites was about when the two boys, or their friends, would ride their pet donkey around the farm -- until the donkey got bored. At that point he would simply head for the low door of the spring house, and the boys had to slide off quickly or be knocked off by the low doorway! As a boy Ed took the donkey each year to the Great Valley Presbyterian Church Annual Lawn Fete and sold rides. His family drove their horse and carriage there to services before joining the Good Samaritran Church in Paoli.

The Valley was his true home, and when his family sold the farm and moved back to Philadelphia, Ed bought the ten-acre plot bounded on the south and west by Yellow Springs Road, where it makes a right angle turn after it crosses Mill road going west. Before he built his house, he kept a riding horse at Wilson Farm at Swedesford and LeBoutiller roads, where he became an "adopted" member of the family. He spent his weekends there until he married, coming out from Philadelphia to ride and, on Sundays, to teach a Sunday School class at the Good Samaritan.

When his house was finished, he married Molly Atwood, and they lived together there happily for 53 years.

He was the eighth generation of his family, a descendant of Wessel TenBroeck, who came to Nieuw Amsterdam in 1626 with Peter Minuet.

He is survived by two sons, Craig and Edward; two daughters, Mary Durso and Nancy; and eight grandchildren.

Virginia Wilson