Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society
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Source: July 1995 Volume 33 Number 3, Pages 89–102


Sproxton, Mannering and Langdale: The Coates Family Estates on the Southern Edge of Berwyn

Herb Fry

Page 89

The date March 31, 1856 on a deed transferring 107 acres in Tredyffrin township to George Morrison Coates, a merchant of Philadelphia, marks the earliest known event connecting the history of the Coates family with our local townships.

George Morrison Coates was a seller of cloths and cassimeres, with a shop at 323 Market Street. He had the same name as his father, and family and close friends knew him as "Morrison", which was his grandmother's maiden name.

His earliest ancestor in Pennsylvania, Thomas Coates, a Friend, came from Sproxton, in Leicestershire, England, arriving evidently early in the year 1683, but because of a death in the family he returned to England almost immediately. On his return to the colonies he lived in Darby, owned land there, and appeared on the provincial tax roll of 1693. At about that time he removed from Darby to Philadelphia, where he had previously purchased a lot, and embarked on his career as the first in a long line of merchants named Coates.

He appears to have combined general trading with the business of a shipping merchant, and a large part of his trade was with planters in the outlying districts, to whom he sold the merchandise needed by settlers of that period. Among the goods he dealt in, as shown by his ledger, his three- great-grandsons later stated in a biography of him, were "linens, muslins, hardware (including nails, tools, cutlery, etc.), hats, gloves, laces, silks, hosiery, ready-made great coats, watches, cordage, drugs, paper, arms, powder, household stuff, hay, meal, flour, grain, wood, and groceries, and, as in these early days members of the Society of Friends were not opposed to the sale of spirits, rum, brandy and wine." Among his customers appear such sturdy names as James Davis "at ye great valley", Morgan Hews, Ellis Pugh, and the like.

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Although he later could afford an estate outside of Philadelphia, near Frankford, including Liberty lands, another early land holding is of interest. On the 16th of August, 1705, he bought of Joseph Taylor "a certain lot or place situate on the north-west corner of High (now Market) Street and Second Street", a part of which remained in the hands of the Coates family for well over one hundred years; in 1839 his great-great-grandson, the above mentioned George Morrison Coates, began his successful career as a cloth merchant there.

The minutes of the Philadelphia Monthly Meeting record the marriage of Thomas Coates to Beulah Jacques. (The name Beulah was destined to be passed down through the distaff side of the family to the seventh generation, still living in Berwyn in the 1950s.) The Jacques family were descendants of French Huguenots who fled to England after the Massacre at St. Bartholomew in the 16th century. When Thomas Coates died in 1719 he was survived by his wife and five children, of whom Samuel, who married Mary Langdale in 1734, would carry on the family name.

Morrison Coates was a great grandson of Samuel Coates, and a fifth generation descendant of Thomas Coates.

On October 1, 1840 Morrison Coates was married at the residence of Henry and Henrietta Troth, on Girard street below Twelfth street in Philadelphia, to their eldest daughter, Anna. Henry Troth, a druggist and one of the founders of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, had lost his membership in the Society of Friends when he married, but the Troth family attended the Friends' Meeting on Twelfth street and were in sympathy with its doctrine. Nonetheless, the Friends also promptly disowned Morrison Coates for his marriage outside of meeting. "To the end," his son wrote, "he was more of a Friend than anything else. Although in later years he rarely went to meeting, he never worshipped elsewhere. His wife and children eventually became members of the Protestant Episcopal Church."

Just why Morrison Coates chose to invest in a farm in Tredyffrin Township in 1856 is uncertain. Certainly he did not hold it for long. His business was located in Philadelphia, and a financial commitment of this kind outside the city was most unusual. (There is a remote possibility that the purchaser of the farm was the father of George Morrison Coates, whose name was the same, but its purchase by him would have been even more unusual; he was over 76 years of age at the time, and had retired from business around 1851.)

"It was a time of great business peril," wrote H. T. Coates, Morrison's son, forty years later, "dark clouds were gathering from every quarter and it was evident to the most superficial observer that a great storm was impending." Some writers have attributed the downturn in business affairs which culminated in 1857 to falling grain prices, caused by an influx of Russian wheat following the Crimean War.

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Western farmers were squeezed, and their diminished consumption hurt both the business of Eastern manufacturers and the railroads. The failure of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company, on August 24, 1857, was followed by the collapse of many hundreds of rural banks.

Morrison Coates sold the farm in Tredyffrin to his brother-in-law, Samuel Troth, on September 23, 1857. His timing was fortuitous: two days later the Bank of Pennsylvania failed, a most serious shock to the financial community of Philadelphia. In short order several other banks, including he Girard, suspended specie payments, and financial chaos reigned supreme.

Morrison Coates suffered severe losses in the panic and its aftermath. "He accepted the situation, wasted no time in ... regrets, gave up everything," his biographer has stated, "and at the age of 40 ... went to work to commence life over again. The [1609] Arch Street house [the family residence] was sold, and a smaller one, at 129 North Twentieth Street, near Cherry, [was] rented, which was to be his home for the remainder of his days."

Fortunately, his older brother Benjamin, who did not marry, survived the panic, although he did lose his partner, and he generously offered Morrison a share in his wool business, in which he was engaged at 127 Market Street. The offer was accepted, and again the timing proved to be most fortuitous as the wool trade was greatly boosted by the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 and the consequent great demand generated for wool. The firm of Coates Brothers became one of the largest dealers in wool in the city of Philadelphia.

Following up this success, the two brothers became interested in another business venture when, in 1869, they both became special partners in the publishing business of Porter & Coates, of which Morrison's son and Benjamin's nephew, Henry Coates, was a member. After a few years Morrison Coates became a general partner of the firm. Thereafter, he devoted his business life to advancing both his wool and his publishing ventures.

Besides being a successful businessman, Morrison Coates took an active interest in public affairs. He joined the Union League in 1863, soon after its founding; supported the organization and equipment of troops during the Civil War; was chairman of the Committee on Cotton and Woolen Manufactures in connection with the great Sanitary Fair in Logan Square; was named a presidential elector in 1864, 1868, and 1872; served seven years as a member of the Board of Health; was selected by City Council as one of three representatives of the city on the Board of Directors of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company; and served as a member of the Board of Trade. In short, he was an energetic worker for many causes.

"[He] was a sturdy-looking man," his biographer has written, "tall and well formed, with broad shoulders, hazel eyes, brown hair fine as silk, and bushy whiskers completely covering a prominent chin; a tireless walker, his erect carriage and firm, steady tread would have made him prominent in any society."

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[George] Morrison Coates

Morrison and Anna Coates had four children who survived infancy. The youngest of them, Samuel, died at age 18 in 1871. The three other sons -- Henry Troth Coates, born in 1843; William Morrison Coates, born in 1845; and Joseph Hornor Coates, born in 1849 -- all reached maturity. All three were to become residents of Easttown township and would leave their imprint on its history.

Henry Troth Coates, the eldest of the three boys, graduated from Haverford College in 1862 with an A.M. degree. His father at one time thought that he would practice law, but that was not to be. A few years after his graduation he engaged in the publishing business: a firm started in 1848 by Robert Porter and Charles Davis, known as Davis & Porter, in 1866 became Davis, Porter & Coates when young Henry Coates entered the firm. Apprently Charles Davis later withdrew from the firm, as in the following year its name was shortened to Porter & Coates.

Henry Coates married Estelle Barton Lloyd, daughter of John and Esther Lloyd, on June 25, 1874. The couple took up residence one block up from the parents of the groom on Twentieth street. (The bride's sister, Anna Morris Lloyd, had five years earlier married William Coates, Henry's younger brother. The marriage of Coates brothers to sisters was not that unusual in the Coates family: their younger brother Joseph and his cousin, Edward Hornor Coates, had already married Potts sisters. A similar event had also occurred in the preceding generation when Morrison Coates and one of his brothers married Troth sisters, and in the generation before that Morrison Coates' father had married a Hornor daughter and his sister Mary had married a Hornor son!)

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William Morrison Coates, the second son, also graduated from Haverford College, one year after his brother Henry, in 1863. He took a position as a bookkeeper to gain practical experience in business, and, the Civil War being at a critical point, later in that same year enlisted in the "Grey Reserves". At the end of the war he joined his father and uncle in the wool business at Coates Brothers, and in 1867 became a member of the firm with which he was to remain actively engaged until his retirement in 1927.

William Coates and Anne Morris Lloyd wed on September 30, 1869 and set up housekeeping on Nineteenth Street just above Market, not far from the home of William's parents. William was the first of the Coates brothers to marry.

The youngest surviving son, Joseph Hornor Coates, was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, with a A.B. degree, date uncertain but probably 1871. The failing health of his 18-year old younger brother Samuel had been a family concern for some time, so following his graduation Joseph's father sent him to a cattle ranch in Colorado with his ailing brother, in hopes that outdoor living would prolong the latter's life. It was to no avail, however, and Samuel Coates died on October 7, 1871, breaking the hearts of all who loved him. His mother and brother William had made the long journey to Colorado Springs, arriving just in time to say their last good-byes.

Returning from the west, Joseph Coates spent three years with the Porter & Coates firm of his brother Henry. During this time he married, on June 10, 1873, Elizabeth Gardner Potts, daughter of Joseph and Elizabeth Potts of Trenton, N.J., and took up residence in Germantown near the home of his cousin Edward Hornor Coates and his wife, the former Ella Mary Potts, the bride's sister.

The years in Germantown were tumultuous ones. Joseph Coates began a publishing venture on his own as the firm of Joseph H. Coates & Co. at 822 Chestnut Street (the address, incidentally, of Porter & Coates) in 1875. Shortly afterward, in 1877, his cousin Edward succeeded to control of the business of Claghorn, Herring & Co., commission merchants and cotton factors at 116 Chestnut Street, and Joseph began an eleven-year association with him in the firm of Edward H. Coates & Co. In 1888, when his cousin retired, Joseph took over and operated the firm as Joseph H. Coates & Co. until about 1892.

The village of Berwyn, in the meantime, was enjoying a "mini" land boom in the summer of 1879. Following on the heels of the Centennial Exposition in Philadelhia, the project of the Pennsylvania Railroad to realign and improve its right-of-way through Reeseville and change its name to Berwyn seemed to energize the small village. A writer in the West Chester Daily Local News observed, "The change ... brought new life with it and the village took a fresh start, farms were turned into building lots, purchasers were found, and comfortable dwellings on the newly opened highway now add to the beauty and thrift of the place."

It was also true that, with the improved railroad service, the village was becoming a more convenient place for Philadelphians to spend their leisure during the summer months and some took up residence year-round and commuted on the railroad to their businesses in the city.

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Joseph W. Sharp, a respected Philadelphia businessman and Easttown Township resident for almost 50 years, is credited with being the first regular commuter between Berwyn and Philadelphia; he had built an exquisite estate house about a mile south of the village in 1856 on almost 200 acres of land acquired by his father, Joseph Sharp, in 1838. Another early commuter was Frank Stauffer, a journalist, who made Berwyn his home in 1874 when he bought a house on the Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike, across from the railroad station. Similarly, Julius Sachse, another journalist, historian, and photographer, bought a 56-acre farm at Leopard; after spending summers there for a few years he became a full-time local resident in 1877 and for several years thereafter a Philadelphia commuter. And finally, William C. Lobb, who had bought a 100-acre farm in 1842 along what is known today as Sugartown Road, was known to spend much time on a real estate business in Philadelphia in the 1870s.

It is not surprising, then, to find that as the decade of the 1870s ebbed away, on December 22d of 1879 another Philadelphia businessman, William M. Coates, a partner in the wool firm of Coates Brothers, became a property owner in Berwyn. (Actually, his purchase, the old Wetherby farm property, was just outside the village, to the south.) It included a small two-story stone house, identified bv Howard Okie as one of three early stone houses just south cf the village. (Benjamin Wetherby had purchased eight parcels of land between 1801 and 1830, aggregating 65 acres and 10 perches. The tracts lay roughly between First Avenue to the north and Travelgwyn on the south, along Waterloo Avenue, sometimes referred to as Wetherby Road in those days, and between Woodside Avenue on the east and the line of Bridge Avenue on the west. The house stood on the southeast corner of Waterloo and First avenues. Wetherby died on May 3, 1867, leaving the farm to his sister Elizabeth B. Leamy, the widow of Stephen Leamy sr. Her death in 1879 precipitated the sale to William Coates.)

Three months later, on March 25, 1880, the Local carried a story headlined "Improvements in Berwyn", in which the writer stated, "Wm. M. Coates, who recently purchased a property at [Berwyn], has contracted with Peter Burns, builder, to erect an addition to the house. ... A brother of Mr. Coates recently purchased 15 acres of ground near Berwyn, from N. P. Leamy, for which he paid $95 an acre." The story continued, "He has [also] within a few days purchased five acres adjoining from George Harlan for which he paid about $200 per acre. The latter is well covered with timber."

The land acquired by Henry Coates from Leamy was east of Leopard Road just south of the W. Atlee Potter property. Coates also bought four acres from Potter about a year later, but apparenty the plan to move to Berwyn was put on hold when Anna Coates, wife of Morrison and the mother of the three Coates brothers, died on January 10, 1881. Henry Coates, with his wife, instead moved into his father's home on Twentieth Street in Philadelphia. Henry Coates later wrote that at that time "Morrison Coates gave up all his public duties and left the management of the wool business to his son William and nephew George and confined his attention to the book-store."

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His virtual retirement notwithstanding, two land purchases in Berwyn were attributed to him subsequently. On December 3, 1883 the tract on the south side of First Avenue, from Bridge Avenue to Waterloo Avenue, which in the early 1930s became the site of the Easttown Elementary School, was deeded to him by Washington R. Baker. And on September 13, 1887 his son William sold him seven and a half acres of his farm, on which had been built a few years earlier a Victorian stone mansion, occupied in 1881 by his youngest son, Joseph.

One of the intriguing mysteries as yet unresolved is why Morrison Coates wanted to control that property. It is likely that he had financed the construction of the home. In any event, before his death on May 21, 1893 in his will, dated July 30, 1889, he devised his estate "to be equally divided between his sons" and made certain provisions respecting his interest in the firms of Coates Brothers and Porter & Coates. By a codicil, dated February 15, 1892, he also directed the "deduction from the share of his son Joseph H. Coates all sums advanced by him to said Joseph and the holding ... of the balance, if any, in trust ..." The accounting filed in the Orphans Court of Philadelphia County disclosed that "the indebtedness of ... Joseph H. Coates to the Estate amounted to more than his share" and as a result all the real estate owned by Morrison Coates was left to his son William and the publishing interests were left to his son Henry.

What happened in 1892 to precipitate the change in Morrison Coates will by the addition of this codicil has not been learned, but it was at about that time that Joseph Coates quit the firm of Joseph H. Coates & Company, cotton and commission merchants. Early 1893 was again a period of economic uncertainty and political tumult leading to bankruptcies and bank failures, the first of which was the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad. Perhaps Joseph Coates suffered financial reverses in the liquidation of his cotton firm and borrowed from his father. But the details of the events of this time period remain obscure.

Joseph Coates had moved his growing family in 1881 from Bryn Mawr to the house in Berwyn which he called "Mannering". (It is believed that the name came from the Sir Walter Scott novel "Guy Mannering", first published in 1815. Porter & Coates had built up a profitable trade, Franklin Burns noted, "by re-publishing the standard works of the best and most popular English and American authors unprotected by copyright -- Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, Cooper, Simms and a host of others". More than likely, Joseph Coates was familiar with the Scott novel.)

In all, nine children were born to his family. Their mother died in 1890, when the youngest was nine months old, but their father stayed with them in Berwyn, and raised seven of them to maturity. His sons followed diverse and useful occupations: a doctor, a mechanical engineer, a farmer and missionary for the Episcopal Church, and, the youngest, an architect.

Two of the girls, "Miss Beulah" and"Miss Anna", inherited the "Mannering" property upon their father's death. They lived in the big house until after the property was sold in 1956 to the Methodist Church board as the site for the growing Berwyn Methodist Church. They then moved to Malvern, where Anna Morrison Coates died in 1963 and her sister Beulah, who was one year older and looked after her handicapped sister, in 1965.

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George and Viola Hurd, long-time Berwyn residents, remodeled the carriage house at "Mannering" into living quarters in 1964-65, and moved into it in 1965. (In January of 1947 they had taken the entire third floor of the big house as an apartment; later they moved their living space down to the second floor, and still later to the first floor, after the Coates sisters had left to move to Malvern.) The big house was subsequently demolished and disappeared from the Berwyn scene, the stone being used in the construction of a new house at the corner of Sugartown and Leopard roads.

In his later retirement years Joseph Coates, no doubt as a result of his early association with the publishing business, was drawn to a career as an author. (The name given his home, "Mannering", shows his interest in literary matters.) He published two novels and wrote several articles for the "North American Review" and the "Atlantic Monthly" while a resident of Berwyn. His novels were a Civil War story, The_ Counterpart, published in 1909, and The Spirit of the Island, which came out in 1911. A magazine article, "Would an Act of Congress Granting Independence to the Philippines be Valid Under the Constitution?", appeared in 1916.

Of all of George Morrison Coates' children, Joseph was the most enigmatic. Whatever caused the family problem which resulted in his disinheritance, it must have been worked out among the parties concerned because in 1911 William Coates sold to his brother the "Mannering" property. Although he was a resident there for almost fifty years, from all appearances Joseph Coates led a private, secluded existence and seldom entered into village affairs. However, a listing of his memberships portrays his diverse in- terests: he was a life member of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, a member of the Academy of Natural Sciences, a member of the board of the Philadelphia Athenaeum, an honorary life member of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (his cousin Edward was its president from 1891 to 1906), and at one time a trustee of the Diocese of Pennsylvania, Protestant Episcopal Church. He died on December 13, 1930 and is buried, with most of his family, in the churchyard at Old St. David's, Radnor.

William Coates, the second son of Morrison Coates, was the consummate businessman. The home he had constructed out of the old farm house at First and Waterloo avenues was named "Sproxton", after the English town in Leicestershire where the family had its roots, and was used only during the summer season. (In a recent interview, Mrs. Anne Coates Sharp Sangree, a granddaughter of both William Coates and Joseph Sharp, said, "My grandmother never thought of moving to the country ... [and] the house was used only in the summer ... they did not have Christmas there.") A photograph of the renovated and enlarged "Sproxton", taken in April of 1882 by Henry Coates, William's brother and apparently an amateur photographer of some skill, still adorns the wall of the entryway to the Berwyn home, now occupied by the Martin A. Cunningham family.

The four children of William and Anne Coates must have enjoyed the summers at "Sproxton" out in the country. They obviously got to know their neighbors as the eldest child, Esther Malcolm Coates, married Joseph W. Sharp Jr. in 1896.

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Their daughter Anne Coates Sharp [Sangree] was born in 1899. "My father [Joseph W. Sharp jr.] was born at Hawthorne," she reported, speaking of the Sharp home, "and my grandfather had bought a great amount of land, reaching from Leopard almost to Berwyn. When his children were grown he gave everyone a field and they [each] built a house on it." She lived on the corner of Leopard and Sugartown roads and, she said, "the house, built of country stone, was the first house built by young [R. Brognard] Okie, the architect." It was known as "Overfields", on the eastern limits of the Sharp land. (Her uncle, David B. Sharp, also built his home, "Trewere", on Sugartown Road, at the western limit of the Sharp farm.)

William Coates had been, with Joseph W. Sharp Sr., part of the group which met during the summer of 1888 to establish the Berwyn National Bank. He was elected chairman of the original organizational meeting and, like Sharp, he subscribed to 10 per cent of the stock of the new bank. He was also elected to the first Board of Directors.

The original 65-acre land holding of William Coates in Berwyn was enlarged almost immediately when he acquired, in 1880, six additional acres from Reese Lewis' widow Mary, contiguous with the Leamy land acquired by his brother that spring. The Coates land then stretched from Lakeside Avenue to Leopard Road south of Berwyn. Later acquired were five acres, from Henry Yates Carter, just west of what today is Hillside Avenue below the crest of Waters' hill, and a lot, from Charles H. Clark, on the northeast corner of First and Waterloo avenues in the village proper, which contained a double house on the west side of Main Avenue facing east. (Today this double house is gone, and the lot is the site of the rectory for St. Monica's Church, which had not been built then.) Together with the land acquired by his father's will and later acquisitions in the 20th century, his holdings and the adjacent properties of his brothers in Easttown eventually reached well over one hundred acres altogether.

Mrs. Sangree also remembers her grandfather running out the lane which led from "Sproxton", and down Main Avenue to the train station. "He was all business --very methodical," she mused, "He had to catch a certain train every day. He never ran anywhere else, but he did exactly the same thing every day." Apparently he had few interests away from his business, but Mrs. Sangree did admit, "Of course, he did travel to Europe to get wool."

The youngest child of William and Anne Coates was Helen Langdale Coates. She married Aubrey Huston around the beginning of the First World War. It is uncertain where they lived after their marriage, but they soon had two children and needed more room. William Coates therefore carved out a lot on the east side of Waterloo Avenue, opposite the driveway to "Mannering", and built a house for his daughter there in about 1918. It was none too soon, as twins arrived in 1921. The house is identified with the name "Morven", derivation unknown, on the 1963 "railroad" maps; today it is 127 Waterloo Avenue and is owned by Melvin and Mary Alice Boyd.

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The Coates Family Estates on the Southern Edge of Berwyn

"Sproxton" Estate of William Coates

"Mannering" Estate of Joseph Coates

"Langdale" Estate of Henry T. Coates

Drawings by Sue Andrews

Page 99

During his business career, William Coates was also a trustee of the Penn Mutual Life Insurance Company, a director of the Philadelphia Belt Line Railroad (created by an agreement of City Council passed on December 20, 1896), and a director of the American Security Trust Company in Washington, D. C. (Mrs. Sangree remembers that he took the train to Washington for meetings the first Tuesday of every month. Today, following a merger, the bank is known as Nations Bank.) He also served as president of the Apprentices' Library Company, and at the time of his death on May 25, 1937 he was president emeritus of the Philadelphia Board of Trade.

After William Coates died, "Sproxton" was remodeled for year-round use, and his widow moved from Philadelphia to Berwyn, where it would be more convenient for her daughter, Esther Sharp, to look after her. Mrs. Coates lived at "Sproxton" until her death in 1952, after which the property was sold and became a part of the Berwyn Downs development of 80 or more homes in the 1950s. Each generation on the maternal side of the William Coates family was incredibly long, spanning almost 150 years in just three generations: Anne Lloyd Coates, the wife of William Coates, was born in 1849 and died in 1952, aged 102 years; Esther Coates Sharp, their daughter, was born in 1870 and died in 1968, aged 98 years; and Anne Sharp Sangree, their granddaughter, was born in 1899 and is still living at the age of 95 years.

Henry Troth Coates, the eldest son of Morrison and Anna Troth Coates, was the last to take up residence in Berwyn. Although he had begun assembling acreage for a "country seat" off Leopard Road in 1880, his mother's death had intervened, and he remained in Philadelphia to look after his father. Just when his Berwyn house was completed is not known exactly, but it was probably around 1890. Julius Sachse, writing in 1886, made reference to "the property of H. T. Coates, Esq. ... where it is expected that a fine set of buildings are soon to be erected". After his father's death in 1893, Henry Coates and his wife (they had no children) moved into their new Berwyn estate. He named it "Langdale", in deference to his ancestor, Mary Langdale.

A publisher, editor and author, Henry Coates spent almost his entire business career with Porter & Coates, the publishing firm he first joined in 1868. Porter & Coates was also one of the carriage-trade bookstores from the 1870s into the 20th century, with a fine publishing list of beautifully printed books, usually with master engravings. (Porter & Coates had the distinction in Philadelphia of employing A. Edward Newton, who in later years became one of America's most famous and influential book collectors, an author of note, and a resident of Daylesford.) For many years it was one of the leading book houses in Philadelphia, and at the 1876 Centennial Exposition Porter & Coates received an award of merit for its books in the Paper, Stationery, Printing and Book-Making competition.

Under the povision of his father's will, Henry Coates was left in control of the book business, and the name of the firm was changed to Henry T. Coates & Company. This firm continued until 1904, and was then acquired by John C. Winston Co. Just before this change, fire had destroyed much of the contents of the bookstore at 822 Chestnut Street and it was moved up Chestnut Street closer to Broad.

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Henry Troth Coates

As Franklin Burns put it, Henry Coates "was a bookish man [who] accomplished much work in 3 few years". Among the publications he compiled and edited were The Comprehensive Speaker (1871), the Fireside Encyclopedia of Poetry (1878), and the Children's Book of Poetry (1879). Henry Coates was also described by Burns as "a man of quick and generous impulses,, sociable,, excitable, lovable. ... He had been on more or less intimate terms with many of the most prominent men in social life, and in the business and professional life of the East." When the organizers of the Devon Horse Show Association met at the Devon Inn in April of 1896 to organize the first Devon Horse Show, they elected Henry Coates to the office of president.

He apparently was very fond of horses. In 1901 he wrote a Short History of the American Trotting and Pacing Horse. Coates cared for old thoroughbred horses at his farm, but never raced them. It would appear that, to spare them from the "glue factory", he bought them up and looked after them at "Langdale". "When old age claimed them," Burns wrote, "they were interred in a private cemetery back of the house. There were nicely rounded head-boards, painted white and lettered carefully in black, with [each horse's] name and dates of birth and death."

Apparently Henry Coates took the village to his heart during the sixteen or so years he resided here. His name appears on an early list of the members of the Berwyn Fire Company which was organized in 1894, and he was a patron of a series of four lectures held in the Easttown School for which the School Board granted permission in 1900.

An instance of the whole-hearted charity of Henry Coates is related by Burns. "A strange woman [appeared in the village]," he wrote, "carrying one small child and leading two others. She had come up from the station and had stopped to rest for a moment by the low wall in front of a residence ... The owner, a widow, probably tired and irritated by too frequent loiterers, asked the stranger to 'move on'.

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Just then the carriage of Henry Coates drove up from the station. That gentleman alighted amd insisted that the burdened woman and her children should drive to their destination, wherever it might be, while he walked home."

He once took an active part in a movement for political reform in Philadelphia and was a member of the original Committee of One Hundred in 1880. During the McKinley campaign of 1896 he was chairman of the Republican meetings at the Odd Fellows Hall in Berwyn which gave the village much notoriety.

Henry Troth Coates died at his home, "Langdale", in Berwyn on January 22, 1910 at the aqe of 66, after a brief illness. His widow, Estelle Barton Lloyd Coates, lived out her life there also; her death occurred on September 9, 1918. The couple had no children. The property was sold on April 1, 1920 to Helena T. Dvereux, and today is known as the Whitlock Center of the Devereux Schools'.

The decision of the members of the Coates family to purchase land and establish country estates on the southern fringes of Berwyn in 1879 had long-term consequences for the village. The longevity of the members of the family there was also significant, and while there was no overt or malicious intent, as a result building and development to the south of the village was effectively blocked. And scarcely three years before the arrival of the Coates entourage in Easttown Township, the Pennsylvania Railroad had also precluded a spread of the village to the north with the construction of the railroad cut parallel to the Lancaster Turnpike.

As development in the Berwyn area lagged, the suburban terminus and yards of the railroad gravitated to Paoli, and Berwyn was left behind, a sleepy backwater village, from which state it did not awaken until the death of William Coates' widow in 1952 finally freed much of the land south of the village for development and houses.

And so the Coates family, perhaps not actively but passively, certainly played a key role in the history of Berwyn.

PHILADELPHIA: PORTER & COATES, 822 CHESTNUT STREET.

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Top

References

Burns, Franklin L., "A History of Berwyn". Unpublished manuscript in the Chester County Historical Society. No date

Chester County Archives, Deed records.

Chester County Historical Society, Newspaper clipping file.

Coates, Henry T., [ed.], "Thomas Coates, who removed from England to the Province of Pennsylvania 1683. Compiled from old records". Philadelphia: Privately printed. 1897

"George Morrison Coates August 20, 1817 : May 21, 1893". Philadelphia: Privately printed. 1899

Keator, Alfred Decker, [ed.], Encyclopedia of Pennsylvania Biography. New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company. 1948

Leach, Frank Willing, "Old Philadelphia Families -- Coates". [in the North American, Philadelphia, March 3, 1912]

Morris, Charles [ed.], Makers of Philadelphia. Philadelphia: L. R. Hamersly & Co. 1894

Sangree, Mrs. Nathan B. (the former Anne Coates Sharp) and her daughter, Ms. Anne C. Sangree. Interview, March 22, 1995

Walker, Mrs. Stafford C. (the former Viola Hurd). Interview, March 25, 1995

Whitehead, Thomas M. [issue ed.], "Aspects of Publishing in Philadelphia 1876-1976". Philadelphia: Graduate School of Library Sciences, Drexel University, July 1976. [Vol. 12, No 3]

A special debt of gratitude is owed by the author to Ms. Anne C. Sangree, who kindly shared with him a copy of the publications on the lives of Thomas Coates and George Morrison Coates as listed above, and to Mrs. Stafford C. Walker, who lent a 1965 watercolor painting of "Mannering" by Henry Rosenberg and a number of family photographs.

 
 

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