A bench honoring long time Women for Greater Philadelphia Garden Committee Chair and member Sylvia Myers sits beneath the Amelia Earhart Tree that was gifted to Pennsylvania and planted at Laurel Hill Mansion.
Amelia’s grandparents’ house, now the Amelia Earhart Birthplace Museum, is home to the original sugar maple from which American Heritage Trees collect seeds and sell as saplings. In the 1980’s, American Heritage donated 50 sugar maple saplings throughout the United States, one per state. The Pennsylvania maple sapling was given to Fairmount Park which in turn donated the sapling to Laurel Hill Mansion.
The grounds of Laurel Hill Mansion form a small arboretum. Each tree is unique.
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German Black Bees, now a rare stock, were brought to America in the 17th century by early European settlers and were favored by beekeepers in the northeastern colonies. German bees most likely thrived on LHM property in the 18th and 19th centuries. Today Italian Honey Bees inhabit the apiary at Laurel Hill Mansion.
View of Strawberry Mansion Bridge from Laurel Hill Mansion in April.
Nestled along the scenic Schuylkill River in Fairmount Park of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Laurel Hill has a prominent location on a high bluff overlooking the river. The view of the river from the back porch is not to be missed.
Laurel Hill Mansion stands on land originally purchased from William Penn by Mary Rochford in 1693. She sold it shortly thereafter to Thomas Shute. Francis Rawle purchased “31 acres with tenements and messuage” (land and the right to build dwellings on it) after it passed from the Shute family in 1760. He was killed in a hunting accident the next year and his wife Rebecca inherited the property.
She married her second husband, prominent Quaker Samuel Shoemaker in 1767. It is near this time that the original center portion of the house was constructed on a hill overlooking the Schuylkill River.