The restored John Cope House is a harbinger of meticulous craftsmanship and a living record of local vernacular agrarian architecture and the ancestral Cope family in Chester County. In 1682, the Wiltshire English born Quakers, Oliver and Rebecca Cope, arrived in the New World with the Founder of Pennsylvania, William Penn. They settled in present-day New Castle County, DE. A family of distinction, the Cope’s ancestral line in England is traceable to the days when Lord Cope was an adviser to King Henry VIII.

In 1712, John Cope (1691-1773), the fourth child of Oliver and Rebecca, purchased 200 acres of prime farmland in present-day East Bradford Township in Chester County, from John Willis and erected a log home. Future expansion and building phases would produce a stately Georgian stone farmhouse that today is a 4Story, 15 room configuration. After John’s first wife (of whom little is known) passed away, he married Charity Evans in 1721 and produced eight children. Upon Charity’s death (1746), John married the widow Elizabeth Fisher, and they had no children.

From 1737 until his death in 1773, John Cope was an active member of the Bradford monthly meeting of Friends. He divided his property between his sons Samuel (1726-1817) and Nathan (1733-1820), who received the Western portion of the ground including the house. Benjamin(1765-1845), Nathan’s eldest son, inherited the property in 1820 and then passed it to his only son, Caleb (1818-1903), in 1845. A noted poet and writer, Caleb was published regularly in the Daily Local and produced a diary which is held in a Collection at the Chester County Historical Society. This diary reveals details on the operation of the farm under his management. Caleb and his wife Lydia took in the children of other families and helped in their rearing in exchange for labor. In 1849 the farm included an orchard, crops of wheat and corn, horses, cattle, oxen and cows. Neighboring landowners of distinction included Isaac Hoopes and Anthony Taylor.

Despite being Quaker pacifists, Northern soldiers billeted at the house during the Civil War and Caleb wrote of an incident of a group fugitive slaves lodged there overnight in 1842.

Caleb and Lydia, both from artistic backgrounds, raised six sons on the farm, one of whom was the local landscape and still-life painter George Cope (1855-1929). At the Centennial Celebration in 1876, George befriended the German-born Philadelphia painter Herman Herzog under whom he would study academic painting. George traveled throughout the West for inspiration before returning to open a studio on Market Street in downtown West Chester. His paintings were exhibited in Galleries in West Chester, Philadelphia and New York. George’s love of hunting and fishing in the Brandywine Valley was the main source of his artistic inspiration. As his fame grew, he became known for his realistic still-life paintings in the trompe l'oeil tradition (literally translated- “fool-the-eye”). He married Theodosia Blair in 1883, and only one of his two children, Muriel Herzog Cope, survived. In later years his fame diminished. Upon his death on January 15, 1929, despite his financial poverty, he left a great local artistic legacy .

In 1895 Caleb sold the farm and approximately 150 acres to Elizabeth Downing who, in 1902, sold it to Williams White. The estate remained in the White family until 1996 when it was sold to Daylesford Associates, Inc. It was later sold to Paoli Shopping Center and then Rouse/Chamberlain homes for development.

Bibliography:

Cope, Gilbert, A Record of the Cope Family, as Established in America by Oliver Cope. Philadelphia: King and Baird Printers, 1861.

Cope, Gilbert, Clan Cope and Its Branches 1898, Cope-Miscellaneous, Family History Collection, Chester County Historical Society.

University of Pennsylvania Graduate Program in Historic Preservation Site Analysis-HSPV 601-201. Historic Structure Report: The John Cope House, East Bradford Township, Chester County, Pa. Spring 1998.

Cope-Evans Family Papers, 1732-1911. Haverford College Libraries Special Collections. http://www.haverford.edu/library/special/aids/copeevans

Cope Family Papers, 1792-1877. Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College. http://www.swarthmore.edu/Library/friends/ead/5178cofa.xml