White Chimneys: Houseful of Our History

In 1967, the owners of White Chimneys created a booklet titled White Chimneys: Houseful of Our History, showcasing the property’s rich and fascinating history. I am excited to share a digitized version of this document with you below.

Houseful of Our History

To no man is it given to live all the history of his homeland and to few houses. White Chimneys began half a century before the nation did, as a stone farm cabin in a clearing near Lancaster, Pa. It was 60 years old in 1779 when Hemy Slaymaker bought it, and his descendants have lived in it ever since, building around it. It grew gracious enough after its first century to entertain the Marquis de Lafayette and lively enough after its second to house the Lucky Strike Orchestra for a dance. And always, its men and women, from “Judge Henry” and Faithful to today’s Sam and Sally, have loved it too much to leave it. As the restless nation moved west, they stayed put, accumulating and guarding the treasures and the tastes of 250 years through eight generations.

White Chimneys

Legend has it that in the spring of 1700, William Penn and a small group of colleagues journeyed west from Philadelphia in search of new lands for settlement in the name of his “Holy Experiment” in religious toleration. On passing through a “gap in the hills,” they viewed a scenic valley inhabited by the Pequea (pronounced Peck-way) Indians. By a hillside spring overlooking the valley, Penn’s party parlayed with Chief Oppessah. Feasting and dancing followed the meeting. It was agreed that the valley of the Pequea Creek would be open to settlement by William Penn’s immigrant land buyers, mostly his own kind: pietists, British Quakers, and Swiss-German Mennonites.

Colonial Period
(1720-1790)

In about 1720, a Welsh Quaker named Francis Jones left his trade as a soap maker in Bristol (near Philadelphia). and traveled west to the Gap in the Hills to become an innkeeper because the region was of potential commercial significance. The east-west Great Conestoga Road ran from Philadelphia to the frontier on the Susquehanna River. At “the Gap,” it crossed the north-south Newport Road. Immigrants from overseas landed at Newport on the Delaware Bay (as well as Philadelphia) and traveled north on the Newport Road to the interior of the province of Pennsylvania. Grain was transported south on this road for shipment to Britain.

Francis Jones built his inn on a lane connecting the Great Conestoga and Newport Roads, the better to serve travellers from all points of the compass. His structure was typical of those built by British Quakers: thick limestone walls, plaster covered, with a thatched straw roof. The entire first floor comprised one large room with a massive open fireplace in the north wall. In the northwest corner, beside the fireplace, a stairway led to second-floor sleeping quarters. Stairs continued to a third-floor attic or garret. The cellar was fashioned with storage vaults for meat and produce.

Francis Jones’ paying guests were local farm folk, inbound immigrants, and buckskin-clad fur traders who dealt with Western Indians and Philadelphia merchants. The Jones Inn’s visitors probably ate and drank at stretcher tables in this room, dominated by its large hearth, which glowed with fire year-round. For here, in a great iron pot on its crane, tallow, and soap boiled, meat smoked, preserves simmered, and bread baked. Flax was spun to linen, and yarn was wound before the hearth with its built-in warming closet. Here, food was kept a simmer for guests and the Jones family alike.

The Pequea Valley’s first settlers in 1712 were Mary Ferree (a French Protestant), her family, and German Calvinist, Mathias Schliermacher, his wife and a daughter. While Mary Feree’s home is long gone, her grave marker can be seen in the small, stone-fenced Ferree Burying ground on the Blackhorse Road in Paradise township near the tracks of the Strasburg Railroad, Mathias Schleirmacher’s original log cabin—now with additions—is still occupied by his descendants, the William Kinzer family. It is located on the north side of U.S. Rt. 30 at Vintage, two miles west of White Chimneys.

Pioneer Mathias anglicized his name to Slaymaker, became a Presbyterian (Mathias was a founder of Pequea Presbyterian Church on Rt. 340 near White Horse), and raised a large family. Two sons were wagon masters during the French and Indian War and distinguished themselves under the command of British General Braddock during the disastrous Battle of the Monongahela.

A younger son, Henry Slaymaker, was born in 1733 and raised in his father’s log home. Henry was educated in the Pequea Presbyterian Church’s school, known as the Pequea Latin School. Henry read law and became a successful storekeeper and a gentleman farmer. He built a handsome stone mansion, Mount Pleasant, on farmland willed him by Mathias. (The house stands today, unoccupied on Rt. 741 in Paradise township.) Henry was too young to serve with his brothers in the French and Indian War. But with the outbreak of hos. tilities with the mother country in 1775, he became a leading revolutionary “Associator” in eastern Lancaster County, serving Jasper Yeates, Esq. as head of a Committee to suppress area Tories. In July 1776, Henry Slaymaker was a member of the Convention, which wrote Pennsylvania’s first post-revolutionary constitution in Independence Hall at the time the Declaration of Independence was being framed. For his services during the Revolution, Henry was made a Judge.

In 1755, Henry Slaymaker married Faithful Jones Richardson, a grand-niece of the Gap innkeeper, Francis Jones. Before her marriage, Faithful’s portrait was painted by the famous Swedish Colonial American artist Gustav Hesselius. Later, Gustav’s son, John Hesselius, painted her husband, Henry Slaymaker. In matching frames, these paintings now hang in the first drawing room in White Chimneys.

In 1761, Francis Jones’s son, Joseph, sold the inn. On June 2, 1779, Judge Henry Slaymaker bought the property containing 200 acres for 6500 pounds from the Irwin family and a wealthy silversmith, John Ewing. Two days later, on June 4, 1779, Henry sold half of the Jones property to Jasper Yeates for 3,260 pounds with the stipulation that the land would be divided between them at a later date.

Henry’s friend and benefactor, Jasper Yeates, had become increasingly influential. Related by marriage to General Edward Hand (General Washington’s wartime adjutant General), Jasper Yeates would later head an investigation (for Washington) of the Whisky Rebellion and become the first Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The Yeates-Slaymaker land purchase was confidential, for Jasper was privy to “inside information.” Plainly, he and Henry had future speculative enterprises in mind. This was to become obvious about a decade later.

Judge Henry Slaymaker died on September 25, 1785, at 51. He is buried in “Slaymaker Row” in the yard of the Leacock Presbyterian Church on Rt. 340, near the Village of Intercourse.

Federal Period
(1790-1837)

Amos Slaymaker was born in 1755 at Mount Pleasant Plantation, home of his father, Judge Henry. After being educated at Pequea Latin School, Amos farmed his father’s lands and studied his law books. Throughout the Revolutionary War, he served in the VII Battalion of Militia, formed by leaders of his Leacock Presbyterian Church, and saw action at the battles of Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth.

During the heavy fighting at Monmouth Courthouse, Amos was separated from his company and ended up fighting in a Chester County Company led by Colonel Fleming, who was wounded in the battle. Colonel Fleming sent Amos to the Fleming homestead (now in Coatesville, Pa.) with a note to the effect that the Colonel would be in a field hospital. Amos spent enough time with the family to fall in love with the Colonel’s daughter, Isabella, or Sibby, as he came to call her. Amos and Sibby were married on September 19, 1780.

Since the young couple had no home, Judge Henry Slaymaker put them up in his newly acquired farmhouse, the one-time Francis Jones Inn. Amos signed a lease with his father and Jasper Yeates, farmed the property for them, and soon opened a store on the property. Judge Henry willed the home to Amos, along with that portion of the land not held by Jasper Yeates in still ‘undivided halves.”

By the late 1780s, Jasper Yeates took his now departed old friend’s son, Amos Slaymaker, into his confidence with respect to the future of their holdings. Lancaster, one of the largest inland towns in the nation, was ill-served by a bad and indirect road from Philadelphia. The Federalist politicians then in power saw a good road between Philadelphia and Lancaster as a suitable first link in a chain of Federal “internal improvements” that would enable the young nation to flourish economically and thus become self-sufficient.

The Philadelphia-Lancaster Turnpike Company was formed in 1790. Its new Macadam-type road, the first of its kind, was to pass through the Yeates-Slay-maker property, consequently increasing its value. But young Amos Slaymaker saw the turnpike as an avenue to wealth that could far exceed that of enhanced land values.

Through his friendship with Jasper Yeates and General Edward Hand (the manager of the eastern Lancaster County stretch of road), Amos became a district manager in charge of maintenance. He was also able to have a tollgate placed on his property. Here was a perfect spot for an inn to serve turnpike travelers. One was built, “The Sign of John Adams.” Being “in on the ground floor’ Amos was the first to secure a license for a stagecoach line—”The Slay-maker Line of Stages”—running from Philadelphia through Gap to Lancaster, on to Chambersburg, and back to Philadelphia. Amos bought a handsome brick building in Lancaster, converting it to another inn called “The Pennsylvania Arms.” Now, he had two stop-over facilities for his traveler customers.

Amos built tenant houses on both sides of the turnpike near his home. He named his village “Salisbury” after the township. In short order, he secured appointments as postmaster, tax collector, Justice of the Peace, and Militia Brigade Inspector. To finance his enterprises, Amos borrowed funds from his father-in-law, his mother, and a wealthy Philadelphia family. By the turn of the century, Amos Slaymaker, Esq. was successful enough to pay off all his debts.

Amos’s village is known today as Slaymakertown. “The Sign of John Adams Inn” is the private residence of Mr. and Mrs. Clinton Himes Martin, who operate their aptly named Stage Coach Motel on the property. Mr. Martin’s great-great-grandfather bought the inn several years after Amos’s death in 1837.

Before Squire Amos Slaymaker erected his “barony,” his family was expanding rapidly. So, in the 1790s, he built an addition to the one-time Jones’ Inn. The second wing was added to the south side of the original Jones structure. This new area was split north-south by a wall with a centered door. One room was for dining, and the other was a living room. The extended second floor provided additional sleeping quarters and an attic.

By the early 1800s, another wing was still needed. More children (11 in all) and the now unseeming position of the home were the operative causes. The house faced east. But in front of its southern extremity ran the most impressive road in the United States. Here was the ideal location for a porticoed Federal mansion facing the new thoroughfare. Such a building would advertise Squire Slaymaker’s arrival as a transportation tycoon.

The mansion addition was built during 1806-07. The two south-facing windows in Amos’ 1790 wing were lengthened (from the bottoms) and converted by two steps into portals, each leading into the new mansion. The west portal led to a hall running up to the fan-lighted front door. On the west wall of the hall, two windows faced the lawn and “The Sign of John Adams Inn;” one window at the rear of the hall, the other at the front. Three chimneys were added to serve fireplaces in the two new rooms and the hall. Many of Amos’ original furnishings remain in his mansion wing today.

By 1795, Amos and Judge Jasper Yeates had dissolved their agreement to hold the property in undivided halves. The lands were split, and Jasper built a large summer home, “Belmont,” 1/4 of a mile northwest of Amos’s house.

Amos Slaymaker served in the State House of Representatives, the State Senate, and the U.S. Congress during the War of 1812, in which conflict his two eldest sons served as militia officers. Deeply interested in methods of improving farming, Amos saw to it that indentured and paid help tilled his 120 acres neatly and fruitfully. His later years were largely spent in settling estates. Among them was that of the famous Swedish emigre’ painter Adolph U. Wertmuller. Probably for remuneration, Amos received eight paintings, self-portraits, and some of the Wertmuller family. These hang in the dining room and front drawing room of White Chimneys.

Amos Slaymaker, Esq., the prototype American gentleman farmer and country squire of the early nineteenth century, died in his mansion addition on June 22, 1837, at the time of the Panic of ’37, which together with business re-verses, greatly reduced his estate.

Victorian Period
(1837-1900)

Amos’s two eldest sons, Jasper Yeates and Henry Fleming Slaymaker, were educated at Dickinson College in nearby Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Jasper, like his namesake, became a respected and successful lawyer and a close friend of his one-time college classmate, James Buchanan. A brilliant career was terminated by his death at age thirty-one.

The heir to the Salisbury estate was Henry F. Slaymaker, who was born there in 1789. As a youth, Henry helped to run “The Sign of John Adams Inn,” the stage line, farm, and post office, all the while understudying his father’s estate settling and justice of the peace duties.

A leading area family for almost a century was the Cochrans of nearby Cochranville in Chester County (Rt. 41 south of Gap). General John Cochran had been one of George Washington’s directors of military hospitals during the Revolutionary War. His nephew Samuel Cochran—a leading Pennsylvania politician—married Amos Slaymaker’s sister, Hannah. Their daughter, Rebecca Slaymaker Cochran, married Henry F. Slaymaker, her first cousin. There were other Cochran-Slaymaker marriages, and the two families engaged in various joint business ventures.

Henry F. Slaymaker’s sister, Hannah Slaymaker Evans, became an accomplished artist. She painted Henry F. and his wife, Rebecca, their father, Amos, and a primitive of Amos’ farm and mansion, the chimneys of which were then of red brick. The painting was done in the 1820s. In the 1830s Henry F. spruced up the property and had the chimneys plastered. It is believed that artistic Hannah gave the home its name, “White Chimneys.” The paintings by the Hesseliuses, Wertmullers, Eichholtz, and Hannah Evans (now in the front room), not to mention the Cochran library-together with heirlooms and antiques—comprised an impressive array of furnishings for the mansion’s fashionable squire who soon embarked on business ventures of his own.

Canal transportation seemed to be the up-and-coming method of travel and commercial hauling. So Henry F. Slaymaker and his brothers invested in a wholesale business in nearby Columbia on the Susquehanna River. It was thought that the river and a canal system skirting the rapids would constitute a north-south trading corridor between the Baltimore-Philadelphia area and the developing northcentral interior of Pennsylvania. By the 1830s, the advent of railroads heralded the downfall of stage lines. Henry F. Slaymaker built a railroad hotel in Gap to serve travelers on the state’s first east-west railroad, the Philadelphia and Columbia, later taken over by the Pennsylvania Railroad. The building, now a private home, is little changed today. It is located on the north side of the tracks of the Penn Central, just off the Bellevue Church graveyard in Gap.

Like his forebearers, Henry F. Slaymaker was a devout Presbyterian elder. A founder in 1829 of the Bellevue Church, he was steeped in theology, literature, and the arts. He expanded the Cochran library at White Chimneys and founded a local literary society. While he was able to afford these trappings of the squirearchy, Henry F., during the last twenty years of his life, was in dire financial straits. Because of the financial troubles plaguing his late father’s estate, it was necessary for him to sell the Salisbury and Lancaster inns, the stage line, his Columbia wholesale business, and the Gap railroad hotel. He was able to start a short-lived insurance company and to keep intact and flourishing the White Chimneys farm. While never occupying public office, he was active in Whig politics and, in later years, the formation of the radically conservative American Party.

Henry F. Slaymaker, Esq. died in 1860 and was buried in the Bellevue graveyard.

Samuel Cochran Slaymaker, born at White Chimneys in 1833, became its new owner and squire. Of Henry F.’s seven children, Samuel showed the greatest promise. He was a brilliant student at nearby Moscow and Parkesburg Academies. Rather than going on to college, Samuel early pursued what would become his lifetime avocation, civil engineering. He was a meticulous and punctilious keeper of diaries. These reflected his fascinating career as a civil engineer for many railroads, as well as his life as a gentleman farmer and country squire. He was intensely interested in “Scientific farming,” which occupation brought him prizes in state agricultural exhibitions.

In order to earn extra money, he held various state political offices, all appointed—the most prestigious being that of Colonel on Governor Pollock’s staff. U. S. Senator Simon Cameron, later President Lincoln’s Secretary of War, was Samuel’s political patron. Samuel married a niece of Senator Cameron, Jane Cameron Redsecker. The daughter of a well-to-do Lancaster County merchant, Samuel Redsecker (whose portrait by Danner hangs in White Chimneys’ hall), Jane was a dowry-laden young woman. With her money, Samuel was able to embark on a program of renovation of the White Chimneys mansion and farm.

Colonel Slaymaker boarded up the old Francis Jones fireplace since, for many years, cooking had been done on wood stoves. A large one was placed before the now closed-up hearth. The stairway to the right of the hearth was removed, and the area was converted to a rear kitchen pantry. A serving pantry was built in the forward southwestern part of the kitchen, and a portal was cut through the wall into an enlarged dining room. By removing the north-south walls of Amos Slaymaker’s first wing, Samuel created a large dining room. Classic Revival pillars were placed to support the ceiling. The two Federal period fireplaces came out. A single marble hearth now heated the Colonel’s new dining room.

Since there was now no rear stairway in the mansion, one was built in the dining room’s northwest corner. Other Victorian touches were added to the mansion: colored tile in hearth facings and iron sheathing in fireplaces (the better to facilitate coal burning). Heavy supporting beams were placed in the first front
room’s ceilings, and new windows in the dining room were fitted with ornamentative latticework. Amos’ two forward drawing rooms now became Victorian “parlors,” complete with horsehair-covered chairs and settees, heavy curtains, marble-topped tables, bric-a-brac curios, and daguerreotypes.

Colonel Slaymaker made White Chimneys a “showplace” farm. There were well-tended flower gardens and truck patches, a hot house in which oranges were grown, a bee house, a new carriage house, a tobacco shed (he was an early grower of cigar tobacco), an ice house, and a new smokehouse. A steam plow, known as a “field locomotive,” was now used on the farm, as were new and exotic fertilizers.

Since his farm was run by a very efficient Mr. Greenleaf, Colonel Slaymaker was able to continue his calling as a civil engineer. He was away much of the time, although he did try to be home over weekends. He lost relatives and friends in the Civil War and was opposed to it. Rather than serve, he took the course of many others in his station. A farmer was paid to go in his place.

Colonel Slaymaker was stricken with apoplexy on a Lancaster street on February 2, 1894, and died that day at age 61. Since most of his later years were spent in Lancaster, he was buried there in Woodward Hill Cemetary, not far from the grave of his father’s and uncle’s close friend, President James Buchanan.

Contemporary Period

Colonel Slaymaker’s eldest son, Samuel Redsecker Slaymaker, became his heir to White Chimneys. Born in Donegal, Lancaster County, on March 14, 1866, he was educated in Lancaster public schools but spent summers at White Chimneys doing farm chores. His father’s reduced financial circumstances necessitated
Sam’s leaving Franklin and Marshall College in his sophomore year. After a stint of surveying for the Pennsylvania Railroad, Sam decided to manufacture padlocks, an idea he probably got through familiarity with railroad switch and signal locks. Sam married Mina Louisa Cohr of Highspire, Pennsylvania.

At the time of his father’s death, White Chimneys farm was run down. The Colonel and Janes’ money was gone because of bad investments and unrepayed loans to family members. But the lock business did so well that by 1907, the 100th anniversary of Amos’ mansion, Sam (now known as SR) was able to modernize the mansion and farm.

A water garden was laid out in Italian style. It was appointed with marble benches and a fountain, which S.R. purchased while on a trip to Italy.

The home was electrified, phones and bathrooms were installed, and an additional tobacco shed was erected. Barns, outbuildings, and tenant houses were rebuilt. The renovation’s completion was celebrated by a large “Centennial” party hosted by S.R . and “Minnie” (as Mina Louisa was called) for their friends and the Lancaster County Historical Society.

As the lock business flourished, S.R. entered various business enterprises: asbestos manufacturing, newspaper publishing, printing, and real estate development. In 1923, S.R. added a west wing to White Chimneys. The first floor, comprising a large ballroom, reflected the then-popular Moorish influence. Here, parties were held by S.R. and Minnie’s four children. A large fireplace in the west wall provided the mansion with a grand total of seven white chimneys!

After World War I service, S.R.’s oldest son, Samuel Cochran Slaymaker, II held fox hunting parties at White Chimneys, and a tennis court was put on the east lawn. White Chimneys’ inhabitants became archetypical of others in like circumstances during America’s “Roaring Twenties.”

S.C. Slaymaker, II married Martha Fletcher of Harrisburg, Pa., and then entered Slaymaker Lock Company. The S.C. Slaymakers never lived at White Chimneys. Ownership passed to their son, Samuel Redsecker Slaymaker, II, upon his grandmother’s death in 1955.

For ten years, Mr. Slaymaker researched the voluminous manuscript collection stored in White Chimneys’ garrets. His work resulted in the development of the home’s story from Colonial times until the present, a saga so uncommon in the realm of Americana that “LIFE” Magazine featured it in a pictured story in the August 27, 1967 issue.

S.R. Slaymaker wrote of his experiences as a twentieth-century country squire—encompassing his projects of research and rehabilitation—in his book Captives’ Mansion, Harper & Row, 1973.

In recent years the home was registered and marked by the Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster County, and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. On April 1, 1975, White Chimneys was put on the National Register of Historical Places by the Department of the Interior of the U. S. Government.

Under the aegis of the Lancaster County Bicentennial Committee, Mr. and Mrs . Slaymaker opened White Chimneys to the public in June 1976. The home and grounds comprise a non-profit corporation, “Houseful of Our History,” the better to ensure the perpetuation of the property throughout years to come.

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The White Chimneys Museum

The late Sir Denis Brogan, who was Britain’s foremost authority on the United States, described White Chimneys as “a most unusual American home,” because it has been lived in by one family for two centuries. In a county known for familiar mobility, this has to be some kind of a record! Sir Denis further noted that the vast array of heirlooms, artifacts, antiques, and manuscripts stored in the White Chimneys’ attics could constitute a singular museum display illustrating the story of White Chimneys’ inhabitants from Colonial times to the present day. He suggested to Sam Slaymaker that such a museum should definitely be built because, to his knowledge, there was nothing of a comparable nature in
the United States.

It’s been said that the Slaymaker family “never threw anything away.” Settlers of estates for four successive generations, they made a practice of keeping records of almost all of their correspondence, much of which was with family and friends whose estates they had settled or would some day settle. Therefore, the entire White Chimneys’ manuscript collection is too large to house in this museum. The same applies to books, periodicals, newspapers, and journals of all sorts—not to mention many antiques. Only a representative sampling from the collection is feasible.

The museum has two purposes: first, Mr. Slaymaker has endeavored to display materials in a way that tells the story of the evolution of White Chimneys; second, he has developed thematic units that illustrate the many and varied activities of the family over 200 years.

The upright panels, in the middle of the room, tell the story of the evolution of the home. They cover each of the cultural periods of American history: Colonial, Federal, Victorian, and Contemporary.

The Colonial panels cover the period of the home’s beginning through the Revolutionary War. Of particular interest is a letter from George Washington and a very rare record of the court martial of General St. Clair. Federal panels display interesting correspondence about the War of 1812, while the panels covering the Victorian Era contain fascinating papers and artifacts exhibiting the family’s activities during the Civil War.

The thematic displays border the room. They show artifacts, heirlooms, papers, and books related to family activities and enterprises, education, commerce, and politics. A distinctive display features old Slaymaker padlocks, and a contemporary tableau highlights the interests of Sally, Sam, and their children.

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Living History Celebration

Join White Chimneys on July 26, 2025, for their Living History Celebration. Admission is free!

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Resources

• White Chimneys: Houseful of Our History