A Narrative of Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, With Some Account of Springfield, Whitemarsh and Cheltenham Townships in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania (review)

118Bulletin of Friends Historical Association A Narrative of Chestnut Hill, PhUadelphia, With Some Account of Springfield, Whitemarsh and Cheltenham Townships in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. By Horace Mather Lippincott. Chestnut Hill: The author. 1948. 190 pages. $3.00. t-TORACE Mather Lippincott has written a modest-sized book with a long title which is likely to be known, conversationally, as his "book about Chestnut Hill." In it he has assembled an extraordinary number of facts about the past and the present, some of them wellknown and some of fresh interest, particularly to those who live, work, or worship in this community. He gives credit to the historical research and writings of various other persons, particularly John MacFarlane, but much of the "bright cloth" with which he has enlivened the facts is the result of his own appreciative conversation with living persons who know both traditions and current life and problems. Chestnut Hill, he says, is the highest point between Trenton and Bryn Mawr. It was probably a wilderness as late as 1710; the name appears in a deed of 1711 from Thomas Fairman "to Peter Wentz, Chestnut Hill, Germantown"; in 1734 the old Germantownship was divided into Germantown and Crisheim, the latter comprising what is now Chestnut Hill. Chapters on Inns and Railroads, Churches, and Schools compress into short space a combination of current information and historical tidbits. The author's interest in, and knowledge about, the Religious Society of Friends runs through the book, with accounts of meetings and individuals. The chapter on Cricket and Horses tells of two interests which were particularly lively in Chestnut Hill in the past but which have declined in recent years. In this connection he quotes a nostalgic and perhaps provocative passage from Dr. Cornelius Weygandt , beginning "the heyday of American life was a hundred years ago; there has been retrogression from that day to this in the will to work, in taste, in manners, in cultivation, in the sense of honor." The middle section of the book consists of twenty-eight pages of photographs of persons and places and events, a varied and interesting collection. Each chapter is charmingly headed by an appropriate line drawing, presumably a reproduction. One wishes that the author, in spite of his declared distaste for elaborate documentation, had somewhere told us their source. Also, although he has written for his own enjoyment and that of his reader, one feels that the latter might have found his pleasure and profit increased by a good index, in a book in which so many bits of information jostle one another. Germantown, PennsylvaniaD. Robert and Elizabeth Yarnall ...