The Crowell – Eakins Farm in Avondale Pennsylvania

A few days ago, I received a call from Ken Mammarella, a freelance writer on assignment for Landenberg Life Magazine. He is writing an article about the preservation of Sunset Farms, property originally purchased in 1878  by my great grandfather, William James Crowell and my great grandmother, Francis Eakins Crowell. Google had led him to a photo I took in 2003 of the original farm house.

My son John Bobroskie (age 11) and Chris Crowell Trostle (now deceased) stand on the front porch. In 2003, I took John out of school for a week to attend the Maryland Renaissance Festival and to visit relatives in the Avondale area. We visited the Philadelphia Museum of Art to see works by Thomas Eakins and I also took John to visit the farm house for better understanding of the history and his heritage. He enjoyed scrambling through the old farmhouse and I was relieved that he didn’t fall through the rotten floorboards of  second story. Chris was our guide and she led us across a field and down to the river to see the family graves. I took many photos on my Olympus camera of both farm house and graves but it wasn’t until some years later that I had the best of the prints scanned and digitized.

One of my most cherished possessions is the original photograph above of the Crowell family sitting on the steps of their Avondale farmhouse, a photograph taken by Thomas Eakins. As best as Carol Shortlidge and I can determine, from top left to right they are: My great grandfather, William J. Crowell, (born in 1844) holding an open book and my grandfather, James White Crowell, (born in 1888) is the blond child sitting beside him. Ella is the young woman on the top step sitting beside her mother, my great grandmother, Frances Eakins Crowell. The baby on her lap is presumably Caroline who was the last of the 10 children born. Ben leans against the post.  The child below Ella is Fanny (or Frances.)  The three boys sitting on the bottom step are presumably Thomas, William  and Arthur. Margaret is the young woman sitting in front of the post at the far right. Assuming my grandfather is 2 years old in this photo, it was likely taken in 1889 or 1890.

Flash forward to a visit in 2012. I wanted to share the farmhouse and the graves with my husband Art. Chris and her daughter Carole were again our guides. The farmhouse was gone and in its place was small renovated memorial marker. Carole asked permission from whom I presume were John Morris and Lynn Sinclair, that we be allowed to visit the graves and we walked down to the river. I now had an Apple I-Phone and I took many took many photos of the graves. In an effort to record family history, before time changes the landscape and the markers themselves are buried, I am posting images of each grave marker.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 1951 the adult Crowell/Eakins Children gathered together for this photograph.

From left to right are James White (Jim), Tom, Frances (Fanny), Ben, Caroline, Will and Arthur.