Averse to war because of their Quaker heritage, they were even more terrified of the disruption of trade. One of the most prominent was a friend of John Adams: fellow attorney Benjamin Chew, chief justice of Pennsylvania.
Soon after Independence was declared, prominent moderates like Benjamin Chew were caught in the maelstrom. He was stripped of his office, arrested as a suspected Tory, and detained in New Jersey. And some of the bloodiest fighting of the American Revolution took place at his idyllic Germantown home
With 153 of his men dead and 500 wounded, Washington gave up and retreated to Valley Forge. As the Continental Army shivered and starved, Benjamin Chew's daughter Peggy danced with Major John Andr at the lavish Mischianza ball held in honor of the departing British General Howe.
Benjamin Chew was released a year after the Battle of Germantown. He took one look at his beloved mansion and decided it was not worth repairing. It was not until 1797 that he repurchased the house and restored it to its former grandeur.
Yet by the early 1800s, the Chews' position as slaveholders in a free state had become untenable, and Benjamin Chew Jr. divested the family estate of its Southern landholdings. A letter sent to his aging father reveals the younger Chew's mixed feelings of family duty and personal disgust as a partic
The Chews lived at Cliveden until 1972, when they donated the house and its contents to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Visitors can still see Benjamin Chew's law library, the John Locke bookcase, the bullet holes, the front lawn, and the slave quarters.