The Woodlands was the estate of William Hamilton, originally purchased by his grandfather (prominent Philadelphia lawyer Andrew Hamilton, whose defense of John Peter Zenger established freedom of the press) in 1735. William was a botanist and the grounds grew to contain more than 10,000 species of plants, including the first specimens introduced into America of the Ginkgo biloba, Paper Mulberry, Sycamore Maple, Ailanthus, Caucasian Zelkova, and Lombardy Poplar as well as plants grown from seeds harvested during Lewis and Clark’s expedition. He also collected and exchanged numerous native plants with his friends and neighbors, the Bartram family of botanists from nearby Bartram's Garden. The property became the epitome of English-style landscape gardening. German naturalist Frederick Pursh was hired to oversee the botanical collections at The Woodlands, and he was later asked to catalog some of the speicmens brought back by the Lewis & Clark expedition. Thomas Jefferson was a frequent visitor of William Hamilton.
In 1840, The Woodlands Cemetery Company purchased 92 acres for a rural cemetery, with the idea of preserving the many tree specimens.
Thomas Evans was dentist and confidante of Napoeon III, and his patients included many European heads of state. Evans pioneered the use of gold as a cavity filling and he introduced nitrous oxide as an anesthetic to Europe. When he died, Evans left his estate to the University of Pennsylvania to found a dental school.
We could not find the grave of Dr Samuel Gross, who also founded the American Medical Association and the American Surgical Association.
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| Grave marker of Leontyne Watts (1919-2018) who was a prominent member of the Harlem Renaissance as a singer, dancer and actor; she was born and raised in West Philadelphia and returned to give back to her community as a career counselor and through her church |
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| Quercus velutina/Black Oak |
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| Grave marker of Andrew McCalla Eastwick (1810-1879) who manufactured locomotives, including for the railroad from Moscow to St Petersburg under Czar Nicholas; Eastwick also purchased the Bartram Gardens to preserve it from indutrial sprawl |
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| Hmm, maybe the fallen headstone is that of Rembrandt Peale (1778-1860), the portrait painter and son of Charles Willson Peale; Rembrandt also opened a museum in Baltimore that housed a mastodon skeleton |
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| Thomas W Evans Memorial (1917, by the Wilson Brothers) is said to be the tallest gravestone in the United States and the tallest funerary obelisk (150'/46 m) in the world |
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| Grave marker of John Ashhurst Jr, MD (1839-1900) was a child prodigy in piano, who graduated from the University of Pensylvania at age 18, and the Medical School at age 21; his estate, the Grange, is now a museum in Haverford Township |
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| Taxodium distichum/Bald Cypress |
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| Quercus montana/Chestnut Oak behind a Pennsylvania State Champion Cornus florida/Flowering Dogwood |
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| The rear of the William Hamilton Mansion (KSS) |
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| Stone and brick work (KSS) |
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| Hamilton Mansion (core 1770, reconstructed 1786-1789) was the first country house in the United States to be built in the Robert Adam style of British architecture |
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| Drexel Mausoleum for 1) Francis M Drexel, an Austrian artist whose ability to speak German and Spanish brought him into international banking; his 1838 Drexel Bank helped finance the Mexican-American War in 1846; 2) Anthony J Drexel expanded the Drexel Bank and founded Drexel University; 3) George Washington Childs Drexel was publisher and editor of the Philadelphia Public Ledger |
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| Gingko biloba/Gingko Tree |
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| Grave marker of Joseph Campbell (1817-1900) who purchased a canning factory in Camden, NJ in 1869; John T Dorrance, a nephew of the general manager, discovered a method of creating condensed soup in 1887, resulting in lower prices and success for Campbell's Soups |
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| Grave marker of Thomas Eakins (1844-1916), an American realist painter with an interest in anatomy, so that he is known for his painting of famed surgeon Dr Samuel Gross presiding over a procedure in a crowded amphitheater at Jefferson Medical College |
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| One of two Pennsylvania champion Platanus × acerifolia/ London Plane Trees at The Woodlands |
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| The remains of a grove of seven Ulmus procera/English Elms that succumbed to Dutch Elm Disease |
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| Grave marker of Lewis H Redner (1831- 1908) who was the the organist at the Church of the Holy Trinity in Philadelphia; on Christmas Eve, 1868, he was asked to compose the music for a poem written by the church's pastor, Phillips Brooks; the next day, O Little Town of Bethlehem debuted |
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| We saw woodchucks and evidence of them |
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| Pennsylvania State Champion Zelkova carpinifolia/Caucasian zelkova |
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| Hamilton Carriage House (1788-1790) (KSS) |
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