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Family History
The colony of New Sweden was founded in 1638. Beginning at Fort Christina (present-day Wilmington, Delaware), the colony quickly spread up the Delaware River towards present-day Philadelphia. Among the early settlers of New Sweden was Mouns Jones’ father, Jonas Nilsson, who was born in 1621 in Sweden, emigrated with Governor Johan Bjornsson Printz in 1643 and settled at Fort Christina. Jonas was a member of the Royal Swedish Army, serving from 1643 to 1645 with the Swedish garrison at Fort Elfsborg. Fort Elfsborg was designed to protect the colony of New Sweden, strategically located near present-day Elsinboro at the mouth of Salem Creek in Salem County, New Jersey.
Jonas Nilsson acquired two hundred acres at Kingsessing in modern-day West Philadelphia and made his home near present-day 77th Street and Laycock Avenue. Jonas married Gertrude and they had four daughters and seven sons. The wealth of Jonas Nilsson was accumulated by trading for furs with the local Native American population. Eventually, he became the business advisor of Armegot, the daughter of Governor Printz. She had become responsible for her father’s holdings when he returned to Sweden. Later, he would acquire an additional two hundred and seventy acres at nearby Aronameck from Peter Yocum. He divided this land up among his three eldest sons—including Mans Jonasson, later anglicized to Mouns Jones. Jonas died at the age of seventy-three in 1693 and was buried at Old Swedes Church in Philadelphia.
Mouns Jones was born in 1663, and settled on the land he acquired from his father where he built a modest stone dwelling. He married Ingabor Laicon around 1690 at Gloria Dei Church (the Old Swedes Church in Philadelphia). Their children were Margaret (1691), Peter (1693), Christina (1695), Jonas (1698), Andrew (1702), and Brigitta (1704)., In c. 1712 Mouns Jones deeded the stone house he had built in West Philadelphia and its acreage to his son-in-law, Frederick Schopenhousen, which was later incorporated into John Bartram’s “Bartram’s Garden” house after Frederick lost it in a Sheriff’s sale.
The Swedish enclave which arose in southeastern Berks County was mostly related to Jones through either blood or marriage. Mouns Jones died in 1727 and is buried in the St. Gabriel’s church yard in Douglassville, Pennsylvania.
As documented in James Logan’s ledgers now in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Mouns Jones was actively engaged from c. 1715 into the 1720s in trading furs acquired from indigenous Native Americans for goods imported from England and continental Europe pursuant to a license issued by the Penn Family. For several years he functioned in partnership with Anthony Sadowski and his sons, wagoning the trade goods to Logan’s warehouse on the Delaware River and imports back to Morlatton. Among Mouns Jones’ possessions at the time of his death in 1727 was a “box of Indian goods” valued at two pounds currency and “skins” worth three Pounds., Mouns acreage was the site of an Indian encampment of the Indians of the Five Nations as reported in the minutes of the Provincial Council dated May 13, 1712. The Indians of the Five Nations are better known as the Iroquois Confederacy and included the Mohawk,Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca tribes. On May 13, 1712, Charles Gookin, Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania, wrote as follows:
“The Governor having received a letter from Mouns Jones of Manatawny dated 4th purported that four Indian kings were there and desired ye governor to meet them on the 8th at the said house of Mouns Jones which letter came but to the Governor’s hands on the 9th and now the Governor desires the opinion of the board, whether he should go or send to them, being it said in the letter they are going with their belts of the Five Nations, and it is the opinion of the board, the assembly now sitting, and the Governor’s presence being required here and the letter coming too late to his hands, the sheriff or some other sufficient person be immediately dispatched to enquire further of their business to acquaint them of the time the Governor received their letter and engage them to Philadelphia in their way if it may be with their convenience or appoint some nearer place to meet the Governor. The public affair here requiring his presence.”
In 1719, Mouns Jones donated a portion of his land for the construction of St. Gabriel’s Church. Services were held as early as 1708 in the region by Reverend Andrew Sandel. Morlatton Church (St. Gabriel’s) would operate from 1719 to 1753 as a de facto interdenominational congregation consisting of Swedish Lutherans, German Lutherans, and Anglicans. Morlatton Church was the first organized religious congregation in the county. In 1763, St. Gabriel’s completed its conversion to the Church of England. According to Raymond Elliott, “When the Swedes could no longer secure a supply of missionary clergy from their own country, they decided not to keep a separate organization but entered into full communion with the Church of England”.
The original church was a hewn log structure, replaced by the c. 1801 stone chapel with its unusual “herringbone” stone walling pattern.
Mouns Jones’s house and its tract of land were owned and occupied by the Kirlin family of blacksmiths for much of the 2nd half of the 18th century.
Architectural History
The 1716 house is the oldest documented dwelling in Berks County. It was built by Mouns and Ingabor Jones. The original structure on the property was probably a log structure located on the river side of the current structure. A foundation for this structure and its hearth were located during archaeological excavations by Chapter 21, Pennsylvania Society for Archaeology.
The surviving 1716 house, which stands at the south end of what was the original 498-acre tract acquired by Mounce Jones in 1701, is a two and a half story sandstone structure, The building is approximately 20 by 36 feet, on a partitioned English hall-parlor plan, with pivoting casement style windows. The house never had a cellar, as is evidenced by the stone joist-support piers found about 18” below grade, and the shallow depth of the beds of the perimeter foundation walls of the house.
By 1886, the original partition wall on the first floor was moved northward, increasing the parlor size at the expense of the kitchen area. There is a radial corner fireplace in the parlor, reflecting both Swedish and English influences and more efficiently distributing heat to all corners of the parlor. At some point, the second floor had been divided into three small rooms with a hall running from east to west for access along the river-facing wall.
At least by 1886 [see engraving], the house’s exterior stone walls had been stucco-coated. In 1952, while workers were burning debris during the removal of the Douglassville Covered Bridge, the roof caught fire and later collapsed in 1958.
In. 1957 the roof and flooring of the attic and second story collapsed. Most of the exterior walls remained in stable condition to the top courses of stone under the eaves-level. Part of the southeastern chimney had fallen as well. In the early 1960s the 1716 datestone disappeared. However, it had been taken by a concerned person to preserve it and later returned it while the house was being restored.
The Historic Preservation Trust of Berks County began restoring the property in 1965, taking three years to complete the work. Some of the lumber from the covered bridge was used to make window frames during the restoration. The fenestration arrangement, doorway locations, some of the framing for pivoting casement windows with leaded glass, the corner fireplace in the parlor, plumb and stable alignment of exterior walls, edge-beaded joists and board flooring, using durable and water-repellent black locust boards harvested from the site, have been restored in several campaigns during the past dozen years.
The house is open to the public periodically during the year and by appointment.
Site History
The house is erected on land granted to the Swedes on October 21, 1701 by William Penn. Andrew Rudman, a Swedish minister, made the application to William Penn in 1701 for 10,000 acres, called the “Swede’s Tract”, later to be chartered as Amity Township…
Between 1704 and 1705 Swedes took up tracts within this land grant. The only compensation that Penn received from the Swedes was an annual quit rent of one bushel of wheat per one hundred acres. Ironically, very few Swedes actually settled on these lands. Only seventeen Swedish families actually acquired land grants in eastern Berks County. Of these seventeen families, only Mouns Jones and his family moved into Berks County. By 1740, only 1,350 of the original 10,000 acres were still in Swedish lands.
In 1719, a petition was presented for the creation of Amity Township. However, it was not signed and formally approved until 1744, the first township in what eventually became Berks County. The township’s boundaries are almost identical to the boundaries of the original 10,000 acre Swedes’ tract. The name Amity derives itself from the peaceful relations the settlers had with the local Native American population.
Mouns Jones acquired 498 acres of land from the Swede Tract on October 21, 1701. However, this tract of land was not actually patented to him until May 15, 1705. From the Journal of Andreas Sandel—pastor of Gloria Dei Church of Philadelphia—it reads in 1704: “The 15th of October I traveled together with Gustav Gustafson, a Swede, and Daniel Falckner, a German, to Manatawny, where the Swedes have 10,000 acres, and one Swede, Mans Jonasson, has begun to dwell there.”
The tracts of land which the Swedes acquired were long and narrow, with river-frontage crucial to access to the river-corridor.
Jones and other first owners had to pay an annual quit rent of 165 bushels of wheat to the Penn family for this land. In 1725, Mouns Jones owned about 740 acres within the original Swede’s Tract.
When Mouns Jones died in 1727, his son Andrew inherited the property. At the time Andrew received the property, it covered 264 acres. Two hundred acres of the original property had been deeded in 1721 to Jones’ brother-in-law Andrew Laicon. Also, Mouns and Ingabor Jones donated the land for Morlatton Church (today Saint Gabriel’s Church) around 1719. The 1734 tax list shows Andrew Jones owning 220 acres. In 1745, William Bird purchased the property from Andrew Jones. On July 29, 1746, Bird sold the land to Thomas Banfield.
John Kirlin, the last Swede to own the property, acquired the house and acreage in 1757. The 1767 tax records have John Kirlin listed as a blacksmith with fifty acres of land, paying and a tax of 2 pounds. In 1804, George Douglass, Jr. purchased the property from John Kirlin. In 1944, the estate of the Douglass family (which had owned the land since 1804) sold the property to Earl Schurr, at which time it contained five acres. In 1961, the property was owned by Roy Schurr (who had acquired it from his brother) but was unoccupied and unused.
The Historic Preservation Trust of Berks County acquired the house along with 1½ acres of property in 1965, through a gift of the Roy Schurr family under the stipulation that it be restored. On January 21, 1974, the house was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Currently, the house is maintained by The Historic Preservation Trust of Berks County after several campaigns of structural and architectural restoration.
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