About

If you stand at the crossroads of Pennsylvania Route 191 and Pine Mill Road in Equinunk and then turn to face an old white house with a green roof, you will be looking at the headquarters of the Equinunk Historical Society. This same house was once the farmhouse of H.N. Farley’s Equinunk Manor Dairy Farm and later the Earl and Ethel Lord boarding house. When the Lords purchased the house in 1915, they knew it to be over 100 years old but no documents existed to absolutely prove it. A very early parchment map owned by Ann Preston Vail shows two structures, one of which may well be this house. This map, known to be authentic, was handed down in the papers of Samuel Preston (land agent, manager for Henry Drinker of Philadelphia, and great-great-great-grandfather of Ms. Vail). Henry Drinker was a large land holder in northeastern Pennsylvania. The land, amounting to 2222 acres, was originally surveyed as of December 8th, 1773, for the Proprietors (or William Penn family) as Equinunk Manor. Preston acquired the land from Penn’s heirs in 1812. It then passed to his sons, Paul and Warner, in 1831. They then sold it in 1833 (recorded in 1834) to Alexander Calder and Israel Chapman. This was the last sale of the entire tract. These two divided it the same year, Calder retaining land on both sides of the creek in Equinunk, and Chapman taking the land up-creek.