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The Letitia Penn House, Philadelphia: Aubrey

In 1702 Letitia married William Aubrey, who had all of Penn's keenness and none of his genial qualities. Almost from the day of the marriage both husband and wife pestered Penn for money. Aubrey insisted on a prompt payment of his wife's marriage portion. His father-in-law was already beginning to feel the grip of financial embarrassment that later brought him to the verge of bankruptcy, but, on this occasion as well as later, he felt compelled to yield to the insistent demands of the grasping Aubrey.

The only members of the Penn family who ever returned to America were the children of the second wife, to whom most of the property descended.

The Letitia Penn House, as it came to be known, fell on evil days. It was an eating house in 1800, and in 1824 it was the Rising Sun Inn. Later it was called the Woolpack Hotel.

In 1882 funds were raised by public subscription, and the venerable house was taken down and rebuilt in Fairmount Park. Visitors who enter the city by the Pennsylvania Railroad from New York City may easily see it from a right-hand car window, for it is the only house in the corner of the park on the west side of the river.

THE CITY OF BROTHERLY LOVE 149 XXXII CARPENTERS' HALL, PHILADELPHIA CALLED BY BENSON J. LOSSING "THE TEMPLE OF FREEDOM" Philadelphia was but forty-two years old when a number of builders in the growing town decided to have a guild like the journeymen's guilds of London. Accordingly they formed, in 1724, "The Carpenters' Company of the City and County of Philadelphia," whose object should be "to obtain instruction in the science of architecture; to assist such of the members, or the widows and children of members, as should be by accident in need of support," as well as "the adoption of such a system of measurements and prices that every one concerned in a building may have the value of his money, and every workman the worth of his labor."

At first the meetings were held here and there, probably in taverns. In 1768 the Company decided to build a home. A lot was secured on Chestnut Street, between Third and Fourth streets, for which an annual ground rent of "176 Spanish milled pieces of eight" was to be paid. The sum of three hundred pounds necessary to begin operations was subscribed in about a week.

The Company's annual meeting of January 21, 1771, was held within the walls, though the building was not entirely completed until 1792.