Trimble House
Introduction
Text-to-speech Audio
Images
The back of the original 1739/1742 section of the Trimble House. The door leads into the kitchen.
The original 1739 kitchen is undergoing restoration and will be used for cooking and brewing programs.
The front of the original 1739/1742 section of the Trimble House. There is a date stone above the door.
During the 19th and early 20th centuries, this outbuilding was used as a smokehouse, but recent investigations have indicated that it may have been originally built as a brewhouse and/or a laundry.
Adjoining the other outbuilding and built out of an outcropping of bedrock is the ruin of another outbuilding. Oral history from previous owners stated that it was a privy, but archaeological excavations have shown that not to be the case. Before being used as a trash pit in the 18th century and again in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, it may have been used for drying or malting grain.
Visitors to the site often ask if this is a historic well, but it was actually a modern barbeque built by previous owners of the house!
Backstory and Context
Text-to-speech Audio
William Trimble came to Pennsylvania from Ireland in 1719 and had settled in Concord Township by 1729. It is thought that he may have worked for the Newlins at the Grist Mill. He became a member of the Concord Friends Meeting and married Ann Palmer in 1734.
In 1737, William purchased 50 acres adjoining the Newlin's property. The first section of the house was built on it in 1739. Built into the hill, it had a walk-out basement kitchen and pantry on the lower level, with two rooms on the upper level for living and sleeping quarters. A third floor was added to this section in 1742.
Around 1750 an addition was put on the west end of the house. William also purchased a property in West Whiteland Township by the mid-1750s and lived there at times, with his son John continuing to occupy the house in Concord.
The Trimble family became more and more successful in the milling business in the second half of the 18th century. William had built a sawmill downstream from the Newlin Grist Mill by 1764. His son John started leasing Newlin Grist Mill in 1768. John's son--William Trimble, Jr.--took over the lease of the grist mill after his father's death in 1772. The Trimble family put another addition onto the house in the 1780s or 1790s. William Sr. left the Concord property to William Jr. when he died in 1795.
William Jr. opened a paper mill on the West Branch of Chester Creek that operated from 1796 to 1817. At that point, he purchased the Grist Mill from the Newlin family and operated it until 1829, when he sold it to Abraham Sharpless.
The Trimble house remained in the hands of the Trimble family until John Hill purchased the property in 1861. In the 20th century, the Hills were followed as residents by Tom and Myrtle Pennewell and then Larry and Pat Dunbar. The Nicholas Newlin Foundation purchased the house in 1991, reuniting the Newlin Grist Mill and the Trimble House.
Sources
Case, Robert P. Prosperity And Progress: Concord Township, Pennsylvania, 1683-1983. Chester, Pa.: Concord Township Historical Society, 1983.
Making Connections: The Trimble House. Grist From the Mill. Fall 2017/Winter 2018. 1-2.
Newlin Grist Mill
Newlin Grist Mill
Newlin Grist Mill
Newlin Grist Mill
Newlin Grist Mill
Newlin Grist Mill