Daily Local News, Sun., Feb. 11, 2007

A CHESTER COUNTY FAIRYTALE

Langoma and the Rose Cottage

By KATHLEEN KEANE

Special to the Local News

Once upon a time, not too far away from where you are right now, a lovely young woman lived in a magnificent palace. It wasn’t exactly a palace like the ones you see in picture books; it was a really elaborate house—you could call it a mansion.

She had a funny-sounding name, Ginerva. No one in her new family approved, so they all called her Mabel.

Yes, you read it correctly: her new family. You see, this young lady had left her home in Newark, N.J., to marry a very rich man, one of the richest men in the entire county. His name was William Potts.

She had a sister, Caroline, who was called “Carrie,” who married Williams’s brother, Francis. Her father, John D. Harrison, and Williams’s father, Col. Joseph Potts, who built this grandiose mansion not to far from where you are right now, were business acquaintances. And both men were extremely wealthy. How very convenient that Col. Potts should have marriageable-age sons, and Harrison, have marriageable-age daughters. If by some chance, Harrison’s daughters would be married to Col. Potts’ sons, well; both families could be even richer, couldn’t they?

That may sound peculiar to you, but back in the days when Ginerva/Mabel was young, things were done differently. People did not always marry for love; sometimes they married to merge businesses, or to ensure that future generations would be rich, also. It was called a marriage of convenience.

Mabel, a very obedient daughter, married the man her daddy chose for her. Her daddy told her she would live like a queen and always be taken care of. He told her sister the same thing. And so, the Misses Harrison became the Missus Potts.

Mabel’s sister went to live in a grand house on Spruce Street in Philadelphia, right next door to her mother and father-in-law’s city residence. What a splendid place it was; it later became known as the International House of the University of Pennsylvania. City life agreed with Mabel’s sister. She went to parties, dressed in the latest fashion from New York and Paris, and entertained all the crème de la crème of Philadelphia society.

Mabel went to live in that place not too far from where you are, a breathtakingly spectacular, one-of-a-kind mansion, built high on a hill, surrounded by several thousand acres of pasture and woodland.

The mansion had a name. The name is still engraved in stone on the front entrance to the mansion. If you ever go there, you can still see it. It is called Langoma.

Langoma is an Indian name for “homestead” That may sound funny to you when I tell you that no real family lived there. That is, a family with children.

When Col. Joseph Potts decided in 1890 to build a stunning estate as a summer home for himself and his wife Mary, he was nearly ready to retire. He had made tons of money from iron-making and transportation enterprises.

Col. and Mrs. Potts spent most of their time in the Spruce Street house next door to their son Francis and Carrie.

The Colonel had been born and raised nearby this place not too far from where you are, but left as a young man to make his fortune. When he was middle-aged, he returned and paid off all his father’s debts, then restarted his father’s old business, the Isabella Furnace.

He decided to build his retirement summer home on a hill just up from the furnace on the highest elevation around. When you stand there, on a clear day you can see for 10 miles in every direction.

Col. Potts hired a man named Theopolis P. Chandler; not only a famous Philadelphia architect, but also a member of the upper crust of Main Line society. Chandler was famous for planning a townhouse for Philadelphia mega-merchant John Wanamaker, and he also founded the School of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania.

These were the years of America’s “Age of Elegance,” years before the notion of income taxes. There was unbounded money to be made, resulting in large personal fortunes; and those who made it; spent it. Some, like Andrew Carnegie, spent it on

building public libraries. Others, like the DuPonts, built children’s hospitals and botanical gardens. Still others built huge palaces for themselves.

When ground was broken in 1890, an

army of workmen set up camp. The men quarried white sandstone from the Welch Mountains on Potts’ land north of Honey Brook and hauled it by six mule teams to the site of the house, over five miles. It was designed as a duplex house, with one side the exact mirror image of the other, separated by a several-foot-thick wall.

One wing as to be the home of Col. Potts and his wife, Mary, and the other the home of William and Mabel.

Each residence was complete with the exact same number of fireplaces, all made of alabaster, white and pink marble and onyx imported from Italy. The winding spiral staircases were made of solid brass and marble, and chandeliers and exotic stained glass window treatment abounded everywhere. The gas lighting fixtures at the bottom of the staircases resembled huge balloons covered with ornate carvings of everything from seashells to flowers. When it was finished after five years, it had 76 rooms, including 22 for the servants, and 22 fireplaces. It was heated by coal, and the floors were all covered with imported rugs on top of inlaid wood over two-foot-thick slabs of concrete. Depending on which news report was read, the total cost for this project ranged anywhere from $140,000 to over half a million dollars.

Unfortunately, Col. Potts succumbed to a stroke in December 1894, at the age of 64, never having lived in his finished mansion.

However, his widow moved in, right on the other side of the mansion with Mabel and William. The house was so very large, with bathrooms and marble fireplaces, and servants who constantly quarreled with one another.

There were gardeners and farmers, stables and conservatories and solariums and people to fix any little thing that went wrong. Mabel didn’t need to lift a finger. She just roamed around the three floors, wandered in and out of all 76 rooms.

Although the house was built for entertaining on a grand scale, both she and William were retiring sort of people, so there were not many visitors to Langoma. This was really sad for Mabel. As rich as she could be, she was not happy. She had nothing to do. Her husband William was off making tons more money as president of the Kewanee Oil and Gas Co. He became even richer than his father, and when he died at 87 in May 1943, he left an estate of $10 million.

What Mabel really wanted was to have a child—children, really, lots of them. She had so much love to give to little children. Her sister had a little baby girl, named Helen, and was so over the moon with happiness. Her sister no longer cared about her parties, her wardrobe, and the swell outings at the nearby estates.

Mabel brooded. What good is this place, with only Mary, Col Potts’ widow and me, and several dozen servants in it, if there is no child’s voice, no sound of little feet running up and down this gilded staircase. Oh, please, please, Mabel would pray to God, please send me a child to love. But God sometimes has plans for us that we cannot fathom. And so it was that Mabel never had that child she so desperately wanted.

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One summer day in 1899, Mabel was sitting by the Brandywine Creek, just down the hill from the grand mansion. She wasn’t really crying, just sighing a lot, and twisting daisies into a chain. She turned, as she heard a light footfall. And, who should be standing there but a little girl! Startled, Mabel asked the child her name, and what in the world was she doing all by herself?

“Rose, my name is Rose,” replied the child. Mabel then noticed that Rose was dressed in ragged clothing, her hair was matted, and she was not wearing any shoes. She was holding a flower; it was a wild pink rose. How unusual, thought Mabel; pink is my very favorite color. Mabel had a pink alabaster fireplace in her bedroom up at the mansion, and all the tile work in her private bath was accentuated with pink rosebuds. She had pink fleur-di-lis engraved in her pink marble fireplace in her main entrance, and the circular staircase was lines with pink marble also.

Rose told Mabel her father had worked at the Isabella Furnace; and she lived with him and her mother in one of the houses that were built for the employees. The houses were connected, appearing to be one long building.

The furnace had been out of blast since Col. Potts died in 1894, and the men who worked there had been put to work by William building the stonewalls all around the properties. But he had been badly burned in a blast at the furnace years ago, and the backbreaking work was taking a toll on him. The family was having a hard time, and she did not go to school in the summer, so like Mabel, Rose was at loose ends.

Mabel and Rose chatted for a while and slowly, other children joined them. Mabel forgot the time, as she was having so much fun with the children. As Mabel climbed the hill to the lonely mansion, she was struck with an idea. It came out of the blue, as so many good ideas whose time has come do.

She decided to use several of the houses used by the employees who had left to start a summer school for the area children. She got busy, She enlisted the aid of several of her lady friends, and her maid, Miss Albertina Johnson, to turn the abandoned places into a place where the children could come during the summer months and have fun, play games, play ball, and perhaps even learn a worthwhile skill or two.

They painted the outside walls of the cottage pink, and the inside walls pink. They put in tables and chairs for the children, and made pink curtains for the windows. They planted pink rose bushes all around the property. Mabel officially opened the Rose Cottage in the summer of 1900, and children came from Downingtown, and points in between on the train from Elverson, Honey Brook and all the surrounding country. Most walked; many were brought by horse and wagon. The original plan was for the children to meet every Wednesday morning at the cottage. There were two buildings eventually, one for the boys and another for the girls. Girls learned embroidery and sewing. Boys had workbenches and tools. All the children made baseballs from a small rubber ball with cord and sewed leather covers over the ball.

Mabel ran the Rose Cottage for the neighborhood children for more than twenty years and then she stopped. No one alive knows why; records are nonexistent.

She spent the last years of her life alone with William in the grand mansion on the hill. Sometimes, though, as she was doing her handiwork by the great black onyx fireplace, or puttering around the vast Victorian glass conservatory with her exotic flowers, she could be seen smiling and nodding to herself. She was remembering the summer days of long ago when she met Rose, and they became friends, and ll the wonderful children who attended the summer school, the ice cream they ate, and the great sugar cookies that arrived every Wednesday on the train from Barrett’s Bakery in Downingtown.

According to the archives of the University of Pennsylvania, Mabel Potts died in December 1942, just six months before her husband William passed away in May 1943. The grand estate was inherited by her niece, Helen Lanier Smith, and her son sold it to developers when she died.

Then the once-magnificent estate began to show ravages of time. It lay empty for five years. The Potts’ bones settled into the dust, forgotten by time and by men.

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Then, something happened that some would consider a very strange occurrence. Some, those who believe in such things, would call it a miracle.

One day in 1948, a great summer storm blew across the county. Trees were uprooted, roofs were blown off, the Brandywine Creek overflowed.

The old Rose Cottage was horribly damaged and the great masses of wild pink roses that grew there were scattered in the wind. A great gust blew them way up into the air. The wind carried the petals far away. They flew on the wings of the wind to a city, a very windy city called Chicago. “Hurry, hurry,” the petals were calling to the wind,

“We have a place to be.” They blew and blew and blew and finally in a great gust, they blew through the open widow of a convent where a tiny nun was praying silently. They landed in a heap on the nun’s lap. “A sign!” exclaimed the nun, “the rose petals are a sign!”

Quickly, the old nun went to her Mother Superior, and told her that God had heard her prayers. There was a large property far away in Pennsylvania, in the place not far from where you are now, that the sisters had been thinking about purchasing for their new home for special children. The sisters were overjoyed! The rose petals, flying in the window and landing in one special place in that gigantic city far away from Langoma was a sign from God that they would finalize the deal, and move to this place. And so, they did.

The sisters, called the Daughters of St. Mary of Providence, moved into the empty mansion where at one time not a single child’s voice was ever heard, and they cared for and educated and loved over 120 girls who otherwise would have no home because they were called “special needs children.”

The sisters loved them so very much and they were happy children. They were the flowers in God’s garden. The sound of their laughter and music and dancing filled the old halls until ever the very rooms shook. This is what this house was meant for, the walls called silently to each other. This is what Mabel always wanted. The sound of children’s voices echoing throughout the mansion. The good sisters cared for the special girls for nearly 20 years.

And then, as suddenly as they came, they were gone. But the sisters stayed. Their mission to help the young girls was ended.

In 1984, the sisters turned the old mansion and the grounds into a conference center; a retirement center and retreat house, where people of all walks of life come and think and heal, and sometimes, even mend a broken heart.

If you dare to visit Langoma on a very quiet night, most certainly when the moon is full, and you stand very, very still, not making a sound, you may see two figures holding hands. One is a young woman in a long, white summer frock; the other a child, her clothes in tatters.

They walk silently up the hill from the creek to Langoma.

Shhh! Not a sound! Here they come! They see you! Stop! “Who are you?” you ask the child. You hold your breath because you already know, don’t you?

“Rose,” she whispers, “my name is Rose.”

Note: This story is a tale from the imagination of the writer. Only the Potts family, Langoma, Rose Cottage, the Daughters of St. Mary of Providence, Isabella Furnace and the dates are correct and true.