Alan West Corson Homestead

Alan W. Corson Homestead
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Alan West Corson Homestead. September 2012.
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Location	5130 Butler Pike, Whitemarsh Township, Pennsylvania
Coordinates	40°7′0″N75°15′55″W / 40.11667°N 75.26528°W / 40.11667; -75.26528
Area	3.5 acres (1.4 ha)
Built	1734-1820
NRHP reference No.	73001649 [1]
Added to NRHP	June 19, 1973

Alan West Corson Homestead is a historic house located in Whitemarsh Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. It was built in three sections between 1734 and 1820. It is a 2+1⁄2-story, stuccoed stone dwelling, six bays wide and two bays deep. It has a 2+1⁄2-story rear ell. Also on the property is a contributing smoke house. The property was used for one of the earliest area nurseries and a boarding school. ^[2]

Abolitionism

Grandson Alan Wright Corson (1788–1882) and his family were Quakers and abolitionists. ^[3] He was one of the founders of the Montgomery County Anti-Slavery Society (1837), and turned the house into a station on the Underground Railroad. ^[a] His brother George built nearby Abolition Hall as a meeting place for anti-slavery groups.

It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. ^[1] It is located in the Cold Point Historic District.

Notes

1. "The earliest and only abolitionists in Plymouth and Whitemarsh townships were Samuel Maulsby, Joseph Corson and Alan W[right] Corson. Away back before 1820 they had been stirred by the scathing denunciations of slavery, and the horrors of the slave trade, made by Granville Sharp, William Wilberforce and Thomas Fouell Buxton, before the Parliament of Great Britain, to an intense hatred of slavery and the slave trade, and the abominations of slavery in our own country." ^[4]

References

1. "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service. July 9, 2010.
2. "National Historic Landmarks & National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania". CRGIS: Cultural Resources Geographic Information System. Archived from the original (Searchable database) on July 21, 2007. Retrieved May 6, 2012.Note: This includes Kathryn Stoler (October 1972). "National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form: Alan West Corson Homestead" (PDF). Retrieved May 5, 2012.
3. Hiram Corson, M.D. "Alan Wright Corson," The Corson Family: A History of the Descendants of Benjamin Corson, Son of Cornelius Corssen of Staten Island, New York. (Philadelphia: H.L. Everett, 1906), pp. 74-81.
4. Hiram Corson, M.D. "The Plymouth Group," The Abolitionists of Montgomery County, (Norristown, PA: Historical Society of Montgomery County, 1900), pp. 41-43.