l, Fourth and Liberty Streets;
Iron Newel, 1107 Walnut Street.]

Cliveden was erected in 1761 by Benjamin Chew, a friend of Washington
and a descendant of one of the oldest and most distinguished Virginia
families, his great-grandfather, John Chew, having settled at James
Citie about 1621, and, like Benjamin Chew's grandfather and father, who
resided in Maryland, having been prominent in the courts and public
affairs generally. Benjamin Chew studied law with Andrew Hamilton, and
at the age of nineteen entered the Middle Temple, London, the same year
as Sir William Blackstone. Removing to Philadelphia in 1754, he was
provincial counselor in 1755, attorney general from 1755 to 1764,
recorder of the city from 1755 to 1774, a member of the
Pennsylvania-Maryland Boundary Commission in 1761, register general of
the province in 1765, and in 1774 succeeded William Allen as chief
justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. Following the Revolution
he served as a judge and president of the High Court of Errours and
Appeals until it was abolished in 1808.

Justice Chew was brought up a Quaker and his attitude coincided with
that of many others who manifested sympathy for the American cause, yet
hesitated at complete independence. In defining high treason to the
April Grand Jury of 1776, the last held under the Crown, he stated that
"an opposition by force of arms to the lawful authority of the King or
his Ministry is high treason, but in the moment when the King, or his
Ministers, shall exceed the authority vested in them by the
Constitution, submission to their mandate becomes treason." It is not
surprising, therefore, that in August, 1777, Judge Chew and John Penn,
the late proprietary, were arrested by the City Troop and on refusing
parole were imprisoned at the Union Iron Works until sometime in 1778.

With fourteen attractive and accomplished children, two sons and twelve
daughters, things were always lively at Cliveden, and it was the scene
of lavish entertainment of Washington, Adams and other members of the
first Continental Congress. Around its classic doorway the Battle of
Germantown raged most fiercely. The house had been occupied by the
British under Colonel Musgrave, the Chew family being away at the time;
and so effective a fortress did it prove that the center of Washington's
advance was checked and the day lost to the American arms. Great damage
was done inside and out by cannon balls, some of it being still vi