The Builders of The Academy of Philadelphia-1740 Evidence of the Cornerstone

The Builders of The Academy of Philadelphia-1740 EVIDENCE OF THE CORNERSTONE FRANCIS JAMES DALLErr, E.A.S.G., F.G.S.P. T HE FOLLOWERS of revivalist George Whitefield who planned to build a preaching tabernacle for his use in Philadelphia secured a site for the proposed building and commenced its erection in the spring of 1740. Title to the property in Fourth Street was legally secured on 15 September 1740 by transfer from its owners, Jonathan Price, carpenter, and his wife Mary, to four men: Edmund Wooley and William Price, carpenters, John Coats, brickmaker, and John Howell, mariner, who were to be executors of the Trustees of the Uses of the land. On 14 November 1740 the Trustees of Uses, headed by Whitefield himself, were legally constituted, the maintenance of a charity school one of their principal aims.' The names of the builder or builders of the structure which in 1749 was taken over by a new board, [the trustees of the Academy of Philadelphia who assumed the free school obligation of their predecessors] have never been known. But one bill remains [in facsimile, the original was lost by the University between 1940 and 1956]. It is dated 14 June 1740 and is for "Drawing and laying out the foundation of House," as well as for the search for and purchase of timber, etc. [The handwriting has not been identified]. A clue to the builders of the Academy building, the largest [?] structure in pre-Revolutionary Philadelphia, has now emerged. The building and the southern portion of the land belonging to the Academy's successor, the University of Pennsylvania, was sold on 6 April 1802 to three Philadelphia Methodists as congregational trustees. Their religious association, which in 1818 became the 'An exhaustive account of the site and of the buildings subsequently erected on it is contained in the dissertation of William L. Turner Ph.D, 1952. 290 The Builders of the Academy Methodist Episcopal Union Church, continued to use the old Whitefield tabernacle building [Academy] until 1833 when they tore it down and built a new church on the same site. "When they built their new building, in 1833, they not only laid their cornerstone, dated 1833, in the walls of their new building, they also placed the original cornerstone, taken from the walls of the 'Tabernacle,' marked I. P. 1740 J. C."2 Here the church remained until its removal to Diamond Street in 1888 when the two cornerstones went with it. The original long, narrow, crudely lettered cornerstone is inscribed correctly:3 1 P • 1740 • 1 C • These initials can refer only to the builders or the prime movers in the Whitefield meeting house scheme. Only two of those persons fit the initials: Jonathan Price, donor of the land, and John Coats, brickmaker and builder, one of the four original trustees. John Coats would seem, then, to have been the actual builder of one of the major buildings of the Colonial city. Four of his sons — John, Lindsay, William and Septimus.— were subsequently students in the Academy and Lindsay Coats received the A.B. from the College in 1760. His original diploma is in the University Archives. 2 H.S.J. Sickel The Historic Cornerstones of Union Methodist Chudch in Brookline, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, (1953), 5-6. OH.S.J. Sickel: A Brief History of Union Methodist Church in Brookline, Delaware County, Pennsylvania and its Historic Cornerstones, (1956) 1. 4 john Coats first wife was Mary ; his second wife was Sarah Lindsay, widow of John Elfred, and daughter of Alexander and Sarah Lindsay. John and Sarah Coats were married at Christ Church, 17 August 1738.