The 1912 Harvest Home Fete At Walmarthon

 The sale of “Walmarthon”, the beautiful 41-acre estate of the late Charles S. Walton, to the Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, as announced in “The Suburban” of April 27, stirs many memories among those who have lived in this vicinity since before 1913, the year that the 40-room house was built by one of Radnor township’s most prominent families.

Perhaps the most vivid of these to the general public is that of the Harvest Home Fete given on the grounds of the Walton estate on October 14 and 15, 1915, two years after the completion of one of “the lordly castles of the Main Line.”

It was the largest affair of the kind that had been given in the vicinity up to that time. And in the memory of this columnist there has never been one since to equal it.

Founded in 1912 by a group of public-spirited citizens with the purpose of improving the health and living conditions in this community, the Neighborhood League was an organization that needed both funds and the support of the community to carry on its fast-expanding program of activities that reached from Radnor to Paoli, out of a meeting in May, 1912.

At the home on St. Davids road, formerly occupied by the Charles Waltons, had come the organization of the Neighborhood League.

Read the rest of the May 25, 1951 column here.