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John Penn was the son of Thomas Penn, Esq., son of Pennsylvania’s founder William Penn, and the Lady Juliana Fermor, daughter of the first Earl of Pomfret. Born the sixth of his parents’ eight children, John was the first male to survive into adulthood.
John attended Eton, where his marble bust still stands in its library, and then Cambridge, where he received a Master of Arts degree at age 19. As customary for young gentlemen of the time, he “finished” his education in 1782 with “The Grand Tour” of Europe. He was the ultimate Renaissance man—a scholar, a poet, a collector of books and a patron of the arts.
By family custom, John became heir to two-thirds of the colony of Pennsylvania, some 20 million acres, upon the death of his father in 1775. However, Pennsylvania’s new constitution of 1776 and its Divestment Act of 1779 stripped the Penn family of the rights granted to them by William Penn’s charter to direct the executive branch of the province’s government and to sell its land. The Divestment Act did, however, promise to compensate the Penn family for their losses following the end of the Revolutionary War.
In the hope of recovering his inheritance, John journeyed to Philadelphia in the summer of 1783. The family in England hoped that young John would work with his cousin, another John Penn, the pre-Revolutionary governor of Pennsylvania, to see that the terms of the Divestment Act were carried out, or perhaps to improve them. It is probable that Penn intended to make a permanent home in America if the family claims proved successful, but, for the moment, he lived with his older cousin in an elegant town house—later to become the Philadelphia residence of President George Washington—and at Lansdowne, a notable villa overlooking the Schuylkill River.
Finding it difficult to live under his older cousin’s roof, Penn purchased 15 acres on the west bank of the Schuylkill. The house he designed and built on this land was only a short ride from his cousin’s villa. Philadelphia’s political climate likely influenced John’s decision to make his own residence away from town. Radicals in the Pennsylvania Assembly did little to mask their animosity toward the Penns and their claims. A villa near the city allowed Penn to keep his finger on the political pulse of Philadelphia, while keeping a safe distance from unfriendly factions.
Penn named his new house “The Solitude” after the Duke of Württemberg’s La Solitude located in the forested environs of Stuttgart. John may have been his own architect; preliminary plans for the house were sketched in his hand in his “Commonplace Book” (kept in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania). John Penn loved architecture and had a personal urge to build. He selected architectural elements resembling those in English buildings designed by Robert Adam and made The Solitude one of the first neo-classical houses in America.
In 1788 the English Parliament granted the Penn family 4,000 pounds per year, in perpetuity. John returned to England at this time to work out the details of this grant. He never returned to America and his house. For the rest of his life in England, John Penn was very active. He managed the affairs of his father’s branch of the Penn family; built a vast house, “Stoke Park House,” on the family estate at Stokes Poges and a majestic stone house called “Pennsylvania Castle” on Portland Island overlooking the English Channel. He rose to Lieutenant Colonel of the Royal Bucks Yeomanry and was Royal Governor of Portland Island. He served as Sheriff of Buckinghamshire and served many years as a Member of Parliament representing a district in Cornwall.
John Penn died in 1834 at the age of 74. Since he had never married, his brother, Granville Penn, inherited all of his property, including The Solitude. At his death in 1844, his eldest son, Granville John Penn, inherited the properties. Granville John made two trips to Philadelphia and is known to have been at The Solitude. Upon his death in 1867 his brother, Rev. Thomas Gordon Penn — the last direct male descendant of William Penn — succeeded him and owned The Solitude until his death in 1869.
Today, encompassed on the grounds of the Philadelphia Zoo, The Solitude is the only surviving American residence once owned by a Penn family member.
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