Tennent house wins fight for life

"William Tennent slept here" may not be the greatest tourism pitch in the world.

The 18th-century Bucks County preacher, after all, never did anything quite so grand as fathering a country.

But Tennent was a pioneering teacher who did much to seed America's higher-education system.

Dozens of colleges, including Princeton University, trace their origins to students taught by the Scottish-born Presbyterian in a rustic school near his home along York Road in Warminster. He was a big enough deal that in 1889 President Benjamin Harrison and the Pennsylvania and New Jersey governors went there to honor his work.

A recently renewed interest in Tennent seems to be the fortuitous byproduct of a battle to stop the bulldozing of his crumbling house.

The current owner was preparing since at least August to raze the home Tennent bought in 1735. On Thursday, officials of Christ's Home, a nonprofit serving children and the elderly, dropped the plan. They made the concession after a private meeting with a handful of Warminster Township leaders.

Those public officials are no doubt breathing easier. They had faced the looming embarrassment of having one of the town's oldest historic structures leveled in the midst of Warminster's yearlong Tricentennial festivities.

"The bottom line is that [Christ's Home] will not tear it down," Warminster Supervisor Ellen Jarvis said after the meeting. "I am both grateful and optimistic."

Christ's Home chief executive Richard Smyth and the nonprofit's attorney, John VanLuvanee, did not return calls seeking comment.

The township will take at least temporary ownership of the two-story home, though the price and other details are up in the air.

Local historians have proposed forming a nonprofit to raise money to restore it.

"We have these dreams, and we're ready to go to work," said Sybil Johnson, a leader of the fledgling Friends of the Tennent House.

"I hope it happens, but it's a monumental task," said Ed Price, another Friends member. As president of the Warwick Historical Society, he has been involved in a $1.5 million restoration of the Moland House, George Washington's 1777 headquarters just up York Road.

Tennent is best known for founding the "Log College," as critics derisively dubbed the small, cabin-like structure he erected near his house.

There he educated his four sons and, in time, other young men in training for the ministry. His was the only school south of New England where Protestant men could study for ordination.

"He really was the father of higher education" in the region, said Wendy Wirsch, historian and archivist at Neshaminy-Warwick Presbyterian Church, which Tennent founded and where he is buried. "Sixty-three universities trace their origins to this humble, rough-hewn cabin structure through its graduates."

Four of Tennent's students, two of them his sons, were among the first trustees of Princeton, known then as the College of New Jersey.

Still, the primitive appearance and limited curriculum of the "Log College" prompted ridicule. Detractors "laughed and scoffed because they didn't think anything good could come of this school," Wirsch said.

Today, William Tennent High School and Log College Middle School in Warminster are named in honor of the minister and his venture.

The Log College, which closed in 1746 after Tennent died, is long gone, memorialized by a monument along York Road. The house, its 1735 deed stored at Princeton, still stands.

Eventually it became part of the sprawling site of Christ's Home, a haven for neglected children that began in Philadelphia in 1903 and relocated to Warminster in 1907.

Into the late 1990s, Tennent's home was still in use as a superintendent's house.

But it has been deteriorating for more than a decade. Price said he occasionally asked Smyth about acquiring the property, but was repeatedly rebuffed.

Price's fears mounted in August, when he saw trees and brush being cleared at the house, then a Peco crew removing utility equipment.

He shot off an Aug. 13 e-mail titled "Special Tricentennial Event" to Warminster's Tricentennial Committee.

"[I]t seems the Christ's Home for Children is planning a special event for the Tricentennial year," he wrote. "They seem to be planning the razing of the home of William Tennent. . . . I wonder if the citizens of Warminster will be invited to watch."

The e-mail prompted Jarvis, who grew up near Valley Forge and once lived in an 18th-century home in Society Hill, to lead the charge to save the house. A Warminster resident for 15 years, she admits that Price's flare "was the first I knew the house existed" because it had been so overgrown for so long.

Christ's Home officials have said the house is a safety risk to children living nearby, driving its insurance costs up. Jarvis said one of the first steps should be to erect a security fence around the house and board up any openings.

Some critics have questioned whether it can be proven that Tennent lived in the home, but Johnson, Price, and Wirsch say there is ample documentation.

Regardless, the house should be saved for its extremely rare construction, an old English post-and-beam framing with stone filling, said Tim Noble, a historic-preservation expert in Lehigh County who visited the Tennent house several years ago.

"It is very similar to English construction that you would find in the late 17th century and early 18th century," Noble said. "It is rare at minimum, and possibly unique."

Noble, who has contracted to work on Pennsylvania's state historic sites for 15 years, called it "great news" that the house is being saved.

"It's my opinion that a lot of the buildings that are preserved around the country are nice, but they're not that significant," he said. "In this economic climate, you really want to focus your resources on the important ones.

"This is an important one."