page_title: Fatland (Audubon, Pennsylvania)
section_title: Audubon
hierarchical_section_title: Fatland (Audubon, Pennsylvania) / Fatland Ford / Audubon
caption_attribution_description: English: Mill Grove Mansion
context_page_description: Fatland (Audubon, Pennsylvania) – also known as "Fatland Farm," "Fatland Ford" and, currently, "Vaux Hill" – is a Greek Revival mansion and estate in Audubon, Pennsylvania. Located on the north side of the Schuylkill River, opposite Valley Forge, the property was part of the Continental Army's 1777-78 winter encampment. On consecutive days in September 1777, its stone farmhouse served as headquarters for General George Washington and British General Sir William Howe.
  The farmhouse was demolished about 1843, and the mansion was completed on its site about 1845. The Wetherill Family owned the property for 121 years—1825 to 1946. A private cemetery contains the graves of some of Fatland's owners, and of Free Quakers who supported the Revolutionary War.
context_section_description: Sutcliff also visited Mill Grove, then owned by Jean Audubon, a retired French sea captain living in Nantes, France. Lead deposits had been discovered on the farm, and Captain Audubon formed a partnership with French businessman Francis Dacosta to mine the ore. Sutcliff wrote: "In the plantation adjoining to my relation's, we visited a lead mine on the banks of the Perkiomin  [sic], which was then worked by a Frenchman. He invited us to go down into it, where, at the depth of about 12 feet, I saw a vein of lead ore 18 inches in thickness; and as it is wrought at a very easy expense, there was a great probability of its being a very valuable acquisition." 
  The "Frenchman" Sutcliff met may have been Dacosta, or it may have been the captain's 19-year-old son (and future naturalist) John James Audubon—they had arrived in America together the year before. Audubon and 17-year-old Lucy Bakewell fell in love, although her father thought both of them too young to marry. Informed by letter of his son's intentions, Captain Audubon initially opposed the marriage. With money borrowed from the Bakewells, Audubon sailed for France in January 1805 to sort out what to do about Mill Grove and the lead mine, and to obtain his father's permission to marry. He returned to the United States in May 1806 having attained his majority and his father's blessing. Bakewell also consented to the engagement. Audubon sold Mill Grove and his father's interest in the lead mine to Dacosta in September 1806, and moved to New York City to work as a clerk in the counting house of Bakewell's brother. In August 1807, he and a partner opened a pioneer store in Louisville, Kentucky. On April 8, 1808, John James Audubon and Lucy Bakewell were married at "Fatland Ford." The next morning, the newlyweds departed for Louisville, where Audubon continued his short-lived career as a merchant.
  When Bakewell advertised Fatland Ford for sale in 1813, he listed "a [steam] threshing-mill, which threshes 12 bushels of barley in an hour," and livestock of "200 Sheep of the English Morena breeds, span of oxen and other cattle, 4 asses, 7 horses, ... 30 pigs of the English Berkshire breed." The sale was not successful; Bakewell was still the owner of the property when he died there in 1821.
  Lucy Green Bakewell had been buried at "Fatland Ford" in 1804. Bakewell remarried, and was initially buried in Philadelphia. His descendants later had him reinterred beside his first wife.
caption: Mill Grove, in 2012.
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