Norwood, et al

The first Mifflin’s to arrive in the New World was John Mifflin I, and his son, John Mifflin II. They left their estate (their family in waiting) in Warminster, Wiltshire, England in 1679 to take up temporary quarters with a Swedish community in Burlington, New Jersey—18 miles up the Delaware River from Philadelphia. They arrived before Pennsylvania was even named—at least two years before William Penn’s involvement. Their town of Warminster had been growing leaps and bounds, so they may have been looking for the space and vistas they once enjoyed.

Fountain Green, named by John Mifflin I

After a few years with the Swedes, they were granted 300 acres on the east bank of the Schuylkill River, that area now known as Fairmount Park, Philadelphia. This grant was confirmed in 1684 by Penn. They named their estate “Fountain Green.” This estate and the house they built remained in the Mifflin family until 1806. By then, Jonathan Mifflin owned Fountain Green, but due to a severe loss of merchant vessels he’d invested in, he felt pressed to move further west to start afresh. Upon words of encouragement from other Mifflins, he found his way to Columbia, and soon after, he established a farm across the river, on the edge of Wrightsville. He named the farm “Hybla.” When Jonathan died in 1840, the farm was left to his son, Samuel Wright Mifflin. All of the Mifflins—on both sides of the river—were committed, Quaker abolitionists (Hybla was an important stop on the Underground Railroad).

The main farmhouse at Hybla, named and built by Jonathan Mifflin, near Wrightsville, PA

A visit to Columbia by Joseph Mifflin II and his wife, Martha Houston, resulted in the birth of John Houston Mifflin, Lloyd Mifflin’s father. J.H. Mifflin eventually took his residence near the corner of Second and Walnut Streets. Around 1850, like previous Mifflins, he felt the need for space and freedom and purchased a large tract of land just outside of Columbia (today, the area of Ironville Pike). John Houston Mifflin quickly resolved to name it “Norwood.” Norwood is simply a shortened form of “North Woods,” but it wasn’t an original thought. The man who left England with his son about 170 years earlier had named their English estate “Norwood,” as well. John Houston Mifflin made a fitting and poetic gesture honoring the Mifflin Family on both sides of the Atlantic. Around 1900, Lloyd enlarged and upgraded Norwood, making it his full-time home. Indeed, it was Lloyd’s final home, when he died there in 1921.

Photographed by his brother, Dr. Houston Mifflin, Lloyd sits on Norwood's porch in his final years