by The Highlands staff

Did you know that Anthony Morris built The Highlands in the 1790s to move his wife and children out of Philadelphia away from the summer outbreaks of Yellow Fever? Morris had already felt the pain of losing a brother to Yellow Fever and feared the disease.

Did you know that Anthony Morris’ life-long friend, Dolley Madison, lost her first husband and one of her sons to Yellow Fever?

Did you know that the mosquito Aedes aegypti, which spread Yellow Fever then, is the same one spreading the Zika virus today?

Come to The Highlands, 7001 Sheaff Lane in Fort Washington, on Saturday, Oct. 15 (rain date Oct 16), 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., to learn what life was like at the time The Highlands was built.

Hear from Anthony Morris and from his life-long friend, first lady Dolley Madison; Watch colonial craftsmen at work, including a blacksmith, stone mason, powder horn maker, flint knapper, potter, wood worker, spinner, weaver, basket-maker and others. Listen to colonial music on the dulcimer, fiddle and fife, and see colonial dancing. Sample colonial food and drink, all prepared before your eyes.

Bring your children and grandchildren to see historic displays and re-enactments, play colonial games and practice 18th and early 19th-century crafts, including paper-quilling, quilting, calligraphy with quill pens and corn husk doll making.

Heritage Day at The Highlands also includes agricultural activities, focused on bee-keeping, retrievers at work and sheep-herding. (Admission is $10 for ages 16 years and older; $5 for children 6 to 15 years; children 5 and under admitted free. No pets, please. No credit cards accepted.)

The Highlands was built by Anthony Morris in 1796, a wealthy lawyer and real estate investor, and includes an award-winning walled garden, a gothic revival gardener’s cottage, a spring house, smoke house, ice house and three-story bank barn. The building was designed by Philadelphia architect Timothy Matlack (1730-1829). It is a large 2 1/2-story, dressed fieldstone structure in the late Georgian style. The front facade features two two-story, Ionic order pilasters.

Morris was the speaker of the Pennsylvania senate and had signed the bill authorizing troops to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion. He was also a director of the Bank of North America (1800-1806) and a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania (1806-1817). From 1810 to 1814, he was President James Madison's unofficial envoy to Spain.

Morris sold the property to Daniel Hittner (1765-1841) in 1808. In the five years that Hittner owned the estate, he accumulated 300+ additional acres. In 1813, it was sold to wine merchant George Sheaff (1779-1851).

After Sheaff's death, the heirs sold off the majority of the estate, leaving a mere 59 acres remaining with Sheaff's grandson, John. In 1917, after the death of the last remaining Sheaff heir, it was sold to Miss Caroline Sinkler and then subsequently sold to her niece, Emily Sinkler Roosevelt, in 1941. Roosevelt and her husband donated the property to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1957.

Today, the Highlands is a 44-acre site with a late 18th-century Georgian mansion and formal gardens. It is operated as a museum and historic site by the Highlands Historical Society, a non-profit educational organization. It is available to rent for weddings and parties.

The home was lived in by three families, spanning over 200 years. The site is open to the public regularly Monday through Friday; tours are given weekdays at 1:30 p.m. or other times by advance appointment.

For information and directions, call 215-641-2687 or visit www.highlandshistorical.org.