Cliveden of the National Trust

This guide to Cliveden in Philadelphia follows the money behind its Georgian facade: Benjamin Chew, colonial Pennsylvania's chief justice, whose legal fees paid for the house but whose real fortune came from nine plantations worked by enslaved people in Maryland and Delaware. It names a few of them who appear only in Cliveden's own records, Molly, Jim, Aaron, and Charity Castle, people who never set foot in the house as guests. The house also carries a more visible scar, from musket fire during a 1777 battle fought on these grounds. Stand at the front step and look for both kinds of marks in the walls.