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(Photo by Richard F. Hope)

Old Post Office Building (62-67 Centre Square, now The CarmelCorn Shop and (together with Easton Sweet Shop Building next door) Valença Restaurant, with condominiums upstairs)

2-1/2 story building with Mansard roof, covering the front of two town lots facing Centre Square. The first two floors are made of stone. A stone basement lies under the southern half of the building (but not under the northern part).[1] The Easton Building Description Survey duly assigned a “Second Empire” architectural style to the building based upon the Mansard roof, but nevertheless estimated a much earlier construction date c.1810-20 for the basic structure.[2] In fact, based upon the building’s history, portions of it appear to date from the even earlier Revolutionary War period.

Early History: Dr. Ledlie

The building sits on the front (western) portion of two Original Town Lots (Nos. 78 and 79), as laid out by William Parsons at the founding of Easton in 1752. Today, the building is connected at all levels to the Easton Sweet Shop Building (also once known as “Maxwell’s Corner”), which sits on the adjacent front (western) portion of the adjacent Lot (No.77) at the corner with Northampton Street. However, the two buildings were historically separate. Pictures dated to 1887 and the early 20th Century show them clearly separated by a small gap or “baker’s alley”, and recent renovations confirmed that the stone basements were originally also separate structures (although there is now a communicating passageway between them).[3]

Engraving of 1887[4] Photo of 1906[5]

The layout of these Original Town Lots (from which a number of conclusions are derived below) is as follows:[6]

Sitgreaves / Alley
C
u
r
c
h / Original Lot No. 80 (Stables) / Original
Lot No.79
------
(OldPost Office Bldg.) / Original
Lot No.78
------
(OldPost Office Bldg.) / Original
Lot No.77
------
(Easton SweetShop) / North-ampton
Street
A
l
l
e
y / Original Lot No.81 (Everhard’s Hotel; later “Chippy” White’s Hotel Annex) / Centre Square

Controversy surrounds the early history of the Old Post Office Building. Its uncertain origins are illustrated by two front-page newspaper articles that appeared on 17 October 2006, reporting the fire that damaged the building the day before. The Express-Times, an Easton newspaper, reported that the building had been built in 1828 by Colonel Peter Ihrie.[7] By contrast, The morning Call, an Allentown newspaper, related a statement by Easton’s Mayor dating the building to before the Revolutionary War, and naming it the third-oldest building in the city. [8] Both views have support, and ultimately both views appear to contain elements of fact.

Original Town Lot No.79 was originally acquired from the Penn Family by John Jones (of Bethlehem Township) in 1755.[9] The property was then passed to their son, Jesse, in 1770.[10] In 1773, the Jones Family sold the property to Thomas Miller (a Bucks County merchant) for £ 40.[11] By 1776, Dr. Andrew Ledlie (probably Easton’s first – and at that time only – physician[12]) was already occupying the Lot when he purchased it from Miller.[13] Ledlie, apparently originally an immigrant from Ireland,[14] also acquired Lot No.78 (now incorporated into the Old Post Office Building and Lot No.77 (now the Easton Sweet Shop Building at 345-51 Northampton Street).[15] During the American Revolution, Dr. Ledlie was suspected of pro-British sympathies,[16] although he did at some point serve as a surgeon in the Revolutionary Army (Twelfth Pennsylvania Regiment).[17] He became unpopular in Easton due to his “clouded . . . relations with his house-keeper”.[18] The Revolutionary Committee that effectively took over the government of Northampton County during the early part of the Revolutionary War, passed a resolution on 31 August 1776 that:

“Nell Hunt otherwise called Nell Marr is a common scold and a common disturber of the peace of the town of Easton and has been so for several years past and that she is aided and abated [sic] in her disorderly proceedings by Dr. Andrew Ladie [sic] who has kept her as housekeeper and whore for many years.”[19]

Dr. Ledlie petitioned the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention against the “great ill-usage by some of the inhabitants” of Easton as a result.[20]

Notwithstanding Dr. Ledlie’s housekeeper and politics (or perhaps because of them), he was appointed by the Commissary Department of the Revolutionary government to (among other things) look after prisoners of war on parole in Northampton County, and in Sussex County, NJ.[21] One of these paroled prisoners was a Hessian stonemason named Isaac Klinkerfuss, employed at Valentine Beidleman’s mill and a neighbor, Abraham Haynze, in Phillipsburg.[22] Klinkerfuss met and married a local New Jersey farm girl, with the permission of Robert Levers (the Easton Revolutionary administrator who publicly read the Declaration of Independence on July 8, 1776). Dr. Ledlie also consented to the marriage license,[23] but then arrested the Hessian mason and held him in Easton’s jail. Dr. Ledlie finally agreed to “free” Klinkerfuss only if the mason agreed to build (without pay) a new stone house for Dr. Ledlie,[24] receiving only his board in return, and consequently being forced to lodge in the Easton jail each night. He was not allowed to visit his friends or new wife[25] (who was now pregnant). Under this arrangement, Klinkerfuss built the Doctor a new house in November 1781.[26] “The thrifty Doctor rendered an expense account to the Government for over a year’s board and lodging, thereby getting the mason work on his new home without any personal expense. . . . Beidleman and Levers finally secured his release through an act of the Committee of Safety and Congress.”[27] Klinkerfuss later “became an influential citizen of Warren County”, New Jersey.[28] According to Historian William Heller’s account of this story, in approximately 1912 part of Dr. Ledlie’s Hessian-built stone house remained adjoining the “north rear” of the Old Post Office Building.[29] No separate building stands there today.[30] However, the remains of Dr. Ledlie’s Hessian-built stone house may be included in the “north rear” portion of the Old Post Office Building, where Valença Restaurant now has its kitchen; this area is distinct from much of the rest of the building, because it does not have a basement underneath.

In 1790, Dr. Ledlie’s residence was considered to have been the “best house in Easton”.[31] However, his dealings with the Hessian mason (and perhaps his relationship with his housekeeper) had resulted in the Doctor losing “the respect of the entire community”. He became “financially involved”, losing “all his worldly possessions and finally died a friendless man.”[32] In later life, he was forced to moved to a “small frame building” on what is now South Second Street.[33] His will gave half of his property to his housekeeper, Eleanor Hunt – the same “Nell Hunt” who had received criticism during the Revolution – and the other half to his illegitimate son (by Bridget Butler).[34] A codicil also directed that his gravestone was to bear an epitaph copied from dramatist John Gay’s tomb in Westminster Abbey:[35]

“Life’s a jest and all things show it,

Once I thought so, now I know it.”[36]

In 1796-97, after Dr. Ledlie’s death, all of this property on the Square was sold by the Sheriff to pay off debts.[37] (The estate was sufficiently involved that it still had not been settled in 1807.[38]) Inspection of the property sale deed recitals indicates that Dr. Ledlie’s Estate owned a stone “Mansion” on the northern portion of Lot No.78 (where he had died), and another “Stone House” (as well as a “frame House”) on Lot No.79.[39] The Stone House on Lot No.79 (as the more northerly of the two) is apparently the one built by Hessian mason Klinkerfuss. These two stone houses appear to be the basis of the connected Old Post Office Building standing today, but in the 1790s they were apparently not yet joined together into “longstone house”, as they would later become.[40]

The Ross Post Office

All of Dr. Ledlie’s property on the Square was ultimately acquired by John Ross.[41] Ross was “one of the leading lawyers of that day, and afterwards became a member of Congress, a Judge of the District Court, and also of the Supreme Court of [Pennsylvania].”[42] He was also appointed as Easton’s second Postmaster by President John Adams on 1 Oct. 1797. During the nine months that he held that office, Ross located the Post Office in the northern part of the Old Post Office Building, according to some authorities.[43] The federal “Window Tax” assessment of 1798 recorded John Ross as owning in Easton Borough a 2-story stone house 20’ X 30’, with wood frame kitchen, outhouse and stable out-buildings, all together worth $1200.[44]

·  Easton had been included in a postal route since the beginning of the American Revolution.[45] An official Easton Post Office was established on March 20, 1793, in response to the federal Congressional postal system set up a year earlier. The site of the official Post Office in Easton was moved regularly by successive postmasters after 1793.[46]

In 1800, Ross obtained formal title to original town Lot Nos.77 and 78 from the Penn Family for £80.[47] He sold the eastern (rear) halves of his three Centre Square lots, along Northampton Street, to Samuel Sitgreaves in 1812, for the construction of the “Sitgreaves’ Folly” Mansion.[48] In the street diagram above, these are represented by the portions of the Lots above the dotted lines.

General Peter Ihrie

The front (western) part of all three lots facing Centre Square -- including the two lots of today’s Old Post Office Building, and the corner lot of the Easton Sweet Shop Building -- ultimately became the property of John Ross’s daughter, Camilla[49] (1801-41[50]). She married Peter Ihrie[51] Jr. (1796 – 1871[52]), a prominent Easton lawyer who served two terms in the US Congress from 1829-33,[53] and was commissioned a Colonel[54] and later a General[55] in the militia. Peter Ihrie‘s father, also named Peter Ihrie[56] (1765 – 1833),[57] built a mill in Easton on the Bushkill Creek opposite Goose Island[58] in 1829 or 1830,[59] on a site taken over from Col. Peter Kichline (see below). The General’s grandfather, Conrad Ihrie,[60] was an immigrant from Germany (born 1731)[61] who became a farmer in Forks Township, and later operated the tavern on South Pomfret (now 3rd) Street that housed Robert Levers and the national documents during the Revolutionary War. He also owned land on the other side of South 3rd Street, including another hotel that General Peter Ihrie also acquired in due course.[62] General Ihrie’s other grandfather was Col. Peter Kichline (1722-89,[63] also spelled Kachlein and numerous other variants[64]).

·  Col. Kichline was the owner of one of Easton’s earliest gristmill and saw mill.[65] He became the Sheriff of Northampton County from 1765 to 1768 and again from 1771 until 1774.[66] He was made Colonel of the “Flying Camp” troops sent to aid General Washington early in the Revolution, and was wounded and captured at the Battle of Brooklyn (Long Island) in 1776. At that battle, Col. Kichline’s troops were (erroneously) said to have initially stood off their regular British Army opponents and to have killed one of the opposing British field commanders (General Grant). Actually, the British move was actually a skirmishing feint, allowing them to outflank the other end of Washington’s army and force those troops not killed or captured to flee the battlefield.[67] Nevertheless, Col. Kichline’s reputation held (since his unit had apparently held off the British for a time). After the War, he remained prominent, and was made the first Chief Burgess of Easton when it was made a borough in 1789.[68]

·  Col. Kichline’s daughter Elizabeth married Peter Ihrie (Sr.) and the couple had a dozen children, one of whom was the General, Peter Ihrie (Jr.).[69]

·  Peter Ihrie (Sr.) acquired the location of the Kichline saw mill, and replaced it with a fulling mill in 1829 or 1830. “[T]his business being unprofitable it was changed to an oil mill, and after a fair trial, the trouble of obtaining flax seed was so great, it was changed into a grist mill. This property remained in the hands of Peter Ihrie till his death; it then passed into the hands of his son Benjamin, who sold it” to Adolph Groetzinger.[70] By 1877, Groetzinger’s mill, then known as the Mount Jefferson Flouring-mill, was grinding “nearly 30,000 bushels of grain annually.”[71]

Historian William J. Heller claims that the current Old Post Office Building was built by Peter Ihrie (Jr.) “back in the [18]20’s”,[72] with a subsequent picture of the building captioned “1828”.[73] It does seem likely that Peter and Camilla Ihrie took up residence here before John Ross’s death and the property’s formal partition in 1835.[74] It is also perhaps significant that many of the underlying Deeds evidencing the chain of title to Lot No.79, which had never been recorded in the County Court either when they were made or even to support the 1801 sale to John Ross, were all suddenly recorded in 1820 and 1821, even though no real estate sale occurred on that date.[75] It seems plausible that John Ross gave possession of the property to his daughter and son-in-law (the Ihries) at about that time, and that the family attorney “cleaned up the records” for the event. It also seems likely that the young couple might have extensively renovated the building in preparation for moving in. Indeed, it might have been on this occasion that Dr. Ledlie’s old “Stone House” was connected to his “Mansion” to create the present building configuration (called a “longstone house” by one artistic cataloger[76]), thus making Historian Heller’s account substantially correct. All of this remains a supposition, however, subject to the discovery of further evidence on the point.