THE PROBLEM, THE PEOPLE, THE PLACE 5 



a trace of bucolic blood in their ancestry on the 

 distaff side. On the Tetlow side it is different. 

 There is a family tradition that the Tetlows intro- 

 duced the use of soap from the civilized Baltic basin 

 into the wilds of north England some six hundred 

 years ago. I researched this as carefully as possible 

 when I was at Yale. There is no doubt all my more 

 recent forebears were soapmakers; but the meager 

 written records prior to the early eighteenth cen- 

 tury indicate that from the earliest times up until 

 then they were all farmers. So perhaps it is not sur- 

 prising we live on a farm. 



Medlock Farm is not a suburban residence in a 

 suburban community: it is a real farm, surrounded 

 by farms, on Skippack Pike at its junction with the 

 old post road from New York to Lancaster. The 

 farmhouse that is our home appears on the maps 

 used by Lord Howe and Sir Henry Clinton, dur- 

 ing the Revolution, as White Horse Tavern. We 

 have a near neighbor whose grandmother saw Gen- 

 eral Washington and his staff ride back up the pike 

 after the battle of Germantown. She was four years 

 old. She waved to the General and he waved back. 

 The Lutheran church a-top the first rise north of 

 Medlock Farm was used as a base hospital after 

 Germantown. From our bedroom windows you can 

 see Valley Forge. 



For a variety of reasons we had not cultivated 

 our forty acres seriously for nearly a decade prior 



