POSTCARD N.82 - USA

Postcrossing postcard sent on the 15th June; received on the 24th June

Postcard image: The Webb Farmhouse of Meadow garden, Longwood Gardens, Pennsylvania, USA 

______________________________________________________________________________

Thank you so much Stacey for a lovely postcard with interesting stamps on it.

I had never heard of Longwood gardens before, and this beautiful postcard prompted me into investigating what lay behind the beautiful brick house that stands amidst what seem to be  a fallow field. 

And so I gathered that the very colonial looking property was built in the 1700 on land bought from William Penn,  included in the nothing short of huge territory Penn got from King Charles II as payment from a debt of the latter to the father of the former.... those were the days and the native Indians of the Leni Lenape tribe who had claim to the land for hundreds if not thousands of years were eventually evicted, but that's another history...

The new owner of the land  was William Webb who built the house in 1734-35, which would serve as homestead for the Webb family, whom I presume derived their income form agriculture, for several generations.

Meanwhile, in 1798, on adjacent fields who had also been bought from Penn by a quaker named George Pierce, a 15 acre arboretum with species both native and imported from abroad was being carefully created by the grandsons of Pierce.

Works of love such as this magnificent opus, firmly rooted on the personal interests of  someone, can only thrive if supported by equal interest and will from those that will continue them, but these, unfortunately,  are  prone to wearing off  from generation to generation. And that's precisely what happened to the arboretum which, in the turn of the 19th into the 20th centuries, was showing the signs of neglect and abandonment to the extent that, at some point in history, its owners were on the verge of having all the trees cut by a lumber mill operator for timber.

Enter Pierre du Pont, a member of the well established Du Pont family, who had the vision and the money, and so the parcel of land was bought in 1906 to save the important arboretum.

Overtime  Du Pont, would develop what he would christen as the Longwood gardens, a vast garden park in the original property that he would increase in area through the acquisition of several adjoining properties, including the one on which the Webb farm house stood.

The property is nowadays managed by the Longwood Foundation, established by Pierre S. Du Pont in 1846 to ensure the future of his beloved gardens and is considered to be one of the world's most important botanical parks.

Stamps, left to right:

"Additional Ounce" stamp, issued on 24JAN2021 with the image of a brush rabitt (Sylvilagus bachmanion) it by the USPS. The stamp was issued so as to cater for the increase in postage from 15 Cents to 20 Cents of first-class domestic letter mail.

Also issued as a non-denominated Forever domestic stamp on 14JUL2021, this colourful stamp invites the beholder to decipher the phrase spelled by the individual letters on each of the coloured squares and which aptly reads "More than meets the eye".

Forever domestic stamp, issued on 19JUL2019 as part of a two se-tenant same value stamp set, commemorative of the 50th anniversary of man's first landing (or should I say "mooning") on the moon. The stamp is illustrated with a picture of  Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, on the lunar surface, taken by Neil Armstrong, whose image can be seen reflected on the visor of Aldrin's helmet. The companion stamp shows an image of moon with a yellow spot marking the area of the first landing (oh... that doubt, again....): Mare Tranquillitatis, or the Sea of Tranquility.