Morton Morton House: Delaware County's Swedish Roots
Near Wilmington, Pennsylvania
The house standing here was built around seventeen fifty by a man whose family name itself tells the story. Morton Morton was the great-grandson of Morton Mortonson, one of the earliest Swedish settlers in Delaware County, who founded the nearby Morton Homestead in sixteen fifty-four. The family had been in this part of Pennsylvania for nearly a century by the time this house went up.
Morton Morton was also a cousin to John Morton, one of the Pennsylvania delegates who signed the Declaration of Independence in seventeen seventy-six, casting the deciding vote that brought Pennsylvania into the majority for independence. This house is a quiet physical link between two of the earliest layers of American history: the Swedish colonial settlement of the Delaware Valley and the founding generation of the United States.
