Not many people today know the history hiding behind the walls of the James-Lorah Memorial Home, located at North Main and Broad streets in Doylestown. Pennsylvania Senator Henry Chapman built the house in 1844 for his second wife, daughter of the sitting Pennsylvania governor Francis Shunk. Upon her marriage, Nancy Shunk Chapman became stepmother to her husband’s teenage daughters, Elizabeth “Lela” and Mary Rebecca Chapman. (She soon gave birth to two children of her own, Arthur and Frances “Fannie” Chapman.)
Lela and Mary attended finishing school in Philadelphia and spent summers in Annapolis, Md. They married in their father’s home in 1853 and 1854 – Mary to Navy Midshipman William Robert Mercer of Maryland, Lela to Col. Timothy Bigelow Lawrence, the heir of a Boston textile magnate.
After marriage, Lela accompanied her diplomat husband to Europe. Mary continued to reside with her father and stepmother while her husband served in the U.S. Navy. On June 24, 1856, Mary gave birth to her first child, Henry Chapman Mercer, in her father’s home.
In 1869, Henry Chapman sold the house to Bucks County physician Dr. Oliver P. James. Upon Dr. James’ death in 1894, the home passed to his daughters, Mrs. Martha Lorah and Miss Sarah James. The Village Improvement Association of Doylestown acquired the house and its contents in a 1954 bequest from Sarah James, who was the last surviving member of her family and an 1895 charter member of the VIA.
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