Rice-Pennebecker Farm

Pickering Creek farm complex in West Pikeland Township, with a stone house begun about 1767 by Zachariah Rice, a miller who had come from Germany in 1751. In 1831-1832 George Pennypacker enlarged the house in Georgian style and rebuilt the stone bank barn, which is 55 by 85 feet. Rice and his wife Abigail supplied General Anthony Wayne's troops after the Battle of the Clouds in 1777, and the mill was converted to process clover seed in 1785. After the Pennypackers and Joseph Tustin turned to dairying around 1870, the Pickering Valley railroad, opened in 1871, let them ship butter, milk and produce to Philadelphia. The farm is regarded as one of the largest and most intact nineteenth-century farm complexes in the township, and the house as a locally outstanding example of its type.