111 Elfreth's Alley
John Pechin, a carpenter who had grown up around the corner on Front Street, bought the frame shop
that originally stood on
this spot from his father’s estate in 1798.
He and his mother, widow Christiana Pechin, lived in the building next door – not House 109 as it appears today, but the building that preceded it. Around 1810, at the same time that Ephraim Haines was constructing Houses 113 and 115 to the west, Pechin had Houses 109 and 111 erected. Pechin’s mother later purchased House 129, and her name – like that of Daniel Trotter or Harmon Baugh – is one closely tied to the history of the street.
House 111 remained an income-producing rental property for the Pechin family for nearly one hundred years, until 1891 when night watchman Jeremiah Murphy purchased the house. Murphy and his wife were raising three children and also had his 74-year old mother, a widow, living in House 111 with them. The property ultimately went to Jeremiah’s son and namesake, and was not sold until the 1950s. However, no Murphys lived in the house after the 1920s – signaling that this first generation American may have found a way to move his own family to the suburbs and give them an increasingly better life.
