Summerseat (Morrisville, Pennsylvania)

Summerseat, also known as the George Clymer House and Thomas Barclay House, is a historic house museum at Hillcrest and Legion Avenues in Morrisville, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Built about 1770, it is the only house known to be owned by two signers of the United States Declaration of Independence, George Clymer and Robert Morris, and as a headquarters of General George Washington during the American Revolutionary War. The house is now managed by the Morrisville Historical Society, which offers tours. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965.Description and historySummerseat is located west of the central business district of Morrisville, sharing a property with the Reiter Elementary School at the junction of Hillcrest and Legion Avenues. It is a 2-1/2 story masonry structure, built out of a combination of brick and stone. Its front and sides are brick, while the rear wall is stone. The main facade faces east, and is five bays wide, with a center entrance framed by pilasters and a fully pedimented gable. The interior follows a traditional center-hall plan, with four rooms on each floor. The interior retains some original features, despite having had non-residential uses.The house was built about 1770 for Thomas Barclay, and was his house at the end of 1776, when George Washington occupied it as a military headquarters during the dark days of the New York and New Jersey campaign of the American Revolutionary War. After the war the house was purchased by Robert Morris, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and the principal financier of the war effort. Morris fell upon financial hard times owing to failed real estate speculation, and sold the house in 1806 to George Clymer, another signer of the Declaration. It is Clymer who named the property "Summerseat", and it was his home until his death in 1813.