American School

The Rosenbach Galleries, Philadelphia
Squire Kinsey, Pennsylvania
Mr. and Mrs. Percy Varian, Gulph Mills, Pennsylvania

The village of Gulph Mills is near Philadelphia, in Montgomery County, Upper Merion Township, Pennsylvania. The large house on the hill lined with poplars is still standing today, as is the building depicted in the lower left of the canvas. The house and village of Gulph Mills are discussed in John T. Faris, Old Roads Out of Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1917, pp.159-160.
Current research on the painting conducted at the Historical Society of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania suggests a date of circa 1820 for the execution of the painting. An article entitled "Ballygomingo" (at one time the name of the area) by Robert Dechert, cites a date of 1820 for a "painting by an unknown artist [which] shows the front lane lined with stately Carolina poplars." (Poplar Lane was the name by which the property was once known.)  Elsewhere in the same article Mr. Dechert notes, "The pillared end to the east was added in 1821 by George Nugent, a retired Philadelphia merchant whose new Southern bride was given a remembrance of home by the white columns."  The columns are very much in evidence today, but there is no sign of them in the painting, suggesting that the painting was done some time before their addition. Dechert acquired the house from Mr. and Mrs. Percy Varian (see Provenance), grandparents of the current owners.

The other building in the painting was the Bird-in-Hand inn, a stage- and breakfast stop on the stagecoach route from Philadelphia to the French Creek Boarding School, and later from Philadelphia to Lancaster, a two-day trip each way. Ads in contemporary local papers, such as The Norristown Herald  and The County Advertiser, refer to several businesses attached to the inn, such as a tailor, blacksmith and wheelwright. 
The name Gulph Mills may derive from a cleft in the hills, opposite the view here depicted and thus not visible in the painting. The word "Gulph," from the Welsh "Guelph," and the Old English "Gulf," has as one usage in the dictionary "hole or depression in the ground."  "Mills" refers to the fact that there were several mills in the area, most notably the McFarland Mills, which provided quantities of cloth for Union military uniforms during the Civil War. Those mills would have been located just to the left of the scene in the painting.
There is a panel attached to the frame verso from The Rosenbach Galleries, 1320 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, Pa.