114 Elfreth's Alley
House 114 was built at the same time as Houses 110 and 112 – sometime between 1757 and 1762.
In 1765, Captain David Spain, an employee of Mayor Samuel Shoemaker, rented the house. He lived in House 114 for almost 10 years, when joiner Daniel Trotter purchased the house and moved in with his new wife, Rebecca. Trotter’s business partner, joiner and cabinetmaker John Webb, was living just two doors down in House 110. Daniel Trotter was a prominent Philadelphia cabinetmaker, whose chairs can be found in the collection of Girard College. He lived in many different houses along the Alley.
French émigré and merchant Francis Vance purchased the house in 1795 and began a legacy of French ownership of House 114 through the 1850s. The house passed through the hands of the Bouvier, Reveillac, Marin, Vieu, Carton, and Pelet families, most of whom identified themselves as merchants or gentlemen. Some, like shoemaker Magdaline Vieu, rented out the front of the house and lived in an attached building at the rear of the property.
Like all the houses on the Alley, by the end of the 19th century House 114 was home to immigrants and first-generation Americans. In 1880, widow Elizabeth Michael lived in the house with her mother and three children; she also had five boarders living with her. Members of her extended household worked in nearby factories making shoes and pearl buttons and packing crockery. In 1910, Austrian-born bartender Richard Barrer lived in the house with his wife, five children, and a boarder, German baker Fred Strahsen.
