[1] Several influential Philadelphians, including Stephen Girard, Robert Morris and John Nicholson, Pennsylvania's comptroller general, were sympathetic to the exiles, and also saw a chance to profit financially.
Some were royalists, loyal to King Louis XVI (guillotined in January 1793) and thus fleeing imprisonment and possible death during the French Revolution.
Major social gatherings took place there, and both Talleyrand (who lived in the United States from 1794 to 1796) and Louis Phillipe (who visited Pennsylvania in 1797 and later became King of the French from 1830 to 1848) were entertained here.
In the late 1790s, after Morris and Nicholson went into bankruptcy and money from French sources dried up, many of the exiles moved to southern cities including Charleston, Savannah and New Orleans.
An original foundation has been left exposed for public viewing and a reconstructed, relocated log cabin, circa 1790, also serves as a small museum.