In 1831, a distinguished group of Philadelphia and New York Quakers purchased 198.5 acres which lay in the center of the Welsh Tract, a part of the 40,000 acres of land ceded to the Welsh Quakers by William Penn. Upon this land the group founded Haverford College two years later. William Carvill, an English gardener, was hired in 1834 to convert the farmland into a functioning campus. His design reflected the influence of Sir Humphry Repton, one of England's great landscape architects.