Newspaper Article

Mansion sold for $450,000
By Bill Alnor
Delaware County Daily Times November 30, 1986

BETHEL - The mansion owned by the Rev. Frederick Drummond has been sold for $450,000.

But officials at the B. Gary Scott Real Estate Agency in Chadds Ford will not reveal who purchased the property, known as the Buena Vista Mansion, at 2089 Foulke Road. A spokeswoman for the agency said that the name of the buyer would not become public until Jan. 6, the settlement date for the sale.

According to a Chester County Board of Realtors listing sheet the pastor of the controversial Church of Our Saviour in Concordville entered into an agreement of sale on Oct. 31.

The listing price for the mansion, which includes a groundskeeper's house on a wooded 11-acre lot was $495,000.

Drummond placed the home for sale on April 16, as his financial problems grew, according to numerous sources.

He owed about $15,000 on back taxes on the property since 1982 and his home had been listed for a possible judicial sale. But numerous church members said that prior to the date of the judicial sale, Drummond paid the delinquent taxes.

Sources close to the church told the Daily Times that the church paid for the delinquent taxes after Drummond repeatedly asked for donations in the late summer and fall to finance a huge tent to hold services on the Concordville property.

The tent was never purchased.

Drummond did not return a phone call to discuss the sale of the mansion.

Sources close to the church -- including several who left the church within the past several weeks -- said Drummond has recently been talking about going on an extended "missionary journey" overseas early next year.

The sale of the mansion by Drummond is a contradiction of sorts. On May 25, 1984 -- and at other occasions, according to former members of the church -- he told his congregation that he gave his home to the church and asked that others in his congregation do the same.

But the deed was never transferred to the church, and he listed it for sale personally, records reveal.

Drummond, rocked by a recent law suit and continued controversy, came back to his church on Nov. 16 after an almost two month trip to South Africa. As soon as he came back he expelled several assistant pastors and a handful of church leaders who had banded together to confront Drummond about his alleged domination of the lives of his members and extreme financial irregularities in the church.

The explusions have led to a church split as an estimated 30 Church of Our Saviour members left with the assistants and are trying to form their own church in the Coatesville area.

Drummond called the assistants "flakes ... Bible belt prima donnas" and said he had an "inclination to thicken their lips."