Brigadier General Nicholas Biddle and his wife Sarah Wharton Lippincott Biddle inherited Melmar in 1941 upon the death of her father, J. Bertram Lippincott. Both Nicholas and Sarah came from influential Philadelphia families with family ties to many other Philadelphia elite families.  Sarah was a 9th generation Mayflower descendent, while Nicholas's American lineage began with the arrival of William Biddle in 1681.  In addition to their direct families - the Biddle's and the Lippincott's - extended family included names such as the Wharton's (Wharton School of Business), the Drexel's (Drexel University), the Hopkins (Johns Hopkins University), the Duke's (Duke University), the Cornell's (Cornell University), the Van Rensselaer's (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the Bucknell's (Bucknell University), the Ross's (George and Betsy Ross), the Dupont's, and others.  CLICK HERE for a more detailed family tree

While they spent summers at their Jamestown, Newport, RI estate "Gulls Nest", Melmar was their primary home until their deaths.  They had five children who sold the Melmar estate upon Nicholas's death.  Although the majority of the land from the original Lippincott estate was sold to developers over the years, the Melmar Mansion remains, and is now centered in the middle of the Toll Brothers Biddle Estates development.