Emma C. Patterson wrote "Your Town and My Town" for the Suburban & Wayne Times from 1949 to 1958. It was written during a time when Wayne's founders were still around to reminisce about the area's development. The articles are a wealth of information, with many names and places referenced.

The same way historic photographs of Radnor can tell us a great deal about their subjects, Ms. Patterson's writing draws a vivid picture of Radnor's history as seen from the lens of the mid-20th Century. At that point venerable institutions that no longer function were still alive in full swing, longtime residents who could remember back to Wayne's agrarian past could still share their memories, and there was enough community interest that the Suburban was willing to print such extensive and descriptive columns week after week for nearly a decade.

Locked in fading newsprint, tucked away inside crumbling scrapbooks for fifty years, each article by Emma C. Patterson is reproduced here in full, in an easy to navigate searchable blog format.

Browse an index of all articles

“The Old Main Line” part 1: The area in the “60s” & “70s” – Lancaster Pike

/ Emma C. Patterson

A little book entitled “The Old ‘Main Line’” has come my way recently through the courtesy of Herbert S. Casey, whose interest in matters of a bygone day is evidenced by the fact that he is president of the Radnor Historical Society. Originally printed more than thirty years ago in pamphlet form, tis book was rewritten in 1922 by its author, J. W. Townsend, as the “meanderings of an old man’s memories jotted down for his amusement . . . they do not pretent to accuracy, in which memory often fails, but a wide margin will allow the reader to make corrections as desired”.

Mr. Townsend was a member of the large Joseph B. Townsend family who were among the first to own country places near “City Line.” Although the book has few specific references to Wayne as a community, it does contain much of general interest about the Main Line section of which this suburb is so integral a part.

A quaint picture of a locomotive of this sixties in the front of the book dates the contents, which are mostly of that decade and the following, the seventies. At that time this section was not even designated as the “Main Line” since the Lancaster and Columbia Railroad, predecessor of the Pennsylvania Railroad, had only one line then. By the first settlers of this part of Pennsylvania the section was known as “The Welsh Barony” which consisted of some 30,000 acres. Several railroad stations and many country estates have Welsh names derived from the names of the places from which these early settlers migrated to America. SOme of the early deeds signed by William Penn are still held by present land-owners.

Early Philadelphians “who craved country air and more room to breathe” settled north of the city first, however, “because the journey by horse or foot to the city from the West and back again involved the sun in the traveler’s eyes both ways”. (Many a commuter by automobile in these days notices this, too!). Although this was not the main factor, it could be one of the reasons why Germantown and Chestnut Hill had become favorite places for country residences of Philadelphia some time before the Main Line was settled.

Germantown, of course, dates back to the Revolution and Chestnut HIll has long been a popular residential section. It was in the late fifties, according to Mr. Townsend, that “a new migration began beyond the western ‘City-Line’ and a few city people began to locate along the ‘Pennsylvania Central Railroad’ soon after it took over the old Columbia State Road”. The first stop was “Mantua”, now almost in downtown Philadelphia, and the second was “Hestonville”. described as “a small village in the midst of a farming country”. This is our present 52nd Street Station! Next was “City Line Station”, where the tracks crossed a creek. When later a culvert was built for it, the new Station was appropriately called “Overbrook”. What remains of the stream site parallels the railroad near the Station, as the west bound commuter looking from his window can see. Mr. Townsend makes an interesting comment when he writes “It is curious to note that the railroad does not cross any sizable stream until far into Chester Valley, showing that it was laid out on a ridge, from which the waters flow in both directions.”

In the sixties there were only six trams a day each way on the railroad. After the six o’clock from Philadelphia in the evening there was nothing until “the Emigrant” at midnight which was a through train for arriving foreigners, stopping only at each destination for which these foreigners were booked. According to Mr. Townsend’s description, “the cars were lighted by oil lamps and in cold weather, red hot coal stoves stood at each end. A brakeman at each car turned a wheel such as those that the present freight cars have. The city terminal was a small square brick building near the present West Philadelphia Station.”

The “Old Lancaster Road” and “The Lancaster Turnpike” of course predated the railroad by many years. The former, later known as Conestoga Road, was originally an Indian trail from the Delaware River to the Susquehanna River. The latter, laid out late in the eighteenth century, had in the early sixties some 67 taverns on it between Philadelphia and Lancaster, or about one a mile! Among them were “The General Wayne”, near Merion; the “Red Lion” at Ardmore; the “Old Buck” at Haverford; “The Eagle” at Strafford; the “Old Ship”, near Exton, and many others.

These old Turnpike Taverns of Revolutionary days were utilized by some of the first Philadelphians to come out to the Main Line for two or three summer months in the sixties and seventies. But the largest aggregation of all, according ot our historian “summered” in “The White Hall Hotel,” the site of which is now occupied by a row of houses opposite the old Bryn Mawr Hospital building on Glenbrook avenue, formerly Railroad Avenue. When the last disreputable old ruins of White Hall were torn down more than thirty years ago “they did not look as if they had ever houses a gay crowd of Philadelphia’s elite”, Mr. Townsend writes, “but it was”, he continues, “the place for large dances for both city and country people. The railway then went by it, and the trains stopped at its door, though later a station was built a few years further west.” The original building of this old Lancaster and Columbia Railroad company now forms the nucleus of the building that houses the well-known Bryn Mawr “Thrift Shop”. A study of its quaint architecture is well wroth a few minutes of the passerby’s time.

Whitehall Hotel held about eighty people. Another popular summer place on the Main Line was the Wildgoss Boarding house near Haverford College, which was kept by an elderly lady of that name. In winter her daughters had a school for children in the house which had ten acres of woods in the rear to make a pleasant recreation spot for boarders in summer and the school pupils in winter. Life in Wildgoss Boarding House, as colorfully described by Mr. Townsend, was probably typical of the many summer hotels on the Main Line in the sixties and seventies, such as the old Bellevue Hotel and Louella Mansion in Wayne. A summary of this description will be given in the newest article of this series.

(to be continued)

In order to complete an extra scrap book of the “Your Town and My Town” series, Mrs. Patterson need a copy of the Suburban of July 15. Anyone who has such a copy to spare will please call Wayne 4569. Such a scrap book, when completed, will be lent to anyone who is interested in the series, or who may have missed some part of it.

“The Old Main Line” part 2: Life in the “60s” – Wildgoos Boarding House, sports,

/ Emma C. Patterson

It was in the sixties, according to Mr. Townsend’s book “The Old Main Line”, that Philadelphians, seeking to escape the heat of the city’s summer, began to come to that section west of the City Line that was later to be known as the “Main Line”. The Wildgoos Boarding House near Haverford College was one of the favorite resorts and one of which Mr. Townsend evidently knew a great deal personally. It was probably very much like Wayne’s Louella Mansion and the Bellevue Hotel, though these two did not reach the height of their popularity until a slightly later date.

“Wildgoos boarders were,” according to Mr. Townsend, “a jolly, good natured crowd, living all summer like one large happy family. Rooms could be engaged only for the entire summer, and were in such demand that there was always a waiting list”. However, to the modern youth, the pleasures of Main Line summer life would probably seem very dull with no automobiles, no movies and no sports as they know them today. Even in Philadelphia itself, there were only two or three theatres and these featured neither comic opera nor musical comedies. And even if they had, there were no evening trains by which to go into the city.

Most of the houses in the country had only coal oil and candles for illumination in the evening. Weather permitting, this part of the day was usually spent on the porch or the lawn. On stormy nights, summer boarders were crowded into the parlor from music or games. Among the latter was one of “Familiar Quotations” played like “Authors”. “It consisted”, according to our Main Line historian, “of cards having about 100 quotations from both ancient and modern authors and was a liberal education in itself to those who played it, making a lasting impression of the best thoughts of the best authors. It was issued and sold for the benefit of the great “Sanitary Fair”, held in Logan Square during the War . . . the selections were made by a well-known Philadelphia woman, Mrs. Lydia Hunn, the grandmother of Mrs. Charles Baily, of Strafford. “She must have read everything and remembered the best of it.”

Other favorite evening entertainment consisted of charades, rebuses and conundrums. The latter were most frequently derived from the Bible, as most people were familiar with it. Spirit mysteries were much in vogue then as witnessed by the popularity of “Planchette”, predecessor of the Ouija Board. It was “a small, thin, heart-shaped piece of wood standing on little revolving rollers and one leg was a short lead pencil. A large piece of paper was placed on a table, with the Planchette board on top of it . . . one or more participants placed the tips of their fingers on it. It soon began to more, and the pencil naturally traced on the paper the semblance of words that were in an operator’s mind.”

So much for indoor amusements. As for outdoors, there was driving in the little carriages built for tow designated as “buggies”. In our historian’s opinion “buggy driving was more sociable than modern motoring, as the horse did not require constant or undivided attention, having sense enough to turn when the road turns, which the motor car has not. The horse could also be guided with one hand, when the driver’s intentions were serious and reciprocated. On long drives, the horse had to be rested frequently and roadside berries, with which the Main Line then abounded, were an agreeable accompaniment.”

Picnics were sometimes organized, occasionally even as far as to Valley Forge, though that was a long, tiresome drive with horses. A popular picnic spot and a more nearby one was Morris’ Dam on Roberts road. Wildgoos boarders and neighbors joined in these, some coming from as far as Overbrook. Moonlight hay wagon rides were another form of amusement among the older people as well as the younger. However, all of these pastimes and amusements were for six days of the week only, for “Sunday in the Sixties was very different from that of today.” Church going, walking and visiting were the order of the day. Those who took long drives were often frowned upon by their more religious neighbors. Sunday evenings were mostly spent in hymn singing. There were, of course no Sunday newspapers. The Pennsylvania Railroad ran but one train and that was from Philadelphia at eight in the morning. None went into Philadelphia. Mr. Townsend tells of an early report of a committee of the railway company’s stockholders which devotes five pages to the “iniquity of the company’s doing nay business on Sunday.”

As to sports in the sixties, they were practically non-existent as known today. Football, basketball, hockey, golf, squash and rackets were still unknown. In the late sixties, “a so-called bicycle appeared . . . the rider sat on top of a wheel about five feet high with a little wheel behind to steady it. Woe to him if he struck a stone as he took a high header . . . a man was killed in this way on Lancaster Pike. . . when the present form of bicycle came in, ten years later, with low wheels and rubbr tires, they were called ‘safeties’”

Tennis did not appear until the late seventies and although baseball was played in some places it was little known in the suburbs. Cricket came into existence at about this time . . . the Merion Cricket Club had just been organized . . . quoits were played occasionally. But the universal game of the sixties for adults and children alike was croquet! Hours were devoted to it, and although “ there was little exercise in it, at least it kept people out of doors!” But on Sundays “even the gentle croquet mallets rested peacefully in their box.”

“Playing cards” were taboo among the Quakers and Presbyterians, who largely predominated in Philadelphia’s social life. Youngsters played parchesi, jack-straws and Lotto, while their elders joined in on checkers and backgammon. Billiards and chess were other popular games.

In the late seventies when Louella House, in Wayne, became a summer hotel for Philadelphians under the name of Louella Mansion, its owners issued a little booklet setting forth its many attractions. Its Casino contained “shuffle-boards, a pool table and gymnasium apparatus. The mansion itself contains library, smoking and music rooms, orchestral music every Saturday evening. Extensive room for dancing.” So even in a decade or two popular summer hotels of the Main Line began to offer more in the way of amusement than did the Wildgoos Boarding House of the sixties.

(To be continued)

“The Old Main Line” part 3: Bryn Mawr in the “60s” – PRR, Baldwin School

/ Emma C. Patterson

We have noted before in this column that the Pennsylvania Railroad ran considerably to the south of its present right of way, in what was later the Bryn Mawr section. At one time it stopped right at Whitehall Hotel, which was directly across the present Glenbrook avenue from the old Bryn Mawr Hospital building. Later the railroad built a station a few yards further west of Whitehall, which to this day forms the nucleus of the Bryn Mawr Thrift Shop building. The tracks were originally located here because, according to Mr. Townsend’s book on “The Old Main Line’”, the railway “took the easiest courses around hills, or swerved here and there to suit some politician’s pleasure, having been built by the State.”

In the late sixties, however, the Pennsylvania Railroad decided to eliminate the long detour past Whitehall Hotel. But when they found it necessary to make a deep cut through the high ground covering the proposed cut-off, neighboring farmers claimed heavy damages for the right of way. And so the railroad decided to buy the large tract of ground which later proved to be the beginning of the suburb of Bryn Mawr. It included nearly all the land between Penn street, Gulph road, Roberts road and the present railway tracks. This they plotted into building lots and to make it exclusively residential, “all the deeds of sale prohibited all manufactures, stores, shops, livery stables or buildings for any offensive occupation.”

It is interesting to note that the Baldwin School started on the northwest corner of Morris and Montgomery avenues in a double frame house, originally built by the railroad with the idea that the purchasers of their lots would reside there while their own homes were being built. Later this house was much increased in size and became the “Lancaster Inn”. Another building erected by the railroad was the Bryn Mawr Hotel, to which many aristocratic Philadelphia families came in the summer. Within a few years’ time the original hotel was burned to the ground, whereupon a neighborhood syndicate built a new one at the cost of a half million dollars. After the foreclosure of the mortgage on this building it was rented to the Baldwin School.

Compared to the grounds now around the School the surroundings of the hotel were quite unattractive, for in the front of it were two large ice ponds fed by a small stream. Although these were merely mud holes in dry weather, it was necessary to have them, since the country in the sixties and seventies depended on ponds for ice. The hotel building itself boasted gas lights and bath tubs, the latter to the extent of only one on each floor for the use of about fifty people!

“Country summering” was becoming increasingly popular with city folks, as indicated by a small prospectus issued by the Railway Company in 1874, when it listed 54 boarding houses from Overbook to Downingtown with accommodations for 1330 guests, exclusive of the Bryn Mawr Hotel, which held 250. The largest of these houses was “Summit Grove”, a frame building on the south side of Bryn Mawr Station with a capacity of about 80 boarders. Its memory has been preserved in the name Summit Grove avenue.

“The Main Line showed the first symptoms of getting gay”, writes Mr. Townsend, “when the hotel got well under way in its second summer of 1873. The Bryn Mawr Assemblies’ were the events of the season and were run by George Kimball . . . about 500 people attended each of these ‘assemblies’. Other entertainments of the summer were a magic lantern exhibition by Will Struther, a comic talk by Benjamin Franklin Duane, a Mock Trial, and an Orpheus Club concert. This was soon after the Club started forty-six years ago* . . . It is curious to consider that these functions continued through the whole of hot summers . . . Philadelphians had not yet acquired the expensive and unnatural habit of seeking distant climbs for cold in summer as well as for heat in winter.

Mr. Townsend’s account continues, “The hotel life was quite similar to that of the old boarding houses, only it was gayer and more formal . . . In the afternoons nearly everyone drove or rode. Cavalcades of perhaps twenty-five riders would go out together and explore the country roads for miles around. Women and girls used only side saddles; bifurcated riding would have been looked upon with horror. The Radnor Hunt had not started and little hunting or jumping was indulged in. The roads were all dirt roads except Lancaster Pike, which was very rough and ridgey, without any smooth surfacing. The dirt roads were fine for horseback, but became a foot deep in mud when it rained, and in winter were almost impassable. The old Haverford road that ran through the Whitehall district was then a ‘plank road’, that is, one-half of it had heavy boards laid close together, unpleasant to ride on but a great boon in muddy weather”.

When the Bryn Mawr tract was laid out, its avenues were covered with a coarse gravel which made for very slow travel. These roads exasperated Mr. Cassatt, vice-president of the railroad, who was fond of driving his four-in-hand coach. He accepted the position of township road supervisor and was instrumental in obtaining macadamized roadbeds. He also got a company of his friends to buy Lancaster Pike as far as Paoli and to make a macadamized road of it. Toll was charged to keep it in order and “it was a great boon” to the driving public for many years. In later years the toll gates were abolished when the State bought the PIke and maintained it by taxes.

The Railway Company gave its new village the name of Bryn Mawr from the home of Rowland Ellis, who in Colonial times settled the tract on Gulph road opposite where Bryn Mawr College now stands. Mr. Ellis had brought the name from his old home in Wales. The old town of Humphreysville, consisting of a few dwellings on Lancaster Pike, also took the name of Bryn Mawr. Mr. Townsend, writing in 1922, says “there are now several thousand residents using the station, from the Schuylkill hills on the north to Newtown Square on the south. All of this territory calls itself Bryn Mawr, while the girls’ college which soon started in the new settlement seems to think the name belongs to it exclusively!”

So much for the interesting early history of a section of the Main Line, a large section of which lies in Radnor Township and is therefore an integral part of “Your Town and My Town”. For all that part of Bryn Mawr south of County Line road between Gulph road and Coopertown road (now known as Llandover road) is part of our township.

(to be continued)

*Mr. Townsend dates the beginning of the Orpheus Club 46 years before 1922.

“The Old Main Line” part 4: Life in the “60s” – Drexel & Childs

/ Emma C. Patterson

On the way of life in the sixties in the Philadelphia suburban area, Mr. Townsend, in his book, “The Old ‘Main Line’” gives us many brief, but telling insights. Old men and young children alike wore long tail coats and stiff starched shirt bosoms in the morning as well as the evening. “At college”, our historian tells us, “the Sophs forbade the Freshmen to wear high silk hats. Imagine a youth today of any class at college wearing this doubtful ornament. . .” And at that, Mr. Townsend was writing almost thirty years ago, when dress was a little more formal than now!

In the sixties well dressed men often wore leather boots that came to their knees, and into them tucked their trousers on stormy days. For a comfortable evening at home these were replaced by canvas slippers, with “flowers worked on their tops by devoted wives or best girls”. Women’s clothes likewise were far more formal in the sixties than in later days, with wasp-like waists and sweeping trains even on the street! Food, though plentiful then as now, did not have the wide variety that greater transportation facilities and increased refrigeration has made possible. Mr. Townsend writes in nostalgic vein of the delicacies prepared by Augustine, the great Philadelphia colored caterer. He ells of a trip on a Pennsylvania Railroad private car which “was stocked as usual with Augustine’s viands . . . a noted Englishman, who had just landed to visit the Centennial Exhibition of ‘76 was one of the party that sat down to the first luncheon in the little dining room of that car . . . one delicacy after another tickled his Anglican palate as never before and turning around, he whispered, “If this is what you Americans have on a railway car, I wonder what you have at home.” Mr. Townsend slyly adds, “We did not tell him we did not always have Augustine at home.” However, regular dining cars were an unknown quantity in the sixties and seventies. On a trip of any length passengers dined at railway restaurants along the route.

Among the many things that would seem unsanitary to us of a later day were the prevalence of flies and the lack of screening in the sixties. Stables bred flies by the millions during a time when wire screens were unknown, though, according to Mr. Townsend, “a few houses had flimsy pink mosquito netting over a few windows . . . some householders had canopies of such netting over their beds, some had wire cages to cover each dish on the table, some had a mechanical fly fan in the middle of the table . . . in hotels, the colored waiters, with large palm leaf fans, kept the flies off a part of the time”.

Of medicine in the sixties, Mr. Townsend says that “homeopathy was being experimented with by many, but its small pellets were laughed at by the ‘Old School’, which was then wedded to its searching draughts”. Professional massage, or osteopathy, as it was later known, was not practiced at all in those days. No one had operations for the removal of the appendix or tonsils or adenoids, as their presence, for good or evil, was not recognized then. As Mr. Townsend states it, “If any of these things went wrong, you were blissfully ignorant of it and there was a chance of getting well, or at least of dying a natural death . . .Neither did you have to have your teeth X-rayed and yanked out.”

Telephones were not introduced until the late seventies, and did not become at all prevalent until the early eighties. Even then many hesitated to have them installed. One thing that graced practically every house, however, was the lightning rod, in fact sometimes several of them, and certainly the barn and stable had to have their share also! “The Lightning Rod man was a feature in country life”, our humorous historian tells us, “he went up and down the breadth of the land, persuading every one that life depended upon having lightning rods . . . He was succeeded in his ubiquity by the life insurance man and later by the bond salesman.”

In the absence of automobiles, cattle could safely roam the roads, and they did. Tramps did the same. It is said that cooks in some of the large houses sometimes fed a dozen or more in a day. Private chalk marks made on gate posts by these hoboes indicated “the quality of the fare or the character of the dog”. Conditions were particularly bad before and during the great railway strikes of ‘77. In one nearby Rosemont section a “Relief Association” was started by John B. Garrett when the hungry who were traversing the roads were fed. A business revival in 1879 eased the employment situation somewhat. However, some of the habitual tramps “had become so enamored of the free and easy life that they never could return to work . . . they wintered in the County Poor Houses and with the first robin, would begin their summer wanderings, sleeping in barns and empty houses and feeding at kitchen doors.” Lancaster Pike was of course the best traveled highway of all for these “knights of the road.”

Business along the Main Line in the sixties and seventies was practically non-existent. About all that was necessary was an occasional small country store and a blacksmith shop. Among these old store was the “West Haverford Store”, on the Pike in Rosemont, later occupied by Lippincott and Eadie.

To Mr. Cassatt, of the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Main Line section owes its township government. As the Suburban communities began to get more thickly settled, he saw that some form of local government would become necessary, especially as regards police protection. And so Mr. Cassatt was instrumental in having the State legislature enact a law for the government of “Townships of the First Class” having a certain number of inhabitants. Lower Merion Township was the first to qualify while Haverford Township followed in a few years. The governing body of such townships has always been a small number of elected Commissioners. In a similar manner the affairs of township schools are in the hands of a school board elected by the voters.

Among the prominent men of the period of which we have been writing were George W. Childs, editor of the Public Ledger, and Anthony J. Drexel, a prominent stockholder in that newspaper and one of the wealthiest men of his time. It was these two men who founded the town of Wayne as a real estate operation. When Mr. Childs was asked one day, according to our historian, why they built their new town so far up the road, when there were numerous properties just as available nearer to Philadelphia, he quickly replied that it was “in order to give the new settlers more time to read the Ledger on the train!” Mr. Childs lived on a large property on Bryn Mawr avenue which was then a new road that had just been laid out southward from Whitehall. His place was called “Wootton”, and because Mr. Childs’ “Herat was as big as his house”, it became “Welcome Hall” for all visitors, whether of distinction or otherwise.

Among other early famous men and large property owners of the Main Line were John Converse, who built his mansion on the Pike at Rosemont; Samuel Vauclain, president of Baldwin Locomotive Works, who built near the Converse place, and T. Wilson Brown, who settled in Villanova. The latter had a large part in the founding and the maintenance of the Bryn Mawr Hospital.

Among many other names mentioned by Mr. Townsend is that of a man well known in our community, since up to the time of his recent death, A. J. County made his home here. Coming to this country as a young Irish lad, he became associated with the Pennsylvania Railroad, eventually becoming one of its vice-presidents.

“Guide for the Pennsylvania Railroad”

/ Emma C. Patterson

A quaint, little, faded book, its pages brittle with age, has recently come into my temporary possession through the courtesy of Herbert S. Casey. Printed in 1855 by T. K. and P. G. Collins, of Philadelphia, it is entitled, “Guide for the Pennsylvania Railroad, with an Extensive Map; including the Entire Route, with all its Windings, Objects of Interest, and Information Useful to the Traveler.” It is indeed an extensive map . . . its pages, too frail for this writer to dare to unfold many times, measures some two yards in length! Those two yards of map cover the route of the railroad from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. Going back as it does to a period now almost one hundred years past, those entire two yards are of vast interest to the historian. But of particular interest to the writer and to her readers are the first few inches which include that part of the railroad between Philadelphia and Paoli, our own “Main Line” of the present day! The book is a first edition, and obviously very rare.

Even one hundred and more years ago, the Pennsylvania Railroad was recognized as n almost indispensable link between “the eastern or Atlantic cities and those situated on the Ohio and the Mississippi Rivers”. Back in the 1830’s there seemed some doubt, however, whether the Allegheny Mountains could be passed on a direct route to Pittsburgh, without an inclined plane. In 1838, the first survey was made by William E. Morris, an engineer, while in 1841 Charles L. Schlatter was appointed by the Board of Canal Commissioners to make a full survey for a railway from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh.

Our “Guide for the Pennsylvania Railroad” relates that “The first meeting of the Citizens of Philadelphia in relation to building the road, was held at the Chinese Museum, on the 10th of December, 1842. It was an unusually large meeting, at which a determined spirit was manifested to prosecute this great work. Thomas P. Cope was called to the chair. A preamble and resolutions urging the importance of the work, were offered by William M. Meredith, and unanimously adopted. A large committee on memorials to the Legislature, praying for an act of incorporation, and a committee of nine to prepare and publish an address to the citizens of Pennsylvania, setting forth the views and objects of the meeting, were appointed.”

At this meeting, Thomas P. Cope was chosen president. He was the great-great-grandfather of Herbert S. Casey, president of our Radnor Historical Society, and long a well-known citizen of Radnor Township. Mr. Cope was a close friend of Stephen Girard and one of the executors of his famous will. Of Girard College, our “Guide” States, “it is principally composed of marble, is the grandest building in America, and the most richly endowed charitable institution, by a single individual, in the world”. Stephen Girard’s will took care of this endowment, of course. Thomas Cope was one of the three Cope brothers who organized the first group of packet ships between England and America.

As soon as the act to incorporate the Pennsylvania Railroad Company was passed on April 13, 1846, a large town meeting was called in Philadelphia for the purpose of taking measures to bring the corporation into existence. A specially appointed committee prepared an address to be issued in pamphlet form. Private and corporate subscriptions soon rose to a total of two and a half million dollars. From this meeting in April, construction of the road was authorized and begun with a charter bearing the date, April 13, 1846.

By the time the first “Guide of the Pennsylvania Railroad” was published in 1855, the line of road between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh was complete. At that time it had three owners. The State of Pennsylvania owned that part extending from the city to Dillersville, one mile above Lancaster, consisting of a double track, in length 69 miles. From Dillersville to Harrisburg, the Portsmouth Mount Joy and Lancaster Railroad took over that distance of 36 miles. The remaining 248 miles between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh was the property of the Pennsylvania Railroad.

According to our two yard map the old depot seems to have been on the Delaware River at the foot of Market street. According to the description given in 1855, “The cars are drawn from the depot by horse or mule power, out Market Street, and across the Schuylkill Permanent Bridge, at the west end of which they take the locomotive . . . After taking steam we pass up the Schuylkill in full view of the light and graceful Wire Bridge on the right, the Fairmount Water Works, and the beautiful fall of water over the Dam, as well as the placid sheet which it makes as far as the eye can reach. The new bridge at Girard Avenue may also be seen, and the Girard College, with snowy Whiteness and its magnificent marble columns and marble roof, overlooking the city and surrounding country for miles.

“The State locomotive engine house is immediately on the road to the right, a few hundred yards from the place of starting. Thence passing through a deep cut, we curve round and pursue nearly a westerly course, leaving the city and its busy multitudes behind. In rounding the curve to the left, we may observe the West Philadelphia Water Works, being a very high iron column cylinder, encircled by a neat and tasty iron stairway, winding around it from its base to its summit. At a distance of 3 miles from the depot we pass Hestonville on our left, then Libertyville, and Athensville, and arrive at White Hall, 10 miles from the city.”

Hestonville, Mr. Casey tells us, was a little village near what is now 52nd Street in Philadelphia. His grandfather, Francis Cope Yarnall, was much interested in the well-known little Episcopalian Church in this section. Libertyville is our present suburb of Narberth, while Athensville later became Ardmore. Athens Avenue still commemorates the old name. White Hall later became Bryn Mawr, although the location of the Railroad station was considerably changed from its original site near the present Bryn Mawr Hospital.

Just before arriving at White Hall “we may observe to the left”, to continue with our description of the route, “a large building with an extensive lawn, and a handsome wood between it and the railroad. This is the Haverford College, belonging to an association of Friends, and conducted by them, where a classical education may be obtained by the youth of that denomination, but which is not confined exclusively to them. This College is in Delaware County . . . we next pass on to the stations of Villa Nova (a Roman Catholic College), Morgan’s Corner, and the Eagle, and arrive at the Paoli, 20 miles on our journey. The train frequently stops here for refreshments. Near this place 150 Americans, under General Wayne, were killed and wounded on the night of the 20th of December, 1777, by a detachment of English under General Gray. This action is frequently called the Paoli Massacre”.

Villanova retains its original name, while Morgan’s Corner has now become Radnor. In regard to the name of “The Eagle”, now Strafford, the writer of this column has recently had a letter from Mrs. Charles Carrol Suffern, of Strafford, who says that since she is “over ninety-one years of age”, she can remember much of the “old set-up”. Mrs. Suffern writes, in regard to a reference to old taverns, “You tell of ‘the Eagle’ – it was known as “The Spread Eagle’, and the post office at the old Eagle Station, midway between Strafford and Devon, was also so called, taking its name from the old tavern”.

Wayne is not on this 1855 map. It may have been a little later that trains began to stop to take on milk at the Cleaver Farm, now known to most of us as the old William Wood property, recently sold as a business site. The milk stop was called “Cleaver’s Gate”, or Cleaver’s Landing”. Later this became Louella, and then Wayne. The first station was a large, square wooden pillar laid on its side where passengers sat while they waited to flag the train. An old wagon bed, which took the place of this pillar, was burned on one Fourth of July. Then a small box-like station was built with a house attached in which the ticket agent lived. J. Henry Askin, one of Wayne’s pioneers, of whom much has been written in this column, is said to have had a private waiting room in this station for his family! The original station still stands, being used now as sleeping quarters for employees of the Wayne Hotel.
(To be continued)

Agricultural past

/ Emma C. Patterson

Last spring when I was describing in this column Wayne as it was in the seventies and early eighties, I quoted from notes of Joseph M. Fronefield, Jr., who came here in 1881 to start a small drug store on the eastern end of Lyceum Hall. The latter was the nucleus of the large old building now standing on the northeast corner of Wayne avenue and Lancaster Pike. Mr. Fronefield had written “The surrounding country was farm land. I could look out the drug store door (it had no window on the pike) and see cattle grazing in the meadow where the business block fire house and school houses now stand.” This was part of what was known as the Siter Farm. This was but one of many farms in this vicinity, among them the Izzacki Fritz place, the Mifflin’s, the Wilds’ the George’s, the the Jones’, the Ramsey’s, the Cleaver’s, (later the Hugh’s) and others of which the writer has no written record.

Evidently the entire Main Line looked much as Wayne did, according to the quaintly worded description of it as given in the “Guide for the Pennsylvania Railroad”, printed in 1855, from which I quoted last week. In describing the route of the railroad from Philadelphia to Paoli, it says “The country through which we have passed is thickly dotted with neat farmhouses and barns, and all sorts of comfortable out-houses for pigs, and poultry, sheep, cattle and horses. The large fields of grain and grass which greet one’s eyes in the summer season, the herds of cattle, and flocks of sheep, everywhere to be seen, indicate great agricultural thrift in the inhabitants of Delaware, Montgomery and Chester Counties, thorough the luxuriant grass, are spring-houses. We may observe the patient cows standing around, with their white udders swollen with milk, waiting to yield it to the milkmaid’s pail, from which it is poured into earthen or tin pans, and those are placed in the clear cool water of those houses where the rich cream is formed for the butter.

“From these houses is taken the far-famed Philadelphia butter, superior to that, it is said, of any city in the world. The secret of its superiority lies in the green grass peculiar to this rolling country, and the cool springs that rise from its hills. No prairie land, how rich soever it may be, can ever produce butter equal to that made in the rolling counties around the city of Philadelphia.” (In this connection I recall almost the first request made by my husband’s grandmother, a woman then already in her eighties, when she visited us in Wayne many years ago. She would like to see the Chester Valley, she said, because she had heard what good butter they made there!)

Those of us who travel west along the Lancaster Pike in our automobiles nowadays are familiar with the beauty of the scene that stretches for miles before our eyes soon after we pass Paoli, “the celebrated Chester County limestone valley” as it is called in our booklet. Because of the quaint wording of that description as given almost a hundred years ago I feel it should be quoted just as it was written. Few, if any, of my readers have failed to feel the breathtaking, yet homely beauty of the valley extending as it does “easterly and westerly some 20 miles in length and averages 2 miles in width. It is skirted on both sides with high hills covered with timber, from which issue innumerable springs of pure water, converted into perpetual fountains in the valley, and affording a never-failing supply for man and beast, at the house and barn. This valley is noted for its fertility and beautiful farms. As the cars descend the hill, on an easy grade, the passenger may take in at one view many miles of this magnificent panorama, interspersed with comfortable and neat farm-houses, spacious barns, and other necessary buildings. Hundreds of fields of waving grain, the deep green corn, and luxuriant timothy and clover, pass in review before him.

“Here, the farmers may be seen driving their teams a-field, and there cattle, horses and sheep, feeding in the pasture, or reclining under the trees. This valley supplies the finest beef for the Philadelphia and New York markets. The cattle are brought, when poor, from the regions of the north and the west, and fattened here in the rich pastures of Pennsylvania. The beef of Philadelphia, like the butter, is nowhere else to be found.”

Thus was the beautiful and fertile countryside of our Main Line section a century or more ago.

Early baseball in Wayne – Main Line League

/ Emma C. Patterson

With one gray day succeeding another as they have so often this month, we are all doing a bit of wishful thinking along the lines of sunshiny days, with more warmth and less of dampness in the air. And with robins in everyone’s yard, and Easter but a few days off, we can say hopefully with the poet, “Ah, Wind, if Winter comes, can Spring then be far behind?”

Among other things, spring brings baseball, both of the sandlot variety and otherwise. Because of the great popularity of the game not only in professional but also in amateur circles, it is often called the national sport of the United States. Baseball really originated in this country, the final outcome of a number of similar games, particularly of town ball. Colonel Abner Doubleday (afterwards a general in the U. S. Army) has been credited as its originator since he devised the diagram of the bases and positions for players in 1839.

Wayne has always been interested in baseball, having had much to do with the Main Line League in its beginnings. In those early days probably no one was more interested in that sport locally than the late A. A. H. Canizares, one-time president of this League and for many years a baseball writer for “The Suburban” and other newspapers in this vicinity. In going over the old giles of “The Suburban,” this writer has come across some anecdotes of Mr. Canizares that should prove of interest to old-timers in the community. They may well be of interest to others than old-timers too, for Wayne’s continued participation in baseball is attested to by the games that go on almost nightly throughout the summer on the school field.

Mr. Canizares listed as the most amusing incident he could recall one that occurred when the Boroughites and Hib Steele’s Ithan team were in the midst of a hard fought struggle for the championship of the Main Line League. The “Old Fox,” as Mr. Steele was often called, was in a bad way, when his regular moundsman developed a charlie horse. Although the League was supposed to be of strictly amateur standing, it was not above paying for the services of a good player when the necessity arose. So in this emergency Mr. Steele hired “a twirler who had been beating all the sandlotters in sight,” to quote Mr. Canizares. “Hib, of course, with the other managers, had long before submitted his list of eligible players to the league secretary. There were one or two on the list who had never appeared in his lineup, and consequently, were not known to the fans. Hib proposed to substitute his twirler for one of the unknown, but unfortunately for him, he hadn’t a copy of his list with him, and couldn’t think of an eligible player’s name. As a result, the game was played under protest, and if memory serves, eventually was forfeited to Narberth.”

Another story concerns the occasion when Mr. Canizares, as president of the League, had to call a special meeting to decide whether “Lefty” Craig, a mounder of note, should play with the Wayne or the Bryn Maw team, the latter then managed by Sam Wisler, the former (according to Mr. Canizares’ best recollection) by Marc Hellner. For it seems that “Lefty” had signed with both teams! The managers of the other teams would not vote in open meeting on the question. After several such meetings, Mr. Canizares sent to each manager a secret ballot to be marked and sent to Secretary Charlie McCrea. The vote was 5 to 3 in favor of Wayne and that was where Charlie played!

Still another story concerns local baseball during World War I. So many of Wayne’s members had enlisted in various branches of the service that there were not enough left to form a team. Among the Marines stationed in a detachment near Paoli was Eddie Collins, one of the greatest second basemen the game has ever seen. He organized a team and brought it to Wayne to play out the league schedule. While the team didn’t last long, it did show the community some great baseball. And “incidentally,” Mr. Canizares wrote, “Eddie hit the longest home run ever made on the school grounds, slamming the spheroid over the tennis court in right field and ending up on Dr. Elmer’s lawn!”

And speaking of home runs, on several Wayne occasions “Cy” Cornog and “Doc” Wallace put the ball on top of the gymnasium in center field.

At the time Mr. Canizares was writing his articles, Leo Murphy, playing on the Wayne team, was considered the best outfielder who ever played along the Main Line. “He had an uncanny knack,” Mr. Canizares wrote, “of seeming to judge from the crack of the bat just where the spheroid was going to land, and he was generally on the spot. I recall him more than once hurdling the fence that used to be in deep left field and making catches that would have been impossible for the ordinary outfielder. And he had an arm of iron, throwing with uncanny accuracy right into the catcher’s mitt, and snaring at the plate many an ambitious runner trying to score from third after a putout.”

(The conclusion of this article in next week’s issue of “The Suburban” will tell of some of the men in the Main Line League who afterwards became famous in professional baseball.)

Great Main Line baseball players – from the Main Line League

/ Emma C. Patterson

In writing of young baseball players who obtained their start in the Main Line League in its early days, the late A. A. H. Canizares, from whose articles I quoted in last week’s column, tells first of Jimmy Dykes, who attained fame with the Athletics and the White Sox. “Round and oratorical,” as the sports writer described him, Dykes played first with Frank Zeiss’ Oakmont (or it might have been the Delmar) team, and afterwards with Jack Seashotz’ Ardmore team. And Jack Lapp, one of the best catchers Connie Mack ever had, obtained his early training with the Pirates of Berwyn. His successor on the latter team, “Help-Me-Lord” Duffy Lehman, was afterwards a ground-keeper at Shibeshire for many years.

Lehman, maskman on the Berwyn team, Mr. Canizares described as “a wizard behind the plate and as a batsman.” Since he was terribly afflicted with St. Vitus dance, both his teammates and the spectators wondered how he could catch or bat. His secret was that he held his breath as the pitch was made which “Stopped his shaking nerves and left him as steady as the ordinary player.” Mr. Canizares considered Lehman one of the best catchers who ever played along the Main Line, a player, indeed, who would have gone far had it not been for his affliction.

Other great outfielders in the Main Line League in addition to Leo Murphy, of Wayne, whose prowess was mentioned in last week’s column, were “Big Ed” cording to our scribe, “hit like Lou Joe Evans, of the Wayne team, and Joe Cullinan who played with Ardmore. “Big Ed” once went through one entire season without dropping a fly ball and could, according to our scribe, hit like Lou Gehrig or Joe Di Maggio.” Joe Evans could wait until the ball was hit, and then, “with the grace of an antelope would gallop across the field and snag the old spheroid.” Joe Cullinan “could hit ‘em a mile, and had an arm of steel and rarely missed one in the outer garden.” And one of the hardest hitters in the Main Line League was Joe Dorsaneo of Wayne, who “didn’t hit the ball so far, but when he smashed one to an infielder, it nearly took off an arm or leg.”

Continuing his amusing reminiscences, Mr. Canizares wrote of a small riot in Strafford one hot summer afternoon when a game between two bitter rivals, the Ardmore team and the Strafford team, was on. The score was tied when the decision of the umpire on a close play at the plate precipitated a riot. In those days, Jack Pechin, “Mayor of Strafford,” was chief rooter for his home town team, while the woman publisher and editor of an Ardmore newspaper led the cheers for Ardmore. Mr. Pechin was about six feet tall and weighed about 275 pounds while the lady in question was a featherweight about five feet in stature. Nevertheless she hit him vigorously over the head with her parasol until further hostilities were stopped by Constable George Morris!

Still another incident involves a Labor Day morning game in Narberth, in 1913, when Wayne was all set to win the Main Line League pennant. The game was scheduled for ten o’clock. But when that time arrived Wayne’s twirler, “Big Ed” Smith was not on hand and Manager Charles Sullivan had only eight other eligible players with him! But when the umpire was about to forfeit the game to the Boroughites, Ed arrived, a large “shiner” on his left eye. Since the game must go on, Manager Sullivan sent the big pitcher onto the mound after a severe tongue lashing. Due to this reprimand, or otherwise, “Ed twirled the game of his life, whiffing 22 of the Narberth sluggers and allowing them but three puny singles.” Writing some twenty-five years after that game, Mr. Canizares stated that that strike-out record still stood in league circles. It was equaled, however, by Herbie Pennock, afterwards famous Yankee star, who “twirling for Cedarcroft Academy, shut out St. Luke’s School, fanning 22.”

And in conclusion, one last, and amusing word, about the so-called amateur standing of players in the Main Line League. There was for instance, according to our scribe, the case of Charlie Coryell, former University of Pennsylvania star, sometimes with the Wayne team, sometimes with the Narberth one. At this particular time he was third sacker for the latter, known as the “Boroughites,” led by “Flick” Stites. The latter found a way to evade the amateur rule. “He simply bought a checker from Charlie every Saturday,” writes Mr. Canizares, ‘paying’ therefore a ten dollar bill – which is some price for a checker in any man’s language.” And may this present writer add it would still be “some price” even in these days of the high cost of living!

More Wayne baseball / Kelly’s Dam (Natatorium)

/ Emma C. Patterson

The last two articles in this series have been devoted to baseball in the Main Line League, and particularly as it was played by the Wayne team in its early days. Then, in the first part of the twenties, local interest lagged and Wayne withdrew from the League. It was not until 1946 that Wayne rejoined, this time under the managership of Tommy Arena, for many years a catcher for the Wayne I. A. C. team. At the close of the season Wayne was in fifth place in the league.

The next season, that of 1947, Wayne took the title after a most exciting series of games. With “Mickey” Gavin as manager, Wayne, in an 11-team league, won the western-half title, going on from there to gain the championship in a thrilling seven game series with Drexel Hill. A general riot marked the fifth game in this final play-off series when Ray Edelman bowled over Larry Aigeldinger, Drexel Hill shortstop, while sliding into second base. The riot was eventually quieted down, and Wayne not only won that game, but eventually took the series.

Although Wayne was not the final victor in the 1948 series, the team did get into the playoffs, defeating Narberth in the semi-finals, only to be defeated by Manoa in the final game of the seven game series. According to my informant, “Johnny Byrne starred on the mound in two of the games for Wayne. In the sixth game Wayne was losing 10-0 going into the last inning. They scored nine runs and left the bases loaded before the final out was made in the ninth inning.”

Last season Wayne beat their arch-rival, Narberth, in the seven-game final series, thus winning the championship. “In the fourth and fifth games”, to quote again one more versed in baseball ligno than this writer, “the locals lost by lop-sided scores, but in the final two games received great pitching from Jim Covello and Jim Morrissey.”

Paying tribute to some of the men who have brought the name of Wayne to the fore in the local baseball world since it rejoined the Main Line League, there is Mickey Gavin, under whose guidance our team has won two championships and has played in the finals the third year. During his term he has sent several players to the minor leagues, some of whom are still playing. Among them are George Brown and Norm Swigler of the 1947 team; Pete Caniglia, outfielder, and Andy Schultz, a fine young left-hander of 1948; Vince DiMagistris, who returned to Wayne in 1949; Ed Skladany, Temple University star of the ‘48 team and John Maiden and Walt Lownes, of the 1949 team.

Attendance at these games was probably at its best in 1947, when over 1000 fans were drawn to each of the first two Sunday games against Narberth. Television may be in part the cause of smaller attendance since then. Be that as it may, Manoa and Ardmore have withdrawn since the close of the ‘49 season, which was such a successful season for Wayne.
——-
Just a year ago this month when this column was but a few weeks old, the writer devoted the major part of one article in the series to the story of Kelly’s Dam, a body of water down in the hollow near the railroad tracks in the general vicinity of what is now Willow avenue. In its beginnings it was just a good old “swimmin’ hole”. Then an interested group took over by renting the rights to Kelly’s Dam and installing equipment and building dressing rooms. A high wooden fence made for privacy for the swimmers. Wayne was one of the first localities in this section to have such an outdoor swimming pool.

Since first writing of Kelly’s Dam, some interesting additional data in regard to it has come the way of this writer. It was in May, 1895 that a charter was applied for by the Wayne Natatorium Association. The incorporators were John P. Wood, president; Richards H. Johnson, vice-president; Christopher Fallon, Esq., secretary and Julius A. Bailey, treasurer. Also among the incorporators were T. Stewart Wood, Herman Wendell and Frederick H. Treat. A charter was granted on June 10, 1895, by Acting Judge William B. Waddell. Kelley’s Lake was then little more than a muddy pond, ranging in depth from about eight inches to eight feet. Its water supply was from the creek which ran from Leaming’s Wood through North Wayne. The R. H. Johnson Company was awarded the contract for excavating and constructing a pool about 500 feet long with an average width of about 100 feet. A fine clubhouse was built, the first floor being used as a ladies’ dressing room and the second floor as living quarters for the manager. A men’s dressing room was built midway of the pool.

At the formal opening of the pool in July, 1895, a large crowd of amateur swimmers, representing the Philadelphia Swimming Association, the New York Athletic Club, the University of Pennsylvania and a number of other organizations was present. It was indeed a gala occasion! The first swimming instructor was Charles Holryd, a Yorkshireman “with an accent so thick one could cut it”. He was later succeeded by George Kistler, who at that time was the champion mile swimmer of the world. After leaving Wayne he became swimming instructor at Houston Hall at the University of Pennsylvania, and for many years coached Red and Blue championship teams.

Under the excellent training of these two men not only the youngsters but many of the oldsters of Wayne were taught to swim. In the winter the pool was used for skating, with many a carnival held under the bright lights with which the enclosure was illuminated.

For a number of years the Natatorium was a great success. Then the bicycling craze reached its height, and attendance dwindled while former patrons of the pool took off on long “hike” trips. Then at about the turn of the century a general drought made it necessary for the Wayne Water Works Company – a local concern, to sink a number of artesian wells to augment its supply. This dried up several large springs along the creek which fed the pool.

And so after several years of struggling against adverse conditions, Kelley’s Dam was sold, and on its site were built the houses on the South side of Willow avenue.

Old Inns, part 1

/ Emma C. Patterson

As we stand at the busy intersection of North Wayne avenue and Lancaster avenue waiting for the red light to stop the stream of automobile traffic and permit us to go on our way North or South, how many of us realize that the highway we are about to cross was the first stone turnpike not only in Pennsylvania, but in this entire country as well? Replacing the old conestoga or King’s Road, which connected Philadelphia with Lancaster, the chief inland city of Penn’s Colony, the Lancaster turnpike was started in 1792 and finished in 1794 at an expense of $465,000, which was financed by a private company. Extending the 62 miles between Philadelphia and Lancaster, it became the pattern for all subsequent hard roads in the country. Along these 62 miles there were originally nine toll bars, beginning two miles west of the Schuylkill. Many of the travellers who passed along the old turnpike were Germans. To them these toll stops were known as “Schlagbaume”.

Far different and more picturesque was the scene on the old turnpike in the late 1700’s from what it is in 1950, when the honking of horns, the grinding of tires and the screech of brakes mark the passing of automobiles of all sizes, makes and descriptions for all of the twenty-four hours of the day and the night. The Conestoga Wagon with its broad wheels rolled along its leisurely way a hundred and fifty years ago, along with the slow-plodding six-horse team with tinkling yoke bells; the Troy Coach, swinging upon its leather springs and drawn by four prancing horses; the stage-wagon and the mail coach; the farm wagon, or “dearborn”, with the farmer going to and from the city market. Interspersed with these vehicles of a by-gone day were the large droves of cattle being driven from the green pastures of Chester County and of Lancaster Country to the seaboard. This was the traffic that once made its way through the countryside that was later to become Radnor, Wayne, Strafford and their neighboring suburbs, both to the East and the West.

For these travellers, making their slow and ofttimes weary way along the solid stone turnpike, the most important institutions were the wayside inns. Indeed, it has been said that these inns ranked in importance next to the church and the school house in our commonwealth in provincial days. J. F. Sachse, in his book, “The Wayside Inns on the Lancaster Roadside”, a beautifully illustrated and valuable record of this section of the country published in the early 1900’s, states that “the highest development of the wayside inns was reached when the Lancaster turnpike became the chief highway and the model roadbed in the United States.”

As all outstanding and typical example of these roadhouses of the better class, Mr. Sachse describes the Spread Eagle in the extreme northwestern part of Radnor Township. Built only a year or two after the completion of the stone turnpike that was to be the earliest link of the first great National highway to the West, this was first called the “Spread Eagle Tavern”, and was known far and wide to travellers from both continents. The lovely old three-story stone building with porch and piazza extending along the entire front, stood slightly to the West of the present building now known as Spread Eagle and occupied by the A. L. Diament Company, Interior Decorators, on the first floor and by apartments above. A few foundations stones still mark the old site just at a point where the Highway makes a slight curve.

This building, with its date stone of the year 1796, high up in its gable, supplemented a small, crude stone house used as “a place of entertainment” even before the days of the turnpike when the road that passed it was only a dirt one connecting Philadelphia and Lancaster. A reproduction from a quaint old engraving in Mr. Sachse’s book shows this as a one story structure with a sign board swinging from its standard in front of the Tavern. This “Spread Eagle” was still a crude reproduction of America’s glorious bird of freedom before some artist at a later date added another neck and head harking back to the nondescript birds used in ancient heraldry. The engraving shows a stage coach drawn by four horses about to pull away from the small tavern along a narrow lane bordered by a forest of tall trees on one side and by a cornfield on the other.

This early Spread Eagle Inn was run by one Adam Ransower as early as 1769. In his petition of August 28, 1770, to have his license renewed, he says “Your Honors hath been pleased for these several years past to grant me your recommendations to the Governor for a license to keep a public house of entertainment . . .” Among the signatures on this petition is that of Anthony Wayne. In 1771, the following advertisement appeared in a Philadelphia newspaper:

To be Sold

On Thursday, the 26th of December instant, A Valuable message, plantation and tract of land, situate in Radnor Township, Chester County, adjoining the Lancaster road, containing near 100 acres of good land, about 16 miles from Philadelphia; about 70 acres are cleared and the remainder exceedingly well timbered; about 17 acres of very good watered meadow, and an excellent orchard that bears plentifully every year; the dwelling house is a large well furnished stone building, and a well accustomed tavern, known by the name of the “Spread Eagle”, and is well accommodated with a barn, stables, sheds, gardens, and a pump of good water near the door, with trough to water creatures. Any person inclining to purchase may come and view the premises before the day of sale, at which time the conditions of the sale will be made known by Adam Ramsower. (Penna. Gazette, Dec. 19, 1771)

As a result of this advertisement, or perhaps of similar ones, the tavern was sold to Jacob Hinkel, a tanner of Lancaster County, who was recommended to the Judges of the Peace of the Chester County by a group of his friends as one who, while living in Lancaster County “acted the part of a true and honest member of the civil government.” Daniel Hinkel apparently became a co-owner at a slightly later date. These two operated the inn until 1778, and perhaps later. From 1787 until 1791, Alexander Clay was in charge. He was succeeded by Adam Siter, who was followed by John Siter.

During the Revolutionary period the old Inn was known as the gathering place of the patriots of the neighborhood, while “Miles” Tavern, a short distance away, was patronized by those who were either Tories or Loyalists. Mr. Sachse states that during the alternate occupations of this section of the country by the American and English forces in 1777-78, “the house became somewhat of a landmark, several reports and letters in reference to the military situation being dated at, or mentioning the “Spread Eagle” tavern. During the encampment of the American army at Valley Forge, the inn for a time was used as an outpost, where the large chestnut tree on the West side of the Valley Road, about fifty feet North of the present turnpike, was utilized as a signal station, or outlook for that picket; this tree still standing (18-66) may easily be recognized on the road leading to the present railroad station; it also marks the boundary between Delaware and Chester counties.”

(To be continued)