Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society
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Source: Spring 2006 Volume 43 Number 2, Page 76

Then ... & Now
WARREN SHOPS, MALVERN

Page 76

Illustration from page 76

PHOTOGRAPHER, DATE, AND SOURCE UNKNOWN. COURTESY BONNIE HAUGHEY

The General Warren Inn on Old Lancaster Road near Malvern was a major stagecoach stop in the Tredyffrin area in the early 1800s. Stagecoach stops almost always had associated shops nearby where blacksmiths and wheelwrights tended to horses and coaches and carriages. The Warren Shops were located just to the east of the inn on the southwest corner of the inter-section of Old Lancaster Road and Warren Avenue. The view in these images is south on Warren Avenue.

Local author Thomas J. McGuire, in his book Battle of Paoli [Stackpole Books, 2000], tells [on pages 97 and 99] how the British forced an unknown blacksmith at the Warren Shops to guide them to the location of Anthony Wayne's troops who were camped just south of the General Warren on the night before the Paoli Massacre early in the morning of September 21, 1777. The blacksmith led them in a different direction and Wayne's troops were spared earlier that fateful night.

A few local newspapers carried business announcements about the craftsmen at the Warren Shops. On March 26, 1870 the Jeffersonian reported that Joseph Aikens had purchased the Warren Shops from Jesse Coburn who moved to Willistown. In the December 20, 1879 Green Tree & Malvern Item John G. Moore, manufacturer of carriages, announced the establishment of a general wheelwrighting business in the Warren Shops. The February 24, 1891 Daily Local News reports that Samuel Mood of the Spring Mills Shops in Glen Loch would be moving to the Warren Shops on April 1st of that year.

Illustration from page 76

PHOTOGRAPHED BY JOYCE A. POST, APRIL 2006

 
 

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