Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society
History Quarterly Digital Archives

Source: October 1995 Volume 33 Number 4, Pages 154–166

How "Inn-Genius" Are You?

compiled by Herb Fry

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[Much of this information has previously appeared in various issues of the Quarterly. Nonetheless, we hope this "refresher" quiz about some of the local inns and taverns of the 18th and 19th century will be as refreshing as the spirits they served to their patrons back when travel was at a much slower pace.]

Questions

1. What inn was allegedly "owned by an Welshman, but named for a Corsican by a bunch of drunken Irishmen"?
Answer 1

2. What inn was originally named for a British admiral who is still daily remembered in the British navy?
Answer 2

3. What inn was named for an animal sometimes "mischievous" but "become very docile"?
Answer 3

4. What inn took its original name from its location on the Conestoga road?
Answer 4

5. The name of what inn was derived from its location at the headwaters of the Darby creek?
Answer 5

6. At what inn did Indians display their skills with the bow and arrow?
Answer 6

7. What inn was described, in the petition for a tavern license, as being on the road between Yellow Springs and Darby?
Answer 7

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8. What inn, despite its name, was a rallying point for patriots before and during the Revolutionary War?
Answer 8

9. At what inn were the plans for the capture of Philadelphia by the British during the Revolutionary War allegedly prepared?
Answer 9

10. What inn was the scene of an emergency balloon landing?
Answer 10

11. What inn building was originally built of logs from an old church?
Answer 11

12. What inns also served as early post offices?
Answer 12

13. The innkeeper at what inn was recommended for a tavern license because he had to care for "two ancient helpless women"?
Answer 13

14. At what inn was the father of a famous painter at times the innkeeper?
Answer 14

15. What inn was allegedly the last stop for a number of peddlers traveling along the road?
Answer 15

16. What inn later became known as a Temperance House?
Answer 16

17. What inns were also used as polling places on election days?
Answer 17

18. What inn later became, for two summers, a school for Indian girls?
Answer 18

19. What inns were also early meeting places for the Free Masons?
Answer 19

20. What later-day inn later became a school for girls, and after that a school for boys?
Answer 20

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Answer 1

This is the Paoli Inn.

After Joshua Evans, a Welshman, received a license to operate "a public house of entertainment" in 1769, the inn originally had no name. Not long afterwards, however, it was named The General Paoli, in honor of the famed Corsican general Pasquale Paoli, a champion of liberty popular in England where he was living in exile at that time.

According to tradition, the manner in which it received its name is somewhat unusual. Here is the story as recounted by Grace Winthrop several years ago. "It seems," she reported, "that the Hibernian Society, fore-runner of the Society of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, was having a gathering of the clan one evening at Evans' new inn to celebrate St. Patrick's Day.

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After a big dinner of roast duck and venison had been consumed, the toasting began. When everyone from the King to the tavern dog had been toasted and the candles were flickering and guttering out, someone raised the 45th toast, in honor of General Paoli. All who could still stand got up and drained their tankards of 'royal cider' in one last loud cheer. Evans was so carried away with all this enthusiasm that he decided then and there to name his house 'The General Paoli'. Thus an inn owned by a Welshman was named by an Irishman for a Corsican. (Soon afterwards, the 'General' was dropped from the name, and the inn became better known simply as 'The Paoli'.)"

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Answer 2

We know this inn today as the General Warren, but that was not its name originally. After George Aston, a prominent and popular man in the area and a vestryman at St. Peter's Church, obtained a license to open a public house on the Provincial or Lancaster Road in 1745, he named the house the Admiral Vernon, in honor of a popular British admiral of that time.

You know more about Admiral Edward Vernon than you think you do. With a fleet of but six ships, he had captured Porto Bello with the loss of only seven men. Among those who served under him on this expedition was the half-brother of George Washington, Lawrence Washington, and he was so impressed by his commander that he named his estate in Virginia Mount Vernon. The admiral's popularity, at least with his sailors, however, plummeted rapidly shortly afterwards when he issued orders to have the daily rum ration diluted with water to prevent scurvy. As he was also known for an old grogham raincoat he habitually wore in bad weather, and was often referred to as "Old Grogham" behind his back, the diluted rum ration soon became known as "Old Groqham's Drink", or, more simply, as "grog". It is the term still used for the daily rum ration in the British navy today.

With his decline in popularity, for this and other reasons, in 1748 the inn was renamed the Admiral Warren, after another British admiral, Peter Warren, who had distinguished himself in the capture of Louisburg in Nova Scotia three years earlier. After the Revolutionary War the name was again changed, perhaps in some measure to expunge the tavern's reputation as a meeting place for the Tories when Peter Mather was the tenant-inn-keeper. In any event, in 1786 it became, under its new owner, Casper Fahnstock, the General Warren, named for the American hero of the Battle of Bunker Hill.

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Answer 3

This, of course, is the Leopard, from which the village of Leopard in Easttown township took its name. John Phillips, who had previously been the innkeeper at the Blue Ball for five years, obtained the first license for a tavern at this location in 1785.

Some forty-four years later, in the spring of 1829, Thomas Temple, in the American Republican, announced that he was "exchanging the retired life of a farmer for the more bustling one of a public house-keeper" and that "on the first day of April he took possession of the tavern in Easttown, Chester County, long known as the sign of the LEOPARD".

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At the same time, he noted that "though [the leopard is] sometimes a mischievous animal, the public may rest assured that he is become very docile".

(Temple further noted, with an understatement not common in today's advertising, that "gentlemen travelling for pleasure or business, may look for treatment that will be agreeable" and that "if his liquors are not of a superior quality, he has erred in judgment", adding that "Exertions will be made to please - and all favors acknowledged".)

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Answer 4

The earliest tavern in either Tredyffrin or Easttown townships was first known as the Halfway House. Located on the Conestoga Road, this name came from the fact that it was located halfway between the Schuylkill and the Brandywine rivers, and also halfway between St. David's and St. Peter's.

As early as in 1735 Robert Richardson received a license to operate a "publick house of entertainment" at this location. (He was succeeded as the owner-innkeeper in 1741 by Thomas McKean, uncle of the Thomas McKean who later became governor of Pennsylvania.) In 1755, during the tenure of Conrad Young as the tenant-innkeeper, it became the Blue Ball. During the French and Indian War it was a recruiting station and supply depot for the British troops of General Forbes and General Stanix.

The "Ball" continued at this location until the mid-1790s. In 1793 the then-owner of the inn, Moses Moore, recognized that the tavern would be by-passed by the new Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike, and sold the property to John Llewellyn. He then built a new Blue Ball inn on the route of the new road.

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Answer 5

This is the Springhouse tavern. The water from the nearby springs flows south to become a part of Darby creek and on into the Delaware River near Tinicum Island.

The tavern was located between the 15th and 16th mileposts on the Lancaster Turnpike at the eastern end of what is now Berwyn. A license to operate a public house there was granted to David Llewellyn in 1794, but records indicate that it was not known as the Springhouse until 1800. (From 1814 to 1833 it was known as the "George Washington", but in 1834 it again took its older name. The inn was also informally referred to as "Peggy Dane's" in the late 1830s when she ran it for seven years after the death of her husband John, who had been the innkeeper.)

"On the opposite side of the pike from the Springhouse tavern," Franklin Burns recorded, "there used to be a deep and open pool of spring water. Few passed on a hot summer day without partaking of its cool and sparkling fluid.

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On the occasion of the exhibition of O'Brien's circus, it supplied water for the entire troupe, including a considerable herd of elephants."

A part of the Springhouse property later became the site of the Berwyn ice plant.

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Answer 6

This was the White Horse, in East Whiteland Township at what we know today as Planebrook, though for many years the cross-roads village there was known by the name of the inn.

When the primitive log cabin that was later to become the inn was built it was, according to Julius Sachse, on a "well-trodden Indian path or trail" and "Indians were still numerous in the vicinity and as a general thing friendly to the whites". Here, as early as in 1721 and perhaps even before that. James Thomas applied for a license "to keep a house of entertainment for selling wine, brandy, rum, and other strong liquors".

This is how Irma Flood, in the Suburban almost thirty years ago, described some of the activities there in the late 18th century: "The White Horse," she wrote, "was ... a favorite stopping place for bands of Indians, who at that time, 1790-1800, would make frequent visits to the capital city. The Indians brought down skins and furs and bartered for lead, stockings, pipes, etc. On arriving at the inn, they would always ask for rum and sugar, of which they were very fond. If refused, they would offer to shoot pennies for it. This was done by fixing a copper cent on a stick and then setting] it up from 30 to 50 yards from the dusky marksman, who would shoot at it with his bow and arrow. If the Indian hit the cent, which he usually did, the coin belonged to him. If not, he then tried it over again -- and this afforded much amusement to strangers and children, beside slaking the Indian's thirst."

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Answer 7

This, again, is the Paoli, located not only on the Lancaster Road but also on a road that at that time ran between Darby and Yellow Springs.

As there were already taverns within two miles to the east and west on the Lancaster road, when Joshua Evans applied for a tavern license in 1769 for the inn which later became the Paoli, he described its location as being "on the road leading through a large body of the upper part of the county by the Valley Church [St. Peter's] to Chester, Darby, &c." rather than as on the Lancaster road. (This road, a continuation of Darby Road north of the Lancaster Road, no longer exists.)

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(Here is the petition he filed with the Chester County Court of Quarter Sessions: "The petition of Joshua Evans Humbly Showeth That whereas there is no house of public entertainment between the 'Yellow Springs' and the Square in Newtown on the road leading through a large body of the upper part of this county by the Valley Church to Chester, Darby, &c. which is too great a distance for one stage, being fourteen miles apart, and of consequence of people passing that way and as your petitioner has a very commodious house situated in the township of Tredyffrin, on Lancaster road, where the aforesaid road meets with the same, as the great road leading down through Newtown to Darby and Chester branches therefrom, and as your petitioner humbly considers a public house in the aforesaid place would be of great use not only to those passing to Chester and Darby, but also to travelers going and coming that way from Philadelphia &c, your petitioner therefore humbly requests your Honors to recommend him to his Honor, the Governor, for a license to keep a public house of entertainment in the aforesaid place ...")

Among the eighteen persons signing the affidavit recommending Evans were Anthony Wayne and Lewis Gronow. And although the innkeepers of the "Ball" and the "Warren", on the other hand, did not think this tavern was necessary and hence filed objections to the petition, it was nonetheless marked "Allowed".

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Answer 8

Ironically, the Sign of George III, in what is now Howellville, was a popular meeting place for local patriots on the eve of the Revolutionary War.

In 1745 Joseph Mitchell first applied for and was granted a license "to sell beer and cyder" at this house on Swedesford Road, and he was the inn-keeper there for twenty years. After he was succeeded as innkeeper in 1765 by David Howell, however, the tavern was more frequently referred to simply as "Howell's Tavern", and the small village that grew up around it became known as Howelltown or Howellville. After David Howell's death seven years later his widow, Mary Howell, took over as the innkeeper until the mid-1780s.

In the early 1770s the tavern was a popular rendezvous and meeting place for the patriots. Anthony Wayne, Harry Emerson Wildes noted in his biography of him, much preferred the "less elaborate Howell Inn" to the more pretentious Warren because "everyone [at Howell's] was strongly Whig". Mary Howell's claims for damages to the property during the British occupation of the Valley prior to the capture of Philadelphia totalled almost 700, and included three horses, 23 head of cattle, 36 sheep, 500 bushels of wheat, large quantities of other grain, 6000 fence rails, and one hogs-head of rum, one hogshead of whiskey, and 20 gallons of gin.

Appropriately, in 1804 the name of the tavern was changed by Christian Fritz, who had become the innkeeper in 1801, to the Sign of George Washington, and by 1830 it became known simply as the Washington Inn.

(According to Sachse, the Paoli, the Green Tree, and the White Horse inns were also gathering places for the patriots.)

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Answer 9

It was at the Admiral Warren, considered to be a Tory or loyalist house, that plans were allegedly made for the capture of Philadelphia by the British army during the Revolution.

The inn at that time was owned by John Penn, who had inherited it from his brother-in-law Lynford Lardner and immediately leased it to Peter Mather, who took over the duties of innkeeper. Mather was a known Tory, and the inn soon became a gathering place for the loyalists in the area, among them several British spies who used it to forward intelligence concerning the movements of the Continental army to the British.

An occasional visitor to the inn, it is also said, was Captain John Andre. He had been captured at the capitulation of St. John's in November 1775 and, before being exchanged, paroled with the Cope family in Lancaster. Cope was also a Tory, as well as the surveyor of Chester County, and Andre allegedly made copies of a number of his maps, which proved to be most helpful to the British as they planned their final approach to the colonial capital.

It has also been suggested that Mather himself was involved in the execution of the British attack by troops under Major General George Gray, and even guided the troops to Wayne's camp in the so-called Paoli Massacre, but this has never been substantiated and the innkeeper steadfastly denied any participation in the attack.

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Answer 10

It was at the Spread Eagle tavern that, on August 14, 1834, James Mills made an emergency balloon landing, after having taken off from Philadelphia late that afternoon. The incident, according to Sachse, "probably caused more excitement and sensation in the immediate vicinity of Sitersville [now Strafford] than had ever been known on previous occasion within the memory of the oldest inhabitant".

Here is "the bold aeronaut's own description of what took place", as reported by Sachse: "Warned by the increasing obscurity of the world below I began to descend and at six o'clock and twenty reached the earth in a fine green field, near the Spread Eagle, on the Lancaster Turnpike, 16 miles from Philadlphia. As I descended very slowly, two young gentlemen and Dr. M , of Philadelphia, came to my assistance, and, laying hold of the car in which I remained towed me about a quarter of a mile to the tavern, where I alighted, balloon and passenger, safe and sound. Before discharging the gas, several ladies got successively into the car and were let up as far as the anchor rope would permit, The gas was [then] let out and the balloon folded. In doing this a cricket was unfortunately in- cluded, and having to cut his way out he made the only break in the balloon which occurred on this expedition. Mr. Home [the innkeeper] of the Spread Eagle, treated me with great kindness, and Dr. M politely offered me a conveyance to the city, which I reached at one o'clock this morning."

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Answer 11

The Lamb tavern, on the Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike [now Old Lancaster Road], was originally a log building constructed from timbers from an old church.

In 1805 the congregation of the Baptist Church in the Great Valley built a new stone meeting place, replacing the old log church building that had been erected in 1721. The old logs from the building were then sold to George Rees, a former sheriff in Philadelphia county, for $51. He had them hauled up the hill from the Valley to the turnpike and built a store near the 15th milestone, operated by Jonathan Jones.

A few years later, in 1812, John Lewis, who had previously been the inn-keeper at the Stage tavern, obtained a license to keep a public house in the log buiding. It was primarily a drovers' stand. The sign board for the tavern, a rural landscape with a lamb in the foreground, was reputedly painted by James McGuigan, a self-taught artist who lived nearby in the village of Glassley.

The log tavern was later replaced by a stone one which is still standing, now a private residence known as "Roughwood".

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Answer 12

Three early inns or taverns in our area were also early post offices: the Spread Eagle, the Warren, and the Paoli. In each case the innkeeper was also the first postmaster.

The first post office in the area was at the Spread Eagle, just over the county and township line in Radnor Township. The first postmaster was Edward Siter, the landlord of the inn, appointed July 1, 1804. Many of the subsequent postmasters until the 1840s were similarly the innkeepers there before the post office was moved to the Eagle railroad station in Tredyffrin Township, and later to a store in the area.

Warren Tavern became a post office on December 7, 1820 when its innkeeper, Charles Fahnstock, was appointed a postmaster. Although the post office was later moved to Valley Store when Henry Acker was named postmaster in 1857, it continued to be identified as the Warren Tavern post office.

Joshua Evans Jr. received his appointment as a postmaster on December 9, 1826 and established the Paoli post office in the Paoli inn, of which he was the owner and innkeeper. The post office remained at the Paoli, save for a two-and-a-half month period from August to October in 1882, for more than 65 years, when it was moved to the new railroad station in 1893.

(Although the first postmaster at New Centreville, appointed April 12, 1857, was the innkeeper at the New Centreville Hotel, Evans Kendall, the post office was not located at the inn but in a store at the southwest corner of Swedesford and Valley Forge roads.)

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Answer 13

This reason for granting a tavern license was advanced in behalf of the petition of Robert Richardson in 1735 to move his public house from Willistown to "a more commodious place on the same publick road" in Tredyffrin, where it was to become known as the Halfway House, later the Blue Ball.

The affidavit in support of his petition was signed by 81 "neighbors and acquaintances" of the petitioner, among them Anthony Wayne, the grandfather of the General. In it they averred that "to the best of Our Understanding [he has] kept good order in his House And as good Entertainment for Travellers as the Convenience of the Place would afford", and that, as he was "incapable of hard work by reason of lameness in both his Arms and also having Two Ancient helpless women (to witt his own Mother and Mother-in-law[)] besides his wife & children to maintain", they prayed that he "may be Continued in Said Calling" of innkeeper.

(The petition was "allowed".)

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Answer 14

John West, the father of the painter Benjamin West, was the host at the inn later known as the Square, at the intersection of Newtown Street Road and Goshen Road, about a mile or so south of the Easttown Township line.

West was the innkeeper there from about 1743 or 1744 to 1748, and again, after keeping a store nearby for a few years, from 1755 to 1758. His son Benjamin was about six years old when West first became the innkeeper, and it was here that he first showed his artistic ability.

It is not known exactly when the inn first became known as the Square, but research by Carl Lindborg has established that it was known by that name by 1755 when West returned to be the tavern keeper for the second time.

(Lindborg has also noted that when Andrew Wilson was the innkeeper in 1778 a frequent visitor to the tavern was James Fitzpatrick, better known as Sandy Flash, the infamous highwayman and brigand who worked with the British army during its 1777-78 campaign in this area and occupation of the city of Philadelphia.)

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Answer 15

It was at the Blue Ball that several peddlers are alleged to have spent their last night, with the result that the house is still considered to be haunted.

Beginning in 1825 "Prissy" Robinson was the mistress of the "Ball". Her sharp temper and caustic tongue were both well known and respected in the neighborhood. By that time the inn, once a drovers' stand, catered primarily to "itinerant merchants, back peddlers, and the like", and, it has been alleged, "Many of these folks were seen to enter -- but they did not come away".

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After enjoying a steaming supper, with ample servings of rum, they tumbled into bed - but never woke up, having been murdered in their sleep and then buried in an informal graveyard among the apple trees next to the inn. (When the Pennsylvania Railroad was engaged in widening its right-of-way in 1872, it was later reported, "the construction work took the laborers through the orchard. They [there] unearthed the grisly remains of humans, believed to be the bones of murdered peddlers". It has also been said that during renovation work on the old inn at the turn of the century several skeletons, some of them with bashed-in skulls, were found buried under a back room of the tavern.)

Residents of the old inn, which is now a private home, have repeatedly claimed that they occasionally hear the sound of bureau drawers upstairs being opened and shut, as the ghost of Prissy Robinson is looking for a clean night shift to wear in place of her blood-stained one! Others, however, have suggested that it was her "three loathsome sons" who actually did the victims in.

As further evidence that these things happened, it has also been reported that before she died at the age of 100, Prissy Robinson had expressed the wish that her coffin be made of chestnut -- so that as she passed through the lower regions she would "go through a-crackin".

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Answer 16

In the early 1800s the General Warren became a temperance house while under the ownership and management of William Fahnstock.

His grandfather, Casper Fahnstock, a Sabbatarian from Ephrata, had bought the tavern from John Penn in 1786. (Casper Fahnstock was in his 60s at the time.) He shortly afterwards renamed it the General Warren, and in 1794 built a new and larger house on the site, its south side facing the new Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike.

As he advanced in years, he turned the property over to his son Charles, who was granted a license for its operation in 1799. Being a good Sabbatarian, he soon closed the bar on Sundays, a sign over the bar proclaiming NO LIQUOR SOLD ON THE SABBATH.

He, in turn, turned over the duties as host to his son William, prominent in the Great Valley Presbyterian Church and a strong advocate of temperance. Almost immediately he ceased selling liquor altogether and sold nothing on Sundays, renaming the inn the Warren Temperance House. (Sachse noted that the new host, "in his temperance idea, eventually went so far as to cut down the large apple orchard which was in the field outside the house ... so as to prevent the apples being used for cider".)

It was, understandably, a change that was not met with great enthusiasm by his largely German wagoner and teamster clientele. The business declined rapidly, and the property not long afterwards became a summer boarding house instead of an inn.

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Answer 17

Four local inns also served as polling places at one time or another in the late 18th- and the 19th-century: the Paoli, the Leopard, the Washington Inn, and the inn at Centerville, later New Centreville.

In 1797, with the formation of a new five-township election district that included both Tredyffrin and Easttown townships, the polling place for the new district was officially designated as "at the house now occupied by Richard Robinson", or the Paoli. As Sachse noted, "It was not an uncommon occurrence for over five hundred persons to be in or about the [Paoli] inn on election day ..." Although Charlestown became a separate election district in 1823, East Whiteland, in 1838, and Willistown, in 1839, the Paoli continued as the polling place for our two townships until 1841.

In that year Easttown also became a separate election district, with its polling place established "at the house of Philip Kirk, sign of the Leopard". The polls for Easttown were located at the Leopard until 1872, though in the official election returns it was identified by the name of the innkeeper rather than the name of the inn: "the house of Philip Kirk" from 1841 to 1843; "the house of Isaac Thomas" from 1844 to 1851; "the house of George Hippie" from 1852 to 1854; "the house of Israel Home" from 1855 to 1862; "the house of William Steele" in 1863 and 1864; and, in 1865, as the "house of Isaac Thomas, dec'd". Before the decade ended, the building was no longer a public house or inn, but had been converted into a general store.

In 1841, and again in 1843, the polls for Tredyffrin were moved to the Washington Inn in Howellville: in 1841, "the house of Charles Thompson" and in 1843, "the house of John C. Werkheiser".

In 1842 they were moved to Centerville "at the house of Jacob Knouse", returning there, now "the house of Evans Kendall" in 1844 and remaining there until 1886. Although the name of the inn changed several times -- in 1844 it was known as the Fanners and Mechanics Hotel; in 1856, as the Centerville House; in 1864, as the Centerville Hotel; and in 1872, as the New Centreville Hotel -- it was known locally as "Kendall's Hotel" and officially in the election returns as "the house of Evans Kendall", its long-time innkeeper.

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Answer 18

For two years the old Spread Eagle tavern, no longer being used as an inn and beginning to show signs of deterioration, was the summer campus of the Lincoln Institution's school for Indians. The school was located in Philadelphia and conducted by Mary McHenry Cox, who lived nearby.

The Lincoln Institution was originally incorporated in 1866 as a school for orphaned children of soldiers who had lost their lives in the Civil War. With the passing of years, however, these soldiers' orphans had become too old to need this kind of instruction, and in 1883 it became a school for young children of various Indian tribes. Its aim was described as to teach the children "the duties of civilization and the beauties of religion" and to expose them "to the broadest cosmopolitan influences".

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Concerned that the hot summer in Philadelphia might prove disastrous for some of the Indian children, Mrs. Cox made arrangements in the spring of 1884 to move the summer session to the former inn. (It had recently been purchased by George W. Childs, who made it available to the school with no charge for rental.) By the end of May 1884 64 pupils had been transferred to Strafford. They came from thirteen different Indian nations, though two, the Sioux and Chippawa, accounted for more than half of the pupils.

Unable to buy the Spread Eagle property, by 1886 the school, now called "Ponemah", meaning "Land of the Hereafter", had built its own summer facilities to the north of Upper Gulph Road east of Croton Road.

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Answer 19

From about 1822 to 1830 the General Jackson inn also served as the meeting place for the Farmers Lodge No. 183 of the Free and Accepted Masons.

The house, first licensed in 1815, was owned by Randall Evans, brother of Joshua Evans, of the Paoli, but was kept by tenant innkeepers after Randall Evans was unsuccessful in his petition for a tavern license. On the second floor was a large meeting room.

It is said that during the anti-masonic movement of the 1820s and 1830s, at the same time the anti-masons were holding forth in the bar room the members of the Lodge were holding their meetings directly above them, on the second floor!

Earlier, in the late 1780s, the Sign of the White Horse in East Whiteland Township was the regular meeting place for a group of former soldiers of the Revolutionary War who, on December 1, 1790, were grantewd a warrant by the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania to form Great Valley Lodge No. 50. Sachse has noted that after the Lodge "got underway they on several occasions gave entertainments and balls, which were the great social events and attracted all the youth and beauty in the vicinity for miles around" and that it "became the most influential lodge in the country until it succumbed to public opinion during the Anti-Masonic crusade". In 1807 it moved to the borough of West Chester.

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Answer 20

This is the Devon Inn, built in 1883 by Lemuel Coffin and Joseph Altemous in conjunction with their early development of Devon and operated as a fashionable summer resort hotel until 1914.

In June of 1919 it was taken over by the Devon Manor Corporation and, after remodeling, was opened that fall as a school for girls. The founder and president of the school was Frances R. Lowell, and the principal was Miss Edith Samson.

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The speaker at the opening ceremonies was ex-President William Howard Taft. But by the summer of 1924 the school had filed for bankruptcy.

After being used again briefly as a fashionable hotel during the Sesquicentennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, in the fall of 1928 the Valley Forge Military Academy, under the direction of then-Capt. Milton G. Baker, opened there with a staff of thirteen and an enrollment of 117 cadets. A few months later, however, in January 1929 a disastrous fire swept through the old inn building and totally destroyed it. (After the fire, the Military Academy was moved to its present site in Wayne.)