Tredyffrin Township
The Blue Ball Inn
"Its earlier incarnation, General John Forbes stayed while leading a British Army of over a thousand en route to Fort Duquesne in 1758. That Blue Ball Inn was located several hundred feet south of the train station on the west side of Glenn Avenue. The old tavern was abandoned when the route of the Lancaster Pike was changed. The new tavern (today a residence) dates to 1799. Until the 1930s if you were headed west from Strafford, you had to take Old Lancaster Pike west to Daylesford (on the north side of the Conrail tracks) and continue west to Daylesford where you would cross under the tracks and then turn right onto Lancaster Pike along the south side of the railway."
- Mark Ashton, Chester County: A Modern History
The British Camp in Howellville
On the evening of September 17, 1777 while Washington and his army retreated to Warwick Furnace in search of fresh ammunition, General William Howe gathered the British troops then poised near Frazer and marched their way to Howellville to establish a camp on the south side of Swedesford Road. Howe made his headquarters at the home of Samuel Jones; Lord Cornwallis stayed at the home of Abel Reese near the intersection of Swedesford Road and the Chester Valley Railroad (now a trail); Hessian General Knyphausen stayed at the eastern side of Howe; and Generals James Agnew and Charles Gray were near Howellville.
At the same time General Wayne is dispatched to command 2,500 American troops and militia stationed in modern day Malvern to observe and resist the British who are encamped 2 miles north of Paoli near Howellville.
Jones Log Barn and Other Barns
"As large working farms gave way to suburban development barns became a casualty in the process. This is especially true of larger wood barns. Some have been dismantled while others burned, victims of their highly combustible contents and the absence of suburban fire departments until after World War II. A good place to see the evolution of the Chester County barn is in and around Chesterbrook. In recent years, Tredyffrin Township reconstructed the Jones Log Barn adjacent to the DuPortail House (297 Adams Drive). This barn is believed to date from the 1730s and is built in the English Lake District style. Next to the Jones Barn is a federal style barn which was erected in 1792. Not far west of DuPortail at 1560 Bradford Road is a barn constructed in the 1880s for Pennsylvania Railroad President Alexander Cassatt. The design is by one of the leading architects of the late 19th century, Frank Furness, and features eyebrow windows in the roof and outwardly flaring walls. It is today a Chesterbrook Academy preschool."
- Mark Ashton, Chester County: A Modern History
Lincoln Institution's Indian School
The Lincoln Institution in Philadelphia was previously used as an orphanage by Mary McHenry Cox for children of orphaned during the Civil War. Cox was president of the Lincoln Institute. As the children of the orphanage aged out, she turned her attention to Indian girls. She took in 84 girls from 16 different tribes, inspired by the famous Indian school in Carlisle, PA. They were taught housework, sewing, English branches, music, and dancing. During the summer, the institute used the old Spread Eagle Tavern in Tredyffrin owned at the time by George W. Childs, publisher of the Phila. Public Ledger newspaper. The school's most noted visitor was Lakota Chief Sitting Bull, who came to visit family members at the school only 8 years after the Battle of Little Big Horn.
Berwyn School Fight
In 1932, the Tredyffrin and Easttown jointure voted to convert a 1912 school building in Berwyn to an all "negro school" where students, faculty and staff would all be persons of color., named it Lincoln Highway School. As a response, the black communities in both townships were upset and disappointed about the segregation of their kids from the rest of the community. On March 16, 1932, Easttown Township was site of a mass meeting to protest the joint school boards decision. In attendance were several hundred black, and some white, residents as well as the leadership from the Bryn Mawr branch of the NAACP. African American lawyer Raymond Pace Alexander represented the black families in this cause.
When the situation was not resolved, parents decided to protest by not sending their kids to the schools. The situation escalated when parents were arrested for refusing to pay a fine for not sending their kids to the school. The fight ended on a positive note when Attorney General William Schnader assisted the black community to end segregation of black and white children in Berwyn.
Bibliography
"An Indian School." Arthur's Home Magazine 52, no. 7 (1884): 429.
"Brig. General John Forbes." Clan Forbes Society. Accessed March 1, 2025. https://www.clan-forbes.org/people/brig.-general-john-forbes.
Carlisle, Dennis. "The Charity Case." Hidden City Philadelphia. Last modified August 6, 2012. https://hiddencityphila.org/2012/08/the-charity-case/.
Futhey, John Smith and Gilbert Cope. History of Chester County, Pennsylvania: With Genealogical and Biographical Sketches. (Philadelphia: Louis H. Everts, 1881): 84.
Thorne, Roger D. "The School Segregation Fight." History Quarterly 44, no. 1&2 (2007): 65-67. https://www.tehistory.org/hqda/html/v44/v44n1+2p065.html.