The 'other' William Penn Inn

About the same distance from my house to the William Penn Inn that I mentioned in my entry on Monet, the Impressionist Painter, in nearly the opposite direction, there was another William Penn Inn.

This "other" inn was located in Merion, PA along side of the old wagon road named the Philadelphia-Lancaster Pike. The fields and farms along side of this old wagon road just outside of Philadelphia later became known as the wealthy "Main Line" suburbs of Philadelphia - so named because the Pennsylvania Railroad's main line which ran first to Lancaster, Harrisburg and Pittsburgh in 1832 and then later, onwards to Chicago.

The old wagon road became Route 30, and is better known as the Lincoln Highway. It passes near my house not very far from the site of the Paoli Massacre and the site of "Mad" Anthony Wayne's most bitter loss.

"Mad" Anthony Wayne was a brigadier general of the Continental Army whose bravery and recklessness (hence the nickname) led him to many military victories in the American Revolutionary War.



General "Mad" Anthony Wayne

In June 1796, General Wayne was on the frontier (the area near Pennsylvania - Ohio line) overseeing the surrender of British forts to the United States. In November he became ill with gout. On Dec. 16, 1796, he died. At his request he was buried in a plain oak coffin near Erie, Pa.

Thirteen years after Wayne's death, his son, Isaac Wayne, decided to move his father's body to the family's burial plot at St. David's Church in Radnor (another "Main Line" suburb of Philadelphia), Pa.

Isaac Wayne drove over the mountains to Erie, Pa., in a one-horse sulky to claim his father's body. Young Wayne enlisted the help of Dr. J.G. Wallace, who had been with Wayne at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, a skirmish with Native American Indians just south of Toledo, Ohio.

Wayne's body was remarkably preserved even after 13 years. There was little decay except in the lower portion of one leg. The men decided it was impractical to reduce the body to small packages that would fit into the back of the sulky.

With Isaac Wayne's permission, Wallace dissected the body and boiled the parts in a large iron kettle to render the flesh from the bones. Isaac Wayne took the cleaned skeleton back home in the sulky.

The rendered flesh and the knives used in the operation were replaced in the original coffin and reinterred in the old grave.

Shortly thereafter, the "other" William Penn Inn was renamed the General Wayne Inn as "Mad" Anthony was a wildly popular man. Sad to say, it is no longer an inn, having recently it has been purchased by Chabad of the Main Line, and has been converted into a synagogue and Center For Jewish Life. The good news, however, is the building was completely restored and preserved as it has a very rich American history.



Edgar Allan Poe once scraped his initials into a window frame here and George Washington, William Penn, General Anthony Wayne and our good buddy, Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, better known as Marquis de Lafayette all stayed here on their way through the area. The building dates back to 1704 and is the focus of many stories, both of visits by famous people and of ghostly manifestations.



The Inn's cellar is said to be haunted by the spirit of a Hessian (German mercenary fighting for the British) soldier, who hid there to escape persecution, became trapped and eventually died. His shade is said to sometimes hammer frantically on the door leading out of the cellar.

This spirit is said to be named Wilhelm, and during a seance he supposedly explained that most of the time he liked to stay down in the cellar but he was restless because he had been stripped of his clothes at the time of his death so that another soldier might use them. Being rather humiliated by being buried in his underwear, he was searching for a proper uniform to wear in the afterlife.

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