Paths of History

My wife and I are on a mission to see all 50 states.  In the last several years, we have crossed paths several other times with two other travelers, Messrs. Lewis and Clark, who crossed the country in 1804-1806.  We’ve seen them at the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia, Harpers Ferry, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, the Columbia River Gorge, and Astoria and Fort Clatsop in Oregon.  We came across them most recently a few weeks ago, when we were in Mississippi, following the Natchez Trace. 

The Trace is a trail from about present day Nashville to the Mississippi river at Natchez, Mississippi that has been used for thousands of years by first the Indians and then the European settlers.  There are sections of it that have created a well worn groove in the earth – a place where you know you are walking in the footsteps of people who passed by hundreds and thousands of years before you. 

Most of those people and their stories are forgotten.  Meriwether Lewis was on the Trace in October 1809, passing by on his way to Washington DC to defend himself against accusations of financial improprieties from his time as governor of the Louisiana territory.  Upon his return from the cross-country expedition in 1806, he had been feted as one of the greatest explorers in world history, compared to Columbus, and honored everywhere he went.  And yet just several years later, at a small inn along the Trace, he had taken his own life.  He is buried there, along a well worn path of history. 

There are monumental places in the world, such as the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, the Great Lakes, Mt. McKinley, and other places of such immense grandeur that you are in awe of them.  However, most of the world consists of more ordinary places, unremarkable in themselves, but containing well worn paths through which interesting people have traveled and historical events have occurred.  In Marple and Newtown, we have impressive history if we care to learn it. 

During the American Revolution, the British army swept through on raids to steal cattle and horses, and to strip homes of their possessions, while at an extant house on Goshen Road an American spy was holed up, relaying the activities of the British movements to General Washington.  Soldiers from both sides likely stopped at the Square Tavern at Goshen Road and Rt. 252 to quench their thirst.  American General Anthony Wayne lived just a few miles down the street and was no doubt familiar with the tavern and its beverages.    

The hostler at that tavern was by some accounts Mordecai Dougherty, an accomplice of the notorious outlaw and highwayman known as Sandy Flash, who had a hiding place in a cave at Castle Rock.  If the walls could talk, they would mention the visits of Sandy Flash.   At that same tavern just a few years before, a young Benjamin West was taught by Indians how to mix colors to add more life to his sketches.  West was the father of American painting and co-founder of the Royal Academy of the Arts in London.  Every great American artist of the 18th century, such as John Singleton Copley, Charles Wilson Peale, Gilbert Stuart, Thomas Sully, and John Trumbull, passed through the studio of this artist who first learned to paint in a small roadside tavern in Newtown Square.

Today if you are sitting at the traffic light in front of this old tavern, you are likely unaware of the history of that small building, and the heroes and scoundrels who passed through its doors.  Like the Natchez Trace, it is a place where travelers had made well worn grooves, now covered by our modern roads.  Each person passing through had a story, each had a reason for traveling, and almost all of their stories are forgotten. 

But there are people in our community who remember the past, who seek out those stories, who take care of those old buildings, and try to save them from being demolished, and seek to educate our community, children and adults, to the importance of valuing and preserving our history.  We are the Newtown Square Historical Preservation Society, and the Marple Township Historical Society, and we welcome this opportunity to begin to share those stories and our community values with the readers of the Marple Newtown Patch.