Washington (Almost) Slept Here

Holy Family’s Brush With History

By April White

CENTURIES BEFORE IT would become home to Holy Family University, the land on which the Philadelphia campus sits ran alongside the British colonies’ first highway, which reached from Boston to Charleston. Where the King’s Highway crossed the Poquessing Creek—more or less where Frankford Avenue does today—a tavern opened in about 1730. It would be known as the Red Lion Inn, and by virtue of its location, it would become a regular stop for people like John Adams, who traveled to Philadelphia to agitate for independence.

During the Revolutionary War, this stretch of road was key to the movement of the Continental Army. In the first days of September 1781, the army and its French allies camped along the banks of Poquessing on the way to the decisive Battle of Yorktown. Commander George Washington may have slept at the Red Lion Inn that night, although one diarist says he continued on “to Philadelphia, with forty or fifty men, who rode sword in hand as a guard.”

History would come even closer to Holy Family’s future campus after the British surrendered in Yorktown, according to the National Park Service. In late 1781 and early 1782, the victorious French troops established a camp near what is now the intersection of Grant and Frankford.