Historic Philadelphia

saddlemaker), and painted miniature portraits
of his officers between combats; one of his
soldiers remembered it, “He fit and painted,
painted and fit.”
THE BRITISH TAKE OVER
The war was stalled as 1777 began. John
Adams strolled in the burying ground (now
Washington Square) in April, and a caretaker
told him that “upwards of two thousand
soldiers have been buried there” and that many
“died of the smallpox and camp diseases.”
Finally, information came. General Sir
William Howe, with 267 ships and 18,000
soldiers, was sailing up Chesapeake Bay to
invade Maryland and march on Philadelphia.
On August 24, George Washington’s raggedy
troops paraded through Philadelphia on their
way to battle. They had been camped in rainsoaked
fields around the Rising Sun Tavern,
where the York Road merged with the road
from Germantown. General Washington had
been staying at Stenton mansion.
The British arrived on September 11 at the
Brandywine Creek area, and fought the
Americans near Chadd’s Ford. Lord Charles
Cornwallis, a British general, studied the
American battle lines and told General Howe
grudgingly, “The damn rebels form well.” But
the British regulars prevailed.
The city went on alert. Frightened citizens
and Congressmen headed for the countryside.
People carried off their valuables. Church
bells were hustled out of town to save them
from being recast into British cannons. The
2,080-pound State House clunker was hauled
to Allentown and hidden under the floor of
Zion Reformed Church.
Early on September 26, British troops headed
by Cornwallis moved down Germantown
Road to Second Street, and entered the city at
about 10 a.m., led by trotting dragoons and a
band playing God Save the King. A body of soldiers
stayed at Germantown, and Howe
moved into Stenton mansion.
Washington devised a grand plan to take
on the British forces camped around
Germantown. On October 4, about 5 a.m.,
British sentries, shivering in the dawn fog on
the Germantown Road at the lane to Allen’s
mansion called Mount Airy, were surprised by
American cavalrymen. The horsemen were
harbingers of two divisions that were to strike
at the heart of Germantown, while other
forces moved down the Wissahickon Creek,
the Ridge Road, the Limekiln Road and the
York Road.
✧
As the war spread to New York and Canada
late in 1775, captured British soldiers and
their families were being sent to Lancaster,
Trenton, and Philadelphia as prisoners.
David Franks was contracted to provide
supplies for all British prisoners of war in
Pennsylvania. He was a ship owner and
merchant, active in the thirty-five-year-old
Mikveh Israel Congregation. He lived
with his wife and four children in Woodford,
a fine house on the east bank of the
Schuylkill, just below the Robin Hood
Tavern and the lovely dell that surrounded
it. His daughter, Rebecca, was a renowned
Philadelphia beauty.
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR.
CHAPTER II
39