Colonial Inns in America

The Blue Anchor Tavern, or inn, which stood in Front Street, Philadelphia, until early in the nineteenth century, had caused so much speculation regarding its origin and history, especially as the proprietor of a rather modern saloon situated a block away claimed for his house the honor of being the real Blue Anchor Inn, that the Colonial Society of Pennsylvania had a report on the subject made by one of its members, Thomas Allen Glenn. This report, together with a picture of the original Blue Anchor Tavern, was published in the January, 1897, number of the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography.

Continuing along the road to Philadelphia, we find an even more historic inn, removed about fifteen years ago, in Frankford, known originally as The Jolly Post Boy, and later the altered hotel was called simply The Jolly Post. This old inn was the scene of many stirring events during the Revolution, and its later history also furnished thrills and festive incidents. Although there had been an inn on this site from early in the eighteenth century and as it had received its name from having been a post house for the post rider between Philadelphia and New York, its date was lost in antiquity. It was known to have been The Jolly Post Boy before the Revolution, for in the year 1768 an advertise-ment in the Pennsylvania Chronicle offering the property for sale referred to it as a noted inn in Oxford Township with about twenty-five acres of ground around it. Part of the property remained in two or three families for two centuries.