History & local legend
City Tavern in Philadelphia was a gathering place for people involved in the founding of the United States. It also had a ghost story in circulation by 1801. We know about it through a letter Maria Fenno sent to her friend Rebecca Gratz on November 8 of that year, later transcribed by researcher Susan Sklaroff.
Fenno wrote that John Bleecker and a companion had spent a disturbed night in a tavern room associated with a deceased man named Jackson. The two men said they had seen a ghost. When they described the visitor afterward, the description supposedly matched Jackson.
Fenno offered another explanation: somebody might have been playing a trick on the pair in return for their own practical jokes at Princeton. She was concerned that the story would spread and frighten away the tavern’s customers. The City Tavern building standing today is a later reconstruction; the 1801 encounter belongs to its predecessor.
Sources
- Susan Sklaroff, A Philadelphia Ghost Story, October 27, 2009, quoting Maria Fenno’s November 8, 1801 letter
- NPS, Cultural Resource Management Records finding aid, City Tavern completion reports, 1975–1976
- Michael Klein, City Tavern’s garden to reopen as a summer pop-up, The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 19, 2026
- The Constitutional, City Tavern, reconstruction history
