History & local legend
Cliveden, the Benjamin Chew family’s house in Philadelphia’s Germantown neighborhood, became a stronghold during the Battle of Germantown on October 4, 1777. British troops took shelter behind its stone walls as George Washington’s forces attacked. The fighting connects the house and grounds directly to the Revolutionary War.
Later ghost stories return soldiers to that landscape. Figures in military dress are said to wander the grounds, and another legend describes an elderly, headless woman searching for her missing head. Billy Penn’s account of Philadelphia folklore includes both stories, while treating the woman’s supposed death in the battle as legend rather than established history.
