History & local legend
The former Blue Ball Inn near Berwyn was a stopping place for travelers on the Lancaster road. Its notorious keeper, Priscilla “Prissy” Robinson, inherited the business in the early nineteenth century and ran it for more than fifty years. Her long life became entangled with stories of missing travelers and suspicious sounds in the night.
According to the local legend, guests sometimes woke to muffled cries followed by scraping that sounded like a shovel cutting into earth. By morning, Prissy was serving coffee and sugared doughnuts as though nothing had happened. Peddlers returning from Philadelphia with money were said to be especially vulnerable, giving the inn's ordinary hospitality a sinister meaning.
Prissy lived from 1777 to 1877. Her gravestone records her name as Priscilla Robison Cahill. The old inn survives as a house at the junction of Russell Road, Old Lancaster Road, and Glenn Avenue.
Sources
- Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society, Caroline Hager on Prissy and the two Blue Ball inns
- Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society, Mary Robertson Ives reads Prissy’s gravestone
- Julius F. Sachse, The Wayside Inns on the Lancaster Roadside, pp. 99–100
- OpenStreetMap, Russell and Old Lancaster roads at Glenn Avenue
