History & local legend
Mom Rinker's Rock rises above Wissahickon Creek in Philadelphia, beneath the Toleration statue. Its name recalls Molly “Mom” Rinker, the central figure in a Revolutionary War story about an old woman's knitting concealing an intelligence operation.
According to the tradition, British soldiers stationed around Germantown paid little attention to Molly as she sat on the rock. She tucked messages about their movements inside balls of yarn and dropped them to the ground below. The Green Boys of Roxborough, a local group supporting American independence, watched from across the creek, retrieved the yarn, and relayed the information to Washington at Valley Forge.
Later storytellers gave Molly a supernatural role. In that version, she was a witch who launched herself from the same high rock on a broomstick at night.
