A familiar Chester County road traces its name to a colonial tavern and a petition filed in 1773.
West Goshen Township's Historic Commission published an account on the township's website tracing Boot Road's origins to that year, when residents of then-Goshen Township petitioned for a roadway out of the Sign of the Boot Tavern extending to Wilmington Road near Thomson's Graveyards.
Michael Pillagalli, chair of the West Goshen Historic Commission, wrote the piece. He noted that road names sometimes come from developers naming streets after their children, their pets or the terrain they cross.
The 1773 petition stalled for 15 years. The American Revolution broke out, and workers to handle the paperwork and planning were unavailable. In 1787, a road jury planned to route the road through properties belonging to Isaiah Matlack, Joseph Moore and William Eachus.
Those three landowners pushed back. In March 1789, they petitioned to have the road's path moved, arguing that another road was already planned from the White Horse Tavern on Lancaster Road. John Bowen, owner and operator of the Boot Tavern, signed that petition.
A separate group then filed its own petition. They argued that all the road paperwork was slowing efforts to move the Chester County courthouse to the borough of West Chester.
The road was finally laid out in November 1789. It ran from the White Horse Tavern past the Boot Tavern, through the Matlack and Eachus properties, and ended at what is now Gay Street in West Chester Borough. According to the township's account, it was named Boot Road after Goshen Township's Boot Tavern and was the first road so named for a local establishment.
That original route has become what residents know as Old Phoenixville Pike, continuing onto Maple Avenue past Henderson High School and into West Chester Borough's Gay Street.
The Boot Tavern itself opened in 1765 at Boot Road and Phoenixville Pike, according to a West Goshen Historic Commission timeline. The tavern served as a site for conducting township business. During the Battle of the Clouds on Sept. 16, 1777, British General Howe ordered Hessian soldiers to the Boot Tavern, according to East Goshen Township's history. Hessian troops engaged Pennsylvania militia on the Meredith farm near the Boot Tavern that day.
Boot Road later served as a connection to agricultural communities north and west of the township, particularly near Exton and Downingtown, according to East Goshen Township records.
Pillagalli's full account is available on the West Goshen Township website.
Upcoming in the area: The West Chester Public Library's Halloween door tour runs through Oct. 31, and West Chester's dark history tours continue through Halloween.
