Jefferis’ Ford on the Brandywine

Jefferis Ford was an early crossing of the East Branch of the Brandywine Creek in East Bradford Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania. It became historically significant during the Battle of Brandywine on September 11, 1777, when the main British flanking column under Generals Sir William Howe and Lord Charles Cornwallis crossed the Brandywine here after first crossing the West Branch at Trimble’s Ford. Their long march around the American right flank allowed them to approach Washington’s army from an unexpected direction and helped determine the course of the battle. Chester County’s modern battlefield interpretation estimates that approximately 11,000 British and Hessian troops passed through the Jefferis property and crossed at the ford.

The ford took its name from the Jefferis family, who had settled along this part of the Brandywine early in the eighteenth century. Robert Jefferis, the family’s early Chester County settler, purchased 169 acres in East Bradford Township in 1701. By the time of the Revolution, his grandson Emmor Jefferis (born about 1732) owned Blue Rock Farm on the west side of the creek near the ford.

A covered bridge crossed the Brandywine at Jefferis Ford for more than a century. Built in 1833, the single-span Burr-truss bridge survived until February 10, 1953, when it was destroyed by arson. Later that year it was replaced by a steel Pratt through-truss bridge dating from 1905, which was moved to the site from another location in Chester County. That bridge still carries Allerton Road across the East Branch of the Brandywine today, although it is presently undergoing rehabilitation.

Historian and illustrator Benson J. Lossing visited Jefferis Ford on December 1, 1848, while traveling through Revolutionary War sites gathering material for his Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution. His description is especially valuable because he saw the ford, bridge, and Jefferis house little more than seventy years after the battle:

December 1, 1848. I breakfasted by candle-light, and, at seven o’clock, we were on our way to Jefferis’s Ford, on the Brandywine, two and a half miles from West Chester. Thick clouds covered the heavens, and a biting northeast wind, bearing a few tiny snowflakes and pellets of soft hail, evinced the presence of winter. The old ford, where the division of the British army under Howe and Cornwallis crossed the Brandywine, was eight or ten rods above the bridge which now spans the stream. On the high ground upon the opposite shore, the old stone house of Emmor Jefferis is yet standing.

In it the merchants of Wilmington, alarmed for the safety of their goods, stored a large quantity of wine and other liquors, believing that the line of march of the British army would be through their own town, and not as high up the stream as at this place. For reasons which we shall presently consider, Cornwallis and his division crossed the Brandywine at this ford, and, discovering the Madeira wine in Jefferis’s house, made themselves merry at the expense of the “rebel merchants.”

Howe took Jefferis with him as a guide to conduct him toward Birmingham meeting-house.

Lossing calls the surviving building in 1848 the “old stone house of Emmor Jefferis” and repeats the tradition that Wilmington merchants had stored wine and other valuables there, only for the British to find them. Modern Chester County research actually gives us better documentation for this story. It identifies 1104 Allerton Road as Emmor Jefferis’s farm, house and barn, and quotes an 1861 West Chester account saying Wilmington merchants had sent their “choice liquors, and other valuables” to Emmor Jefferis’s house believing the area would be safe from the British. Instead, Howe’s flanking column marched directly through it. (Chester County Planning Commission)

Visit the Site

Modern battlefield research identifies the Jefferis’ Ford archaeological site with the location of County Bridge No. 111 on Allerton Road, at the East Branch of the Brandywine. The surrounding 1090 and 1104 Allerton Road properties are identified as part of the historic Jefferis landscape through which the British forces passed. (East Bradford Township / Brandywine Battlefield Strategic Landscape Study)

For someone who actually wants to visit, the better address is:

Jefferis Ford Nature Area
35 North Creek Road
West Chester, PA 19382

East Bradford Township maintains the small interpretive area there, directly overlooking the bridge and historic ford site.

References

• Futhey, J. Smith, and Gilbert Cope. History of Chester County, Pennsylvania, with Genealogical and Biographical Sketches. Philadelphia: Louis H. Everts, 1881. See especially p. 613 for the Jefferis family and the section reproducing Joseph Townsend’s account of the Battle of Brandywine.
• Cope, Gilbert. Jefferis Family. West Chester, Pennsylvania, after 1870. The Chester County History Center’s bibliography dates it only as “after 1870,” rather than firmly to 1870. Chester County History Center
• Lossing, Benson J. The Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution. Vol. II. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1851–1852, pp. 374–375.
• Chester County Planning Commission. Historical, Archeological, Geophysical, and Geomorphic Assessment of Four Strategic Battlefield Landscapes: Brandywine Battlefield, Chester County, Pennsylvania. This is actually a very useful modern source for the exact ford, Jefferis properties, roads, and battlefield landscape.