|West Chester & Chadds Ford History| The Chester County History Center has started taking lovers of history on local walks around West Chester. These treks back in time are very quickly becoming among the hottest tickets in town
History streets
By Richard L. Gaw Staff Writer
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Photo by Richard L. Gaw
Anne Skillman, left, and Jennifer Green of the Chester County History Center provide complete narration during each tour. 48
Chadds Ford Life | Fall/Winter 2021 | www.chestercounty.com
t is an early autumn weeknight at the Chester County History Center (CCHC) on North High Street in West Chester, and 16 guests gather on the building’s front patio and prepare for an evening that will take them back in time. Over the course of the next 90 minutes – under the guidance of CCHS’ Director of Education Jennifer Green and CCHC Public Program Coordinator Anne Skillman – the guests embark on a 1.7-mile trek along High, Market and Gay streets and through all of the nooks and crannies of West Chester. At different locations, Green and Skillman hold up their lanterns and tell of local fables and macabre truths of murder, mischief and hijinks, all of which happened at or near where they now stand, between 1838 and 1907. Pulled from the Chester County Archives’ coroner’s records, county prison records and old newspaper clippings, each story becomes more riveting than the one before it. To each guest, the Borough of West Chester is gradually no longer a downtown of packed restaurants and strolling college students, but a history lesson about false identifications, exhumed cadavers, the Grimm family, prison gallows, buried bones and public hangings. This is “Chilling West Chester II,” and it is part of a new walking tour series launched by CCHC in 2020 that is drawing sold-out audiences whose fascination with local history is
