Presidential Visits to the Phoenixville Area

Today is Presidents Day, and Phoenixville Patch headed to (HSPA) to get the skinny on some presidents and their kin who passed through the area.

The Freedoms Foundation in Schuylkill Township was by far the most popular stop, but presidents have made their way to Phoenixville Borough, too. Here’s what we uncovered, with the help of the volunteers at the HSPA.

• There was some local lore that Abraham Lincoln slept, danced and spent time at the former Mansion House Hotel in Phoenixville (now the Pickering Creek Inn) on his way to Gettysburg. It’s just a myth, however.

Jack Ertell of the HSPA cleared it up. The owner of the hotel was big in the Republican Party and likely concocted the story. Tracing the train routes, there’s no way Lincoln would’ve found his way to Phoenixville when he was on his way to deliver The Gettysburg Address.

“It’s totally untrue,” Ertell said. “There’s nothing to it.”

• It’s true, however, that in 1912, Teddy Roosevelt passed through Phoenixville, stopping at the Reading Railroad Station. See him standing on the back of a train in one of the photos with this article.
• Dwight D. Eisenhower was one of the founders of The Freedoms Foundation in Schuylkill Township in 1949 and served as the first chairman. He made multiple visits there, and presented the first Freedoms Foundation National Awards.

“There can be no doubt that the presentation of those first awards by Gen. Eisenhower, probably the most well-known and highly respected man in America at that time, contributed tremendously to the widespread attention given the [awards] program by both the media and the general public,” states the Report from Valley Forge newsletter from 1984.

• On Feb. 22, 1958, Herbert Hoover laid the cornerstone for a new library building for The Freedoms Foundation during the awards program.
• In 1974, Eisenhower’s son John, who lived in Schuylkill Township on Valley Forge Mountain, wrote a weekly column for the local newspaper The Daily Republic.
• In 1978, Gerald Ford dedicated a new visitors’ center at The Freedoms Foundation.
• Two of Richard Nixon’s grandchildren were born at Phoenixville Hospital, and he stopped to see them in the borough. The HSPA had a photo from 1980 of Julie Nixon, the daughter of Richard Nixon, who married David Eisenhower, the grandson of Dwight D. Eisenhower.
• In 1981, Ronald Reagan was named honorary chairman of The Freedoms Foundation. He served as a trustee for the foundation beginning in 1968.

Thanks to the volunteers at HSPA for their help digging up this information!