During the Battle of Brandywine on September 11, 1777, British Generals Howe and Cornwallis marched 11,000 Crown Force soldiers through Blue Rock Farm, owned by Revolutionary War-era Quaker Emmor Jefferis, and across the east branch of the Brandywine at Jefferis' Ford as part of a 14-mile flanking effort against General George Washington's American forces at Chadd's Ford. The ford took its name from the Jefferis family. Emmor Jefferis was forcibly made to guide the British beyond the east side of the ford, and the troops reportedly plundered his house and barn. Howe recognized that his maneuver had succeeded when he reached the east side of Jefferis' Ford and encountered no American troops. Jefferis survived the war, and his family later operated their farmhouse, dating from about 1714, as the Sign of the Eel's Foot Tavern for travelers along the route of today's Allerton Road until it closed around 1845. Joseph Townsend later recalled the British army emerging from the woods into Jefferis' fields on the west side of the creek above the ford, with the fields quickly covered by troops whose raised arms and bayonets shone brightly in the clear, warm day.
