Pointing to the Powel House on 3rd Street near Walnut where George Washington was a frequent guest, one guide claimed that “George Washington and Abraham Lincoln ate dinner together inside.”
Several guides proudly proclaimed that John F. Kennedy had lived on 3rd street a few doors down from the Powel House. Another said Jacqueline Kennedy had spend most of her childhood in one house.
Yes, three houses on the block were built by Jacqueline Kennedy’s great-great grandfather Michel Bouvier in the1840s, so it’s just a simple leap of logic to make 3rd Street JFK’s or Jackie’s childhood home.
“Benjamin Franklin fathered 69 illegitimate children,” declared one ghost tour guide. Well, Ben did have one illegitimate son, William Franklin.
So what’s wrong with a bit of exaggeration?
Yes, when Walt Whitman lived in Camden, he
did visit friends in Philadelphia, as a young tour bus guide explained. No, he did
not get to Philly by crossing the Ben Franklin Bridge, which opened 34 years after the poet was dead and buried.
