Sketch of the original Tun Tavern
was a
tavern in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania which served as a founding or early meeting place for a number of notable groups. It is traditionally regarded as the site where the
United States Marine Corps held its first recruitment drive.
It is also regarded as the "birthplace of Masonic teachings in America."
[Sturkey, Marion F. (2001) (excerpt from "Warrior culture of the U.S. Marines") USMC Press. Retrieved 2008-09-02.]History
Founding
Samuel Carpenter built the tavern in 1685. Built at the intersection of Water Street and Tun Alley, at what is today known as
Penn's Landing, it was named both for the alley and the
Old English word "tun", for a container of
beer. In the 1740s, a restaurant, "Peggy Mullan's Red Hot Beef Steak Club", was added to the tavern.
Organizations founded in the Tavern
The tavern hosted the first meetings of a number of organization. In 1720, the first meetings of the St. George's Society (forerunner of today's "
Sons of the Society of St. George") were held there. The Society was a charitable organization founded to assist needy
Englishmen arriving in the new colony. In 1732, the tavern hosted the
St. John's No. 1 Lodge of the
Grand Lodge of the Masonic Temple in its first meetings. In 1747 became the founding point of the St. Andrew's Society, which, similarly to the St. George's Society, aided newly arriving
Scottish.
The tavern was a significant meeting place for other groups and individuals. In 1756,
Benjamin Franklin used it as a recruitment gathering point for the
Pennsylvania Militia as it prepared to quell
Native American uprisings. The tavern later hosted a meeting of
George Washington,
Thomas Jefferson, and the
Continental Congress. When
Samuel Nicholas enacted a decision of the Continental Congress to form the
Continental Marines, today known as the
United States Marine Corps, he based recruitment at the Tavern, with then-proprietor Robert Mullen as the "chief Marine Recruiter".
Present Day
Tun Tavern no longer exists, having burned down in 1781. Its original location is now occupied by
Interstate 95. The
National Museum of the Marine Corps in
Quantico, Virginia contains a Tun Tavern-themed restaurant with a lunch menu and alcoholic beverages and bread pudding.
See also
