I should say, for accuracy, that the Benedict Arnold led raid into Richmond in 1781 DID get farther west than Mulberry and Grove — Thomas Jefferson, then governor, placed papers at the Westham Foundry for safekeeping, where they were burned. But, no organized resistance of merit occurred during that time. Thus, no advance pickets of Arnold’s would’ve been “driven in.”

The Revolutionary War “scuffle” legend is, well, just that. When Benedict Arnold led his traitorous raid into town in January 1781, he (as I understand the event) didn’t get that far west at that point.

The little marker placed at Mulberry and Grove by a Rev War veteran aggrieved because he didn’t get enough of a pension, that mentioned driving in “Arnold’s picket” is, well, an apparent fabrication.

“Scuffle” may refer to the few residents of that quarter in the late 18th century and their hardscrabble living conditions.

The article you referred to makes note of the Westham “Scuffletown” Pike that roughly tracked along Park Ave., but leaves out the most important part. Scuffletown Tavern stood on the site of the park. Images of it are in his book on pages 18-19.

As Drew St. J. Carneal mentions in his Fan Disrtrict book, the name was getting used by developers of the land early as 1791.

The tavern began operating there at least by 1792. The wonderfully chatty historian Samuel Mordecai writing before the Civil War, described a sign of a globe in front of the place “the head of the proprietor protruding at the north and his feet at the south pole, with the legend, ‘Help a scuffler through the world.’” It’s a great image.

The tavern seems to have converted to a residence after 1800. As what became the Fan District evolved throughout the late 19th and early 20th century, what must’ve been a sagging, splintering wooden 18th century building became an impediment to progress. It was demolished around 1918 — perhaps for that horse barn.

The house, built around that time, at Strawberry and Park on the southwestern corner, seems to have tried to honor the building in its design.

Seems a shame to have lost such an old structure — imagine the bed and breakfast! — but otherwise, we’d not have the park. And I enjoy taking lunch there on warm days.

And I remember the concrete embellishments from the 1980s when they became frequent marks for graffitists and useful for skate board practitioners.

Why these things were built, when a scraped knee would send a kid wailing or worse, is beyond me. Paradise Park resembles how Scuffletown used to look.