Okehocking Historic District | |
Location | Roughly bounded by West Chester Pike, Plumsock Road, Goshen Road, and Garrett Mill Road, near Media, Willistown Township, Pennsylvania |
---|---|
Coordinates | 39°58′35″N75°30′30″W / 39.97639°N 75.50833°W |
Area | 1,400 acres (570 ha) |
Built | 1703 |
Architect | Multiple |
Architectural style | Colonial Revival |
NRHP reference No. | 93000719 [1] |
Added to NRHP | August 2, 1993 |
Okehocking Historic District, also known as the Okehocking Indian Land Grant Historic District, is a national historic district in Willistown Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993. [1]
The historic district encompasses 69 contributing buildings, 5 contributing sites, 2 contributing structures, and 1 contributing object in a rural area near Media. A majority of the buildings were built before 1845. The district features an assortment of 18th-century and 19th-century farmhouses and related outbuildings located on a 500-acre Indian land grant by William Penn to the Okehocking band of Lenape, established in 1703. Notable contributing assets include a Willistown Friends Meetinghouse and its burial ground, a one-room school known as the Willistown School No. 6, a former inn known as the Rising Sun Tavern, the vacated Smedley Mill, and three mill sites: the Garrett Mill, Duckett Mill, and George Matlack's sawmill. [2]
Dedicated on June 21, 1924, a Pennsylvania state historical marker commemorates the location of the former Okehocking Indian Town. The marker consists of a bronze tablet affixed to a large natural boulder, which declares the Okehocking Indian Town to be "the only Indian Reservation the Proprietor [William Penn] ever established." [3] Archaeologists have not uncovered evidence of a permanent Lenape village—the band was probably nomadic and lived in tent-like dwellings that left little trace. [4]
Willistown Friends Meeting House, located near the northeast corner of the district at the intersection of Goshen Road and Warren Avenue, was built in 1798. The earliest European settlers in the area were Quakers who attended meetings for worship at Goshen or Middletown. In 1753 Francis and Ann Smedley donated a small plot of land on Plumsock Road to build a school, which was torn down in 1873. After Francis's death, Ann Smedley donated adjacent land for a burial ground and the meeting house. [2] The meeting owns about 25 acres around the meeting house to protect the rural character of the site. Membership in the meeting had decreased to about five families in the 1950s, but as of 1998 membership had risen to 99 families. [5]
Birmingham Township is a township in Chester County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 4,085 at the 2020 census.
East Goshen Township is a township in Chester County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 18,026 at the 2010 census.
Willistown Township is a township in Chester County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 10,497 at the 2010 census. At the 1860 census, the population of Willistown was 1,521, and in 1980 it was 8,269.
Concord Township is a township in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 17,231 at the 2010 census. It contains the unincorporated communities of Concordville and Glen Mills.
Newtown Township, also referred to by the name of its post office of Newtown Square, is a township in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, United States. Prior to 1789, it was part of Chester County. As of the 2020 census, the population was 15,002.
Whitemarsh Township is a home rule municipality in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, United States. It retains its former classification of "Township" in its official name despite being a home rule municipality. The population was 19,707 at the 2020 census. Whitemarsh is adjacent to the neighborhood of Andorra in the Roxborough section of Philadelphia, and is bordered in Montgomery County by Springfield, Upper Dublin, Whitpain, and Plymouth townships, Conshohocken, and the Schuylkill River, which separates it from Lower Merion Township.
Concordville is an unincorporated community in Concord Township, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is located 20 miles west-southwest of Philadelphia, at the junction of U.S. Routes 1 and 322. This intersection can be traced back to two of the earliest roads in Pennsylvania, Baltimore Pike which became U.S. 1, and Concord Pike, which connected Pennsylvania with Delaware.
Fallsington is an unincorporated community in Falls Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, United States.
Ercildoun, population about 100, is an unincorporated community in East Fallowfield Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania, United States. The hamlet was founded by Quakers and was an early center of the abolitionist movement. In 1985 the entire hamlet, including 31 properties, was listed as a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places. Of these properties two were vacant land, 14 were significant buildings, ten were contributing buildings, and five buildings, built in the 1950s, were non-contributing. The Lukens Pierce House, an octagon house listed separately on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places, is located about half a mile northwest of the hamlet. Ercildoun is one of about ten hamlets in the township, which has no cities or towns, but has 31 sites listed on the National Register. It is one of the larger hamlets, located near the center of the township, and historically among the best known. The city of Coatesville is about 3 miles north.
Nathaniel Grubb (c.1693–1760) was a Willistown mill owner who served ten years in the Pennsylvania Colonial Assembly from 1749 to 1758. A member of the Quaker religious sect, he broke with the Society during the conservative reform movement and sponsored important legislation promoting military preparations for the French and Indian War. His politically incorrect comments about the Scotch Irish are still quoted.
Birmingham Friends Meetinghouse is a historic Quaker meeting house at 1245 Birmingham Road in Birmingham Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania. The current meetinghouse was built in 1763. The building and the adjacent cemetery were near the center of fighting on the afternoon of September 11, 1777 at the Battle of Brandywine. Worship services are held weekly at 10am. The meetinghouse and adjacent octagonal schoolhouse were listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Birmingham Friends Meetinghouse and School on July 27, 1971.
Bradford Friends Meetinghouse, also known as Marshallton Meeting House, is a historic Quaker meeting house located at Marshallton in West Bradford Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania. It was built in 1764–1765, and is a one-story, stone structure with a gable roof. A porch was added to two sides of the building in the 19th century. The interior is divided into four rooms, rather than the customary two. Abraham Marshall, father of botanist Humphry Marshall was instrumental in the establishment of the meeting in the 1720s. The meeting originally met from 1722 to 1727 at the Marshall home, Derbydown Homestead, from 1722 to 1727.
Old Kennett Meetinghouse is a historic meeting house of the Religious Society of Friends or "Quakers" in Kennett Township near Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.
Chichester Friends Meetinghouse is a historic Quaker meeting house at 611 Meetinghouse Road near Boothwyn, in Upper Chichester Township, Delaware County, Pennsylvania. This area, near Chester, was one of the earliest areas settled by Quakers in Pennsylvania. The meetinghouse, first built in 1688, then rebuilt after a fire in 1769, reflects this early Quaker heritage. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.
The Fallsington Historic District is a historic district in Fallsington, Pennsylvania.
Rancocas is an unincorporated community located within Westampton Township in Burlington County, New Jersey. The name derives from the Native American word Rankokous, which was used in the name of the Powhatan Lenape Nation Indian Reservation located in Westampton Township. The name was also known as a sub-tribe of the Ancocus. The Reservation was a popular tourist destination for visitors from the Philadelphia area, New York, and local residents, before the Reservation became Rancocas State Park.
The Okehocking Tribe was a small band of Unami language-speaking Delaware Indians, who occupied an area along the Ridley and Crum creeks in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Part of that area is now known as Ridley Creek State Park. Along with the Schuylkill and Brandywine Indians, the Okehocking were known as Unami or "people down the river" by other tribes, in accordance with the Indian way of designating a tribe by geographical location.
The Quaker Meeting House is a historic Quaker meeting house at the intersection of Quakertown Road and White Bridge Road in the Quakertown section of Franklin Township in Hunterdon County, New Jersey. In 1733, Quaker settlers acquired four acres of land here and built a log house for their first meeting house. A stone church was built here in 1754. The current building is a reconstruction built in 1862 using the original stones from that church. It is a key contributing property of the Quakertown Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places on August 23, 1990. The adjoining burial ground is also contributing to the district. The building is the only Quaker meeting house constructed in Hunterdon County.
The Garrett Farmstead is an historic farmhouse which is located in Willistown Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania.