![]() ![]() In 1784, state authorities carved Montgomery County out of the original Philadelphia County and placed the county seat in Norristown.įrom the county’s earliest days, farmers participated in long-distance commodity trading through the Philadelphia port. After the American Revolution people in the upper part of Philadelphia County petitioned the state Assembly for a separate county, complaining about the inconvenience of traveling all the way to Philadelphia to conduct business at the county seat. Those early incorporations were hardly surprising, since originally those townships were included within Philadelphia County. They included Cheltenham Township, incorporated in 1683, Plymouth in 1701, Abington in 1702, Whitemarsh in 1704, and Lower Merion in 1714. Among the earliest to incorporate were areas located nearest to the port of Philadelphia. Penn encouraged early settlers to form townships and practice self-government. A small farmhouse built in 1719 by Welsh Quaker and farmer William Rees Sr. ![]() Many Germans arrived during the eighteenth century, including Schwenkfelders who settled there as a group. English Quakers also acquired land in the area that eventually became lower Montgomery County. The newcomers gave Welsh names like Gwynedd and Bala Cynwyd to their communities. Lenape people, along with some Dutch and Swedes, inhabited this land before William Penn (1644-1718) acquired it in 1681 and sold what he called the Welsh Tract to Quakers fleeing from persecution in Wales. By the close of the twentieth century, Montgomery County had become an economic engine in its own right, boasting the largest population and by far the largest job base among the counties surrounding Philadelphia. Beginning in the 1950s, however, county residents depended less on Philadelphia for employment, entertainment, shopping, and other daily activities. Subsequent generations built a dense transportation network that linked county laborers, suppliers, and consumers with each other and with the city, fueling the county’s prosperity across the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They depended on the Philadelphia market to sell their products and on its port to connect them to the wider colonial world. The early Europeans who settled in what would become Montgomery County in the eighteenth century tended prosperous farms, forges, and mills. Philadelphia, the Place that Loves You Back. ![]()
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