BAPL serves a wide and diverse area. Many don\u2019t know that the library doesn\u2019t just house historical records of the City of Bethlehem\u2013the library also has a great array of resources, including those from Hanover Township.\u00a0 And we figured what better way to highlight some of these artifacts than a historical summary of the township using some of these sources.<\/i><\/p>\n
Hanover Township, Northampton County, tucked into the rolling hills north of the City of Bethlehem, is a relatively small municipality that has seen a lot of change over the decades.<\/p>\n
Originally part of the Penn family’s hunting grounds, the area possesses a complicated history. The Penn brothers and other Philadelphia landowners (including the ubiquitous William Allen), who had unscrupulously \u201cacquired\u201d the land from the native populations (especially in the infamous Walking Purchase), had trouble selling it to settlers for several decades. The cause of this avoidance was a misunderstanding about the nature of the land and soil. Called the Dry Lands – an area encompassing much of Hanover Township and extending all the way to Palmer and Forks Townships – it was thought to be poorly watered scrubland. According to some sources, the first Anglo-European settlement in the area was James Burnside\u2019s plantation.1<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n One part of Hanover did see a lot of early activity, however, including visits from some of the Colonies\u2019 most famous persons. The old Lenape Nescopeck Path was the main road from Bethlehem and parts south to the northern settlements, including the doomed Moravian village of Gnadenhutten, and onward to the upper Lehigh River and the west branch of the Susquehanna (where the native village of Nescopeck was located). Beginning in north Bethlehem, it followed what is now Schoenersville and Weaversville Road, and took travelers through the Lehigh Gap in the Blue Mountains. The hardships of the road are described in Benjamin Franklin\u2019s autobiography, in a chapter dealing with his time establishing a series of forts along the Pennsylvania frontier during the French and Indian War:<\/p>\n \u201cI concluded to go myself with the rest of my force to Gnadenhut, where a Fort was tho\u2019t more immediately necessary. The Moravians procur\u2019d me five Waggons for our Tools, Stores, Baggage, &c. Just before we left Bethlehem, Eleven Farmers who had been driven from their Plantations by the Indians, came to me requesting a supply of Fire Arms, that they might go back and fetch off their Cattle. I game them each a Gun with suitable Ammunition. We had not march\u2019d many Miles before it began to rain, and it continu\u2019d raining all Day. There were no Habitations on the Road, to shelter us, till we arriv\u2019d near Night, at the House of a German, were and in his Barn we were all huddled together as wet as Water could make us\u2026The next Day being fair, we continued our March and arriv\u2019d at the desolated Gnadenhut.\u201d<\/p>\n Among the ruins of Gnadenhutten Franklin\u2019s men built Fort Allen, which then gave its name to the Lenape Nescopeck Path. Later, it was also known as The King\u2019s Road to Allentown (Allentown was the early name for what we now call Weissport). Almost every traveler, exalted or humble, coming up out of the city of Philadelphia who traveled to the northern interior of Pennsylvania would have used that path.<\/p>\n With the discovery in the nineteenth century that the land was much better for farming than previously thought, and then the further discovery of an abundance of iron ore, Hanover Township slowly began to fill with farms and homes. What had kept settlers away for so long – the gentle landscape and the lack of watercourses – eventually became a trait that attracted the rapid and dramatic development of the late twentieth century. The placement of Route 22 was instrumental to Hanover\u2019s growth, both in terms of suburban housing and the industrial parks that sprang up.2<\/em><\/strong> Lehigh Valley Industrial Park IV was the second largest Industrial Park in Pennsylvania when it was built in 1989, and it was quickly followed by another Industrial Park nearby.3<\/strong><\/em> Today, more than ten-thousand people live in the township.<\/p>\n