Category: History Spotlight

“With the slow pace of life in the village of Newtown Square at the beginning of the 1800s, a few landowners or wealthier residents rose above the usual farming level to become outstanding in one way or another.

The United States celebrated its 200th birthday in Philadelphia on July 4th, 1976. The Bicentennial was a stone in the pond, whose ripples continue to be felt. In Newtown Square, some history-minded people got excited about their own history, noticed that Newtown Township would be 300 years old in 1981, and ended up writing a thorough local history book, “Historic Newtown Township.”

After Delaware County was split off from Chester County in 1789, a new road was needed to take travelers west from Newtown Square to the new county seat of West Chester, and so the West Chester Turnpike was laid out.

Following the American Revolution, a civil war took place in Chester County. The county seat was the town of Chester, on the Delaware River, equally inconvenient to everyone in the huge county other than the locals.

Carl Ewing, past Chief the Newtown Square Fire Company is now the “Official Time Capsule Opener.” When the first firehouse building was built in 1916, a copper box was sealed in the cornerstone.

Where do you begin to tell the history of Castle Rock, once one of the…

Each September we recognize Constitution Day on September 17th, to celebrate the U.S. Constitution. Over…

West Chester Pike has been a witness to the history of transportation in Delaware County. From its first creation in the 1790s, the road saw foot traffic, horse and wagons, a “plank road” turnpike, regular stagecoach service and finally in 1895, a horse-drawn and later motorized trolley line that eventually connected the 69th Street Terminal with West Chester.

Newtown was a sleepy country crossroads for much of its history. Today, it is two miles from I-476. And if different choices had been made, the interstate highway would have crossed right through the eastern portion of the Township.

When I first joined the Newtown Square Historical Society in the mid 1990’s, there was…