BAPL serves a wide and diverse area. Many don’t know that the library doesn’t just house historical records of the City of Bethlehem–the library also has a great array of resources, including those from Hanover Township. And we figured what better way to highlight some of these artifacts than a historical summary of the township using some of these sources.
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.
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 “acquired” 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’s plantation.1
One part of Hanover did see a lot of early activity, however, including visits from some of the Colonies’ 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’s autobiography, in a chapter dealing with his time establishing a series of forts along the Pennsylvania frontier during the French and Indian War:
“I concluded to go myself with the rest of my force to Gnadenhut, where a Fort was tho’t more immediately necessary. The Moravians procur’d 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’d many Miles before it began to rain, and it continu’d raining all Day. There were no Habitations on the Road, to shelter us, till we arriv’d 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…The next Day being fair, we continued our March and arriv’d at the desolated Gnadenhut.”
Among the ruins of Gnadenhutten Franklin’s men built Fort Allen, which then gave its name to the Lenape Nescopeck Path. Later, it was also known as The King’s 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.
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’s growth, both in terms of suburban housing and the industrial parks that sprang up.2 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 Today, more than ten-thousand people live in the township.
A flavor of mid-twentieth century local land use politics – as well as an idea of the surrounding landscape – can be gained from BAPL’s newspaper archive dealing with Hanover Township. In the “Vertical Files” of the Bethlehem Room, you can piece together an event that determined the kind of city we live in today. In the 1950s the City of Bethlehem created recreational space in the open land where the township tucks into the city along Illick’s Mill Road. After the quick success of the golf course, swimming pool, and ice rink, City Council decided to add to the park in September 1958 by annexing the triangle of land bordered by Illick’s Mill Road, Schoenersville Road, and the ice rink. This 62.5 acre parcel of land, most of which had once been the Kipp farm and had recently been bought by developer Harold S. Campbell, became a legal battleground.
Campbell had begun preparing the ground for the construction of a shopping center, and upon “first reading” of the eminent domain ordinance at a Council meeting, the feathers started to fly. There were accusations of broken agreements between the city and Campbell, who argued that the land had appreciated greatly in just the short time he’d owned it. At council meetings Campbell was called a “propagandist” and accused of extorting public money. Sometimes, Council would suddenly move to a private meeting in the mayor’s office. Several weeks later, the ordinance was read a second time, but, breaking the usual custom, not immediately read a third time and then adopted, so the issue hung in limbo for a few more months. Campbell (actually the attorney representing Campbell’s three children, who had apparently been entrusted with the land) took the city to court in order to force it to act, claiming that money was being lost every day that the shopping center was not getting built.
In late November 1958, the eminent domain ordinance was finally adopted. And with that the arguments in court switched to the land’s value. Campbell claimed the potential shopping center increased the worth of the land to $1.5 million; the city stuck to its original figure of $285,000. A district court appointed an outside appraisal board of “three Easton men,” who eventually set the figure at $385,000. Campbell stuck to his figure and his lawsuit.
In August 1962 new mayor Gordon Payrow (who had succeeded Earl Schaffer) and City Council rescinded the order of eminent domain, saying they didn’t want to take the risk of the court forcing the taxpayers to pay the $1.5 million. This brought new legal action: Campbell sued for $1,000,000 damages, claiming the land had lost 2/3 of its value during the standoff.
Finally, in January 1965, with a trial date set for February to determine possible damages, the city and Campbell settled on a figure of $565,000 for the land, dropping all pending and future claims. Mayor Payrow negotiated with Bethlehem Steel for a $200,000 grant, plus an interest – free loan to cover the rest, which would be paid off by redirecting federal money that was going to go toward land in the Poconos to increase Bethlehem’s watershed. On January 16, 1965, after so much governmental and legal artillery fire, a half-column story appeared in the local section of the Globe-Times: “Purchase Of Park Tract Completed.”
So that little patch of land at the bottom of Hanover Township has seen two seven years’ wars: the one that Ben Franklin took part in when he passed through on the Nescopeck Path, and the seven year Battle of the Campbell Tract almost exactly 200 years later.
Notes
- Comprehensive Historic Resource Survey For: Hanover Township, Northampton County, Penna.
- Ibid.
- “Lehigh Valley Industrial Park At 30”
Sources
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Yale University Press, 1964.
“Lehigh Valley Industrial Park at 30.” The Bethlehem Globe-Times. 27 June 1989.
“Buildings & Streets – Hanover Township” Vertical File, Bethlehem Room archive. Bethlehem Area Public Library.
“Purchase Of Park Tract Completed.” The Bethlehem Globe-Times. 16 Jan. 1965. Microfilm collection, Bethlehem Area Public Library.
“Steel Offers $565,000 To Buy Campbell Tract.” The Bethlehem Globe-Times. 6 Jan. 1965. Microfilm Collection, Bethlehem Area Public Library.
Comprehensive Historic Resource Survey For: Hanover Township, Northampton County, Penna. Northampton County Historical & Genealogical Society; Northampton County Historical Resource Survey, Thomas Edward Jones, chairperson. [date unknown]
Article written by Information Technician, Brad Rogers.