Plymouth Meeting is a census-designated place (CDP) that straddles Plymouth and Whitemarsh Townships in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, United States. The settlement was founded in 1686.
The population of Plymouth Meeting was 7,452 as of the 2020 census. Plymouth Meeting is home to the Colonial School District, the Plymouth Meeting Mall and several large office parks and shopping centers. It is home to IKEA's U.S. headquarters.IKEA: Global furniture chain The confluence of the Pennsylvania Turnpike (I-276), the Mid-County Expressway/"Blue Route" (I-476) and the Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike (I-476) at the Mid-County Interchange occurs at Plymouth Meeting. This interchange contributes to regional commerce and was a major driver for business and retail development.
Plymouth Meeting is located northwest of Philadelphia City Hall, and southeast of Allentown. Northwestern Avenue, Philadelphia's western boundary at Chestnut Hill, is about southeast of the intersection of Germantown Pike and Butler Pike, in Plymouth Meeting.
History 17th century Plymouth Meeting was settled by members of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers. They sailed from Devonshire, England, on the ship Desire, arriving in Philadelphia on June 23, 1686. The settlement takes its name from the founders' hometown of Plymouth in Devon. The Plymouth Friends Meetinghouse was built in 1708, at the southwest corner of what are now Germantown and Butler Pikes.
18th century In 1754, Benjamin Davis received a license to keep an inn on Ridge Pike at Plymouth Creek. This inn, the Seven Stars, was shown on maps as early as 1759. It was demolished in 1975 to make way for the Midcounty Expressway.
Early records indicate that one person was elected as "road supervisor" and tax collector. The roads were mostly dirt, and repair and maintenance was often auctioned off to the lowest bidder, usually a farmer who had large properties and kept many men and horses, and the smaller farmers worked on the roads for them.
Tax records show that many taxpayers paid their taxes by working on the roads. From 1846 to 1854 the road supervisor was paid one dollar per day for his work as supervisor and collector of taxes. Men working on the roads received $.80 per day and boys received $.40 per day. For the use of a double team of horses with a wagon or cart, one was paid $1.75 per day.
During the Revolutionary War, in May 1778, the Plymouth Friends Meetinghouse served as a temporary military hospital. General George Washington, then at Valley Forge, learned that a British force intended to seize the area and cut off movement of the Continental Army. He sent Marquis de Lafayette and 2,100 troops to counter. They camped around the meetinghouse on the night before the May 19 Battle of Barren Hill. The next morning the British arrived with a massive force of 16,000, and tried to cut off any escape route. Lafayette instead took advantage of the Americans' knowledge of local roads, and escaped with minimal casualties.
19th century
Plymouth Meeting House is the name of a village situated at the intersection of the Plymouth and Perkiomen turnpikes, on the township line. On this [Plymouth] side is the meeting house, school house and four houses; and in Whitemarsh two stores, a blacksmith and wheelwright shop, post office and twenty-four houses. The houses in this village are chiefly situated along the Perkiomen or Reading pike, nearly adjoining one another, and being of stone, neatly white washed, with shady yards in front, present to the stranger and agreeable appearance. In the basement of the Library building the Methodists hold worship. This is an ancient settlement, whose history dates back nearly to the arrival of William Penn, and is marked as a village on Lewis Evans' map of 1749. The post office was established here before 1827. In 1832 there were but ten houses here. — History of Montgomery County (1858).William J. Buck, History of Montgomery County within the Schuylkill Valley (Norristown, PA: E. L. Acker, 1859), p. 81. In the early 19th century the Hickorytown Hotel, on Germantown Pike opposite Hickory Road, was a prominent road house. Robert Kennedy, an officer in the Revolution, operated the inn in 1801. In 1806 it was kept by Frederick Dull and in 1825, Jacob Hart. In the beginning of the 19th century it was a training place for the 36th Regiment of the Pennsylvania Militia and the Second Battalion of Montgomery County. The Friendship Company for the Protection against Horse Stealing was organized there in 1807. Township elections were held there, and a Hickorytown post office was established in May 1857.
Transportation and industry
What is now Germantown Pike was ordered laid out by the Provincial Government in 1687 as a "cart road" from Philadelphia to Plymouth Meeting. The actual road was paved in 1804, at a cost of $11,287. A road from Plymouth Meeting to Gwynedd appears to have been built in 1751. What is now Chemical Road, following Plymouth Creek, was opened in 1759 to provide access to a new gristmill.
The Philadelphia, Germantown, and Norristown Railroad was built along the Schuylkill River through Plymouth Township and commenced operation in 1835. For most of its history, this railroad was part of the Reading Railroad system. Today these tracks are SEPTA's Manayunk/Norristown Line.
The Plymouth Railroad was built in 1836 to serve some 20 lime kilns operating along the route between Conshohocken and Cold Point. In 1870, the line was acquired by the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad and was rebuilt and extended to Oreland at a junction with the North Penn Railroad. The line was abandoned by the 1970s.
The Schuylkill Valley Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad was built parallel to the Reading Railroad tracks along the Schuylkill River, opening for service in 1884. Rail service ended in the 1970s and the track-bed is now occupied by the multi-use (pedestrian and bicycle) Schuylkill River Trail.
The Trenton Cutoff branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad was built in 1891. The Trenton Cutoff is now owned by Norfolk Southern and is known as the Morrisville Line.
In the 1890s, electric trolley lines were built through Plymouth Meeting. The trolleys ran along the shoulder of Germantown Pike and connected Chestnut Hill and Norristown. The trolley along the shoulder of Butler Pike was a short shuttle known as the Harmonville Dinkey, running between Germantown Pike and Ridge Pike (0.7 miles). Dinkey passengers transferred to Conshohocken-bound trolleys at the corner of Ridge Pike and Butler Pike.
Among early industries in Plymouth Township was the Hickorytown Forge operated by the Wood family, and a forerunner of the present Alan Wood Steel Company. The name Plymouth Furnace appears in the records about 1847 and was engaged in the manufacture of nails.
In 1863, the Plymouth Iron Company was organized with a capital of $30,000.00. The company purchased the property of Colwell Furnace, which is located just west of the present Colwell Lane adjoining the development known as Farmview Village.
Abolition
Slave holding was condemned by the Society of Friends in 1754. At the time of the American Revolution, slavery was legal in every one of the 13 Colonies. With the 1780 Gradual Abolition Act, the Pennsylvania legislature became the first state government to implement a gradual abolition of slavery. But completing that process took 67 years.
The Maulsby and Corson families of Plymouth Meeting were early abolitionists, sheltering runaway slaves beginning in the 1810s, and turning their properties into stations on the Underground Railroad.Hiram Corson, M.D. "The Plymouth Group," The Abolitionists of Montgomery County, (Norristown, PA: Few slaves were held in Plymouth Township, and only one was recorded in the 1830 U.S. Census. Historical Society of Montgomery County, 1900), pp. 41-43. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 increased the penalties for giving assistance to an escaped slave to six months in federal prison and a $1,000 fine.
On July 18, 1855, Colonel John H. Wheeler, a North Carolina slaveholder and the new U.S. Minister to Nicaragua, traveled by train from Washington, D.C. to New York City, to be followed by a voyage to Central America. He was accompanied by his wife and children, and his slaves Jane Johnson and her two sons. At Philadelphia, the train passengers had to switch to a ferry to cross the Delaware River. Wheeler locked Johnson and her sons in a hotel room, while he and his family took the afternoon to visit his wife's parents. Johnson's screams for help were heard by a Black porter, who contacted William Still of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, who in turn contacted attorney Passmore Williamson. Still and Williamson met Wheeler at the ferry and explained the Pennsylvania law to him and Johnson. Johnson chose to walk away from slavery and, as a pair of Black dockworkers restrained Wheeler, she and her sons were driven away in carriages. The trio were secreted to Boston. Johnson returned to Pennsylvania the following month as a surprise witness in the August 29 trial of William Still and the five dockworkers. Still and three of the dockworkers were acquitted of assault; while the other two were found guilty, spent a week in jail and paid a $10 fine. Following her testimony, Johnson was hidden for several days at George and Martha Corson's house in Plymouth Meeting, to prevent her being kidnapped and returned to slavery.
Johnson's escape to freedom exposed a loophole in the Fugitive Slave Act—because Wheeler had voluntarily brought them into Pennsylvania, Johnson and her sons were not fugitives across state lines, thus, Pennsylvania law rather than federal law applied. The Johnson verdict established that slaveholders could be stripped of their human property who accompanied them while passing through a free state. The Johnson incident was viciously condemned, especially in the South.Phil Lapsansky, "The Liberation of Jane Johnson," The Library Company of Philadelphia, 2003.
Following the suspicious burning of a church that had hosted abolitionist speakers, local churches and schools began denying abolitionists permission to use their buildings. In response, George Corson built Abolition Hall (1856), an addition to his barn at Germantown and Butler Pikes. The hall could accommodate up to 200 people, and hosted speakers such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lucretia Mott, Mrs. Stephen Foster and William Lloyd Garrison.
Abolition Hall later became the studio of painter Thomas Hovenden, who married George Corson's daughter Helen, also a painter, in 1881. Perhaps inspired by the righteous arguments that had been made in that same room a generation earlier, Hovenden painted The Last Moments of John Brown (1884), a posthumous portrait of the radical abolitionist and insurrectionist kissing a Black baby as he is led to the gallows.Naurice Frank Woods, Jr., "Home, Hearth and Humanity: The Triumph over Racial Stereotyping of African-Americans in the Genre Paintings of Thomas Hovenden and Henry Ossawa Tanner," in Thomas Hovenden (1840 - 1895), American Painter of Hearth and Home, exhibition catalogue (Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, 1995).
Hovenden was noted for his genre scenes of American life, many featuring his Plymouth Meeting neighbors, black and white, as models.Anne Gregory Terhune, "Thomas Hovenden: Images of Heritage and Hope," in Thomas Hovenden (1840 - 1895), American Painter of Hearth and Home, exhibition catalogue (Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, 1995). He succeeded Thomas Eakins as instructor in painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1886. Perhaps Hovenden's most famous painting, Breaking Home Ties (1890), is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
20th century