Honey Brook Township
Cambridge As a Possible New County
It was the year 1800 when a movement was created to form a new county along the border of Lancaster county. One man named Abraham Dierdorf acquired a tract of land and laid out a town that he named "Cambridge." Since it straddledbetween Lancaster and Chester counties, even mapmakers, began to place this village on maps. The village of Cambridge still exists on the map that although it has never been developed.
Samuel Sloan, Architect
Samuel Sloan (1815-1884) was born on March 7 in Beaver Dam, PA (in what is now Honey Brook Township) to a family of cabinet makers. In 1833, he became a carpenter in Philadelphia, and was employed by English architect John Haviland who was known to design noteworthy prisons in the United States, including the Eastern State Penitentiary. Transitioning from carpenter to an architect, he won commissions for the designs of the Delaware County Courthouse in Media, PA (1849) and Andrew M. Eastwick's estate Bartram Hall (1850) on 54th St. & Lindburgh Boulevard in Philadelphia.
Bartram Hall had a combination of Italianate features with north Italian medieval design that made Sloan's work popular. He was selected to design the row houses in the West Philadelphia suburbs. You can find his homes still standing in the historic district of Woodland Terrace.
List of Sloan's Famous Works
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Lancaster’s Fulton Opera House (1852)
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Longwood (the Haller Nutt House) in Natchez, Mississippi (1859 - unfinished)
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Asa Packer’s mansion in Jim Thorpe, PA (1859–1861)
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Forks of the Brandywine Presbyterian Church in Glenmoore, PA (1875)
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Faunbrook Bed & Breakfast (residence of William Baldwin) in West Chester, PA (1860)
The First National Bank of Honey Brook
The First National Bank of Honey Brook opened on New Year's Day 1868, and merged with the Bank of Pennsylvania in Reading, PA in 1981. The bank still stands on 4711 Horseshoe Pike as the M&T Bank. After the Civil War, nearly every town in Chester County became home to its own bank.
An Amish Stand Against School Policy
In November 1937, Aaron King of Honey Brook refused to pay a fine for keeping his 14 year old daughter Rebecca out of a "modern" public school. He spent a few nights in jail at the Chester County prison on Market Street. It was noted by the county officials that refusing to have Rebecca go to school would affect state subsidies. The case ended with a whimper once the federal court refused to grant the father’s demand for a writ of habeus corpus. On February 1, 1938 King paid his $15 fine and sent Rebecca back to school. This battle over mandatory public education simmered in the U.S. until 1972 when the U.S. Supreme Court decided Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205
Bibliography
Brubaker, Jack. "Cambridge is no Lancaster." Lancaster Online. Last modified June 5, 2019. https://lancasteronline.com/opinion/columnists/cambridge-is-no-lancaster/article_eb9a1696-66f2-5495-a91a-b756453f077a.html.
"First National Bank, Honeybrook, PA (Charter 1676)." Bank Note History. Last modified June 25, 2022. https://banknotehistory.spmc.org/wiki/First_National_Bank,_Honeybrook,_PA_(Charter_1676).
"Samuel Sloan: Italianate Planner and Architectural Theorist." The Picturesque Style: Italianate Architecture (blog). July 16, 2016. https://picturesqueitalianatearchitecture.blogspot.com/2016/07/samuel-sloan-italianate-planner-and.html
Tatman, Sandra L. "Sloan, Samuel (1815-1884)." Philadelphia Architects and Buildings. Accessed January 31, 2025. https://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/ar_display.cfm/21518
Uhrich, Bill. "Bill Uhrich: Amish men jailed in 1960 for not sending children to school." Reading Eagle. Last modified August 25, 2021. https://www.readingeagle.com/2015/09/13/bill-uhrich-amish-men-jailed-in-1960-for-not-sending-children-to-school/.
Wallace, John P. Genealogy of the Parke family, nine generations from Arthur and Mary Parke, 1720-1920. (1920): 54.