Fallsington, Pennsylvania

How did Fallsington, Pennsylvania get it’s name? This page provides a brief history about the naming of Fallsington, Pennsylvania, the people who settled it, and the industry rising within it.

Village near the northern central part of Falls Township, on the Newportville Road and near Route 281. The name was no doubt suggested by its proximity to Falls of the Delaware and to the fact that the Falls Friends’ Meeting Houses are located there. Members of the Society of Friends met for worship at their homes in Falls at a very early date. A minute of 1683 says: “At a meeting at William Biles’ house, the second day of the third month, 1683,” the seven men present “thought it fit and necessary that a Monthly Meeting should be set up, both of men and women . .. and that this meeting be the first of the men’s meetings after our arrival into these parts.” There is no record, however, showing dates of meetings that must have been held prior to 1683. A meeting house was built by Falls Monthly Meeting at Fallsington in 1692. The second meeting house was built in 1728 and the present Hicksite Meeting House is dated 1841. The present Orthodox Meeting House was erected in 1789. After the separation among Orthodox Friends in 1860, the group of Primitive Friends in Eastern Pennsylvania finally centered around Fallsington. They hold their First-day Meetings in the afternoon in the Orthodox Meeting House. Charles Henry Moon is in charge of the Primitive Meeting records. These meeting houses and their sur-rounding grounds, together with other interesting old buildings, impress the visitor with a pleasing sense of the antiquity of the place. Fallsington is named in Scott’s Gazetteer of 1795. Between 1788 and the day of his death, October 29, 1831, Fallsington was the home of Dr. Reading Beatty, some of whose descendants today are noted people of Eastern Pennsylvania. Gordon’s Gazetteer, 1832, gives the population of the village in that year as 120. It then had twenty dwellings, two stores and a tavern. The village is delightfully situated. Although settled almost exclusively by Friends, the population and the village itself have undergone great changes since early days. The post office was established October 1, 1849, with James Thompson as postmaster.

Source: MacReynolds, George. Place Names in Bucks County Pennsylvania, 2nd Edition. Doylestown, PA: The Bucks County Historical Society, 1955.

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