How did Featherbed Hill in Pennsylvania get it’s name? This page provides a brief history about Featherbed Hill in Pennsylvania, the people who settled on it, and the industry rising around it.
In the western part of Doylestown Township, between New Britain and Castle Valley. “Featherbed Hill,1 whose graceful slopes rise to the northwest as a sheltering protection from the winds of winter, has borne its peculiar name from very early times, insomuch that it is now difficult to ascertain why it was so called. One tradition assigns a trifling and whimsical cause. It is said that a traveler with a waggish turn of mind arrived at its summit footsore and weary and wished to lie down and rest himself. He accidentally found a stray feather, and jocularly laying it on a rock, he concluded that it would answer for the rudiments of a feather bed, and contentedly laid down for repose.” There is another version of this story. While a man was moving his household goods across the hill on the Almshouse Road in a wagon, a strong gust of wind ripped open a seam in a featherbed and scattered the contents over the trees and shrubs on the hill, producing a curious spectacle that suggested the name. Featherbed Hill is one of the few places in the county where the rare Wild Lupine (Lupines perennis) may be found.
- Local History Sketches, by E. M. (Edward Mathews). [↩]