How did Leidytown, Pennsylvania get its name? This page provides a brief history about the naming of Leidytown, the people who settled it, and the industry rising within it.
Village in Hilltown Township on the old Line Lexington and Hilltown Turnpike (Route 919) between Fricks and Hilltown village. It. has the usual complement of stores and shops, together with two churches, a Methodist Episcopal edifice and the old Hilltown Baptist Church, near the village, founded in 1737. The three-story inn was a stopping place for the Philadelphia and Bethlehem line of mail and passenger coaches. Later the landlord was Zachariah Leidy, who afterwards was a real estate dealer at Chalfont.
From 1880 to about 1910 Francis Sellers operated a thriving cabinetmaker’s factory, having several expert woodworkers as helpers. On the opposite side of the road was a tannery, in operation for half a century following the Civil War.
The village was named for the prominent Leidy family, originally of Montgomery County, descended from Jacob and Elizabeth Leidy, who with their eldest children arrived at Philadelphia on the ship Adventurer on October 2, 1727, from the Palatinate. Jacob Leidy acquired a 247-acre estate and established a tannery in Franconia Township, Montgomery County, whence descendants emigrated in various directions. An eminent descendant was Dr. Joseph Leidy (1823-1891), naturalist and paleontologist, from whom Mount Leidy in Wyoming, Cape Joseph Leidy on Grinnell Island and the Leidy Column and Leidy Stalactites in Luray Caves, Virginia, were named.1
- Information from Col. C. I. Kephart, President National Genealogical Society, Washington, D. C. [↩]