Historic Fallsington

In 1690, Samuel Burgess donated six acres to the Meeting for construction of the first meetinghouse in town, replacing the earliest on Biles Island in the Delaware. This became the nucleus around which the Village of Fallsington formed. During his second visit to North America, in 1699 through 1701, William Penn worshipped and preached at the meetinghouse. During the Revolution, Washington’s retreat across the Delaware in December 1776 brought war fearfully close. The majority of Quakers followed their pacifist tenets, but the Meeting raised subscriptions to relieve the suffering in Philadelphia during the British occupation of 1777 and 1778.

The village evolved through a succession of periods in American history and architecture. Significant homes in Fallsington range from the late 17th through the Victorian era of the mid-19th century. Fallsington was a center of commerce. In the 1860’s a business directory listed blacksmiths, a butcher, carpenters, a carriage builder, a cooper, farmers, an insurance agent, machinists, physicians, a surveyor, and a wheelwright. Visitors can see a unique capsule of history in an ordinary American village, with roots in Pennsylvania’s distinctive Quaker origins.