Roxborough Township, Pennsylvania

Roxborough Township is a defunct township that was located in Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania. The township ceased to exist and was incorporated into the City of Philadelphia following the passage of the Act of Consolidation, 1854.

The name is still applied to the modern day neighborhood of Roxborough which was once a part of Roxborough Township. The area was likely named for Roxburghshire, Scotland, the ancestral home of Andrew Robeson, one of the earliest settlers of the area.

History

The Native American trail called the Manatawny, now Ridge Avenue, was central to the well-organized development of farms and plantations within the area then known as Manatawna. The Court of Upland in England appointed local Swedish settler Peter Rambo to be the maintainer of the Manatawny road. In 1690, the road was renamed Ridge Road (it follows the crest of the ridge between the Wissahickon valley and the Schuylkill valley), and the area was renamed Roxburgh. By 1707, the name had been changed to Roxborough. Roxborough is first mentioned as a township in QS Road Docket II: 31 in 1706. In 1840, Manayunk was erected as a borough within the township, and on March 31, 1847, Manayunk was declared separate from the township.

Resources

* [http://www.phila.gov/phils/Docs/Inventor/graphics/wards/wards1.htm "Chronology of the Political Subdivisions of the County of Philadelphia, 1683-1854"]
*" [http://www.ushistory.org/philadelphia/incorporated.html Information] courtesy of [http://www.ushistory.org ushistory.org] "
* [http://www.ushistory.org/philadelphia/incorporated.html Incorporated District, Boroughs, and Townships in the County of Philadelphia, 1854 By Rudolph J. Walther] - excerpted from the book at the ushistory.org website
* [http://membrane.com/philanet/Philadelphia/ History of Roxborough] presumably adapted from the Roxborough-Manayunk-Wissahickon Historical Society