A Promising Start

In 1682, William Harmer, a Quaker from Wiltshire, England, bought a fertile, 408-acre tract of land northwest of Philadelphia from William Penn. Alongside the Wissahickon Creek and its tributaries, which coursed through his land, Harmer built the first gristmill in the area. The creek provided ample energy for this, the first of many mills, providing flour, cloth and lumber to the region. Harmer shared the land peacefully with members of the Lenni Lenape native tribe he found there, and he prospered.

In 1730, Harmer petitioned the English Court to build a public road giving access to his mill from Bethlehem Pike, known in that time as the "Great Highway."

By 1739, the area had attracted many farmers who needed roads to facilitate commerce, and Butler Avenue was "piked", or made a public highway by the Court.

Twenty years later, the original tract of 408 acres was divided, and several flour mills were built. By the end of the Colonial period, Wissahickon, as Ambler was then called, had a large enough population to support Jonathan Thomas' new tannery as well as his undertaker's establishment, the first in Upper Dublin Township.

According to the first US census in1790, Montgomery County, PA, within which Ambler sits, had a population of 22,918, with more than half being of English or Welsh descent and over one quarter of German heritage. The Scottish, Dutch, Irish and French were also represented, and there were 318 slaves.

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Read more about the significance of Ambler's mills to the region.

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Visit this site for an interesting history of the region
1790 census information is archived at the Fisher Library of the University of Virginia.

Source: Early History of Ambler by Dr. Mary P.H. Hough, 1936.