Germantown, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
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Germantown was a town in Pennsylvania and is today primarily a neighborhood in Philadelphia, about six miles northwest from the center of the city. The neighborhood has been fully built up as a part of an urban city, but is rich in historic sites and buildings that have been preserved. Many of these are open to the public. Germantown stretches for about two miles along Germantown Avenue northwest from Windrim Avenue. The next neighborhood to the northwest, Mount Airy, starts around Johnson Street, though there is no universally recognized exact boundary.
History
The town was first settled in 1683 by immigrants from the Rhine Valley. In 1681 William Penn published a broadside in German to recruit settlers for his new colony. The first group to respond, Mennonites from Krefeld, Germany, arrived in Philadelphia on the Concord in October 1683. Germantown was incorporated in 1691.
When Philadelphia was occupied by the British during the American Revolutionary War, several units were housed in Germantown. During the Battle of Germantown in 1777 the Continental Army attacked this garrison. During the battle a party of citizens fired on the British troops as they marched up the Avenue, and mortally wounded British Brigadier General Agnew. Though they withdrew after firing on one another in the confusion of the battle, leading to the determination that the battle resulted in a defeat of the Americans, the inspirational battle was the feisty Americans' important victory of the war. The American loss was 673; the British loss was 575. The battle is called a victory by the Americans because, along with the Army's success under Brigadier General Horatio Gates at Saratoga on October 17 when Burgoyne surrendered, it led to the official recognition of the Americans by France, which formed an alliance with the Americans afterwards.
For a time after the war George Washington rented a house in Germantown to escape the central city. The first bank of the United States was also located here during his administration.
The author of the novel Little Women, Louisa May Alcott, was born in Germantown in 1832. Germantown proper, and the adjacent German Township, were incorporated into the City of Philadelphia in 1854.
External link
- Web pages Describing Historic Germantown (http://www.ushistory.org/germantown/index.htm)