The Swamps of Western Montgomery County and the Great Swamp Picnic (Today, 8/22)
Long before there was a 422, the early European settlers of Pennsylvania pushed out of Philadelphia along the river valleys and then up the local creeks, seeking water and land for their new farms.
In 1719 or thereabouts, Daniel Falkner, one of the Mystics of the Wissahicken, founded his church on the banks of Minister creek. That church today is called Falkner’s Swamp Church, and it still operates on Swamp Pike in New Hanover.
Two years earlier, other German immigrants had come to New Hanover, and they had also built a church, right on the opposite banks of the same creek. That church, the New Hanover Evangelical Lutheran church, will hold the roughly 125th annual Great Swamp Picnic, today, on their picnic grounds one block over, on Swamp Picnic Road.
It never occurred to me to wonder why all these people decided to build their churches in a Swamp. It doesn’t seem like a great idea.
Which leads me to the point of this post. Daniel Falkner and his congregation didn’t speak English. Neither did their kids or grandkids. In fact, English was not widely spoken in the area until well after the Civil War some 125 years later.
The word they used was Schwaam. And schwaam in Pennsylvania Dutch means meadow. Not swamp. They built their community in a beautiful meadow.