About Skippack, PA

Skippack (Pennsylvania German: Schippach), originally named "Van Bebber's Township", is a census-designated place (CDP) in Skippack Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 3,758 at the 2010 census. In 1683, the Original 13, thirteen families from the lower Rhine River arrived at Philadelphia aboard the Concord, on October 6 of that year. These families were primarily linen weavers, but also knew how to farm. These first German immigrants left their homeland of Germany because of persecution they experienced as religious Anabaptist Mennonite and Quakers from the Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed Churches. Upon arriving at Philadelphia, the families were greeted by the representative of the Frankfort Land Company, a highly educated German lawyer, Franz Daniel Pastorius, who charged with the authority to make land transactions with the thirteen families. After inspecting different areas of the vicinity of Philadelphia, the families settled on the land that was to become the villages of Germantown, Summerhousen, Crefeld, and Germantownship. Within approximately twenty years Anabaptist German farmers in the Electorate of the Palatinate began to immigrate to Philadelphia in such numbers that Benjamin Franklin wrote an editorial fearing that Pennsylvania would soon become a majority German-speaking colony. As the Germantown area became more densely settled, there was a departure of some of the original families of Germantown to an area twenty miles west of Philadelphia further up the Schuylkill, purchasing land from the father in-law of Herman Isacks op den Graeff (an original settler of Germantown), who had earlier purchased approximately seven thousand acres. These German Mennonites brought the linen making business to the community, along with their farming skills.