Allentown
Allentown, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Founded 1762 by the noted colonial leader and the jurist, William Allen. Known until 1834 as Northampton. Here the Liberty Bell was hidden in 1777, and Revolutionary wounded hospitalized. City incorporation, 1867. Long a textile and cement center.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Allentown was laid out in 1762 by William Allen, a wealthy Philadelphia merchant and chief justice of colonial Pennsylvania, and was known as Northampton until 1834. Its most storied moment came in 1777, when patriots spirited the Liberty Bell out of Philadelphia ahead of the advancing British and hid it here, while the town also sheltered wounded Continental soldiers. Incorporated as a city in 1867, Allentown went on to thrive as a center of textiles and cement.
Why it matters
Allentown safeguarded one of the nation's great symbols during the Revolution and grew into an industrial city emblematic of eastern Pennsylvania's rise.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the middle of the 18th century, the Lehigh Valley was a frontier of colonial Pennsylvania — fertile, freshly settled country a comfortable distance from the bustle of Philadelphia. It was a landscape being organized into towns by the ambitious and the wealthy, men who saw in the open land both opportunity and the makings of a lasting legacy.
When this town was founded in 1762, colonial Pennsylvania was prosperous and confident, but the storm of revolution lay just over the horizon. For its first seventy-odd years the settlement carried the name Northampton, and only in 1834 did it take the name we know today — a reminder that places, like people, sometimes grow into new identities.
The town's early decades spanned the most dramatic passage in American history: the shift from loyal British colony to independent republic. That it played a memorable part in that transformation, despite its modest size, is what gives this ground its lasting resonance.
People & events
The town was laid out in 1762 by William Allen, a figure of real weight in colonial Pennsylvania — a noted colonial leader and jurist whose prominence lent the young settlement both a founder and, eventually, a name. To be founded by such a man was no small thing for a frontier town.
But the moment that echoes loudest came in 1777. That autumn, with British forces advancing on Philadelphia, patriots faced the danger that the great State House bell — the bell we now revere as the Liberty Bell — might be seized and melted down for cannon by the enemy. To save it, they spirited it out of the city, and it was hidden here for safekeeping while the danger passed.
The town gave more than a hiding place. It also took in Revolutionary wounded, sheltering and caring for soldiers of the struggling Continental cause. In those anxious months this was a place of refuge — for a beloved symbol and for the suffering men who fought beneath its promise.
Its place in the American story
Few objects carry the weight of national meaning that the Liberty Bell does, and this town's role in protecting it during the Revolution ties an ordinary Pennsylvania community directly to one of America's most enduring symbols of independence. To have kept that symbol safe in the war's darkest season is a distinction that outlasts everything else about the place.
The sheltering of the wounded belongs to the same story from a humbler angle. Behind the grand narrative of the Revolution stood countless communities that fed, housed, and healed the army — the unglamorous work without which the cause could not have survived. This town did that work.
Its later history rounds out a very American arc. Incorporated as a city in 1867, it became a long-running center of textiles and cement — trading its Revolutionary chapter for an industrial one, and growing into an emblem of how eastern Pennsylvania's towns rose into the manufacturing age. Founding, war, and industry: the whole sweep of the nation's early life is compressed into one place.
If you visit
Approach this as a chance to connect a familiar national story to real ground. The marker anchors you to a town whose calm present-day streets once held a hidden national treasure and a makeshift hospital for a young country's soldiers.
As you stand here, let the layers settle over one another: the 1762 founding by a leading colonial figure, the tense autumn of 1777 when the bell was concealed nearby, and the later rise of a working industrial city. It's a lot of history for one spot, and part of the fun is holding all of it in mind at once.
This makes a natural stop on a Lehigh Valley history route, where a short walk and a bit of reading turn a name you may know into a place you've actually stood. Read the marker slowly, look around at the town it describes, and you'll never think of the Liberty Bell's story as belonging to Philadelphia alone.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · William Allen
Related events
- · Hiding of the Liberty Bell, 1777
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Allentown
Whitehall, PA · est. 1947
Laid out in 1762 by the powerful colonial jurist William Allen, this Lehigh Valley town spent its first seventy years known as Northampton before taking its founder's name. In the anxious autumn of 1777, as the British occupied Philadelphia, the Liberty Bell was spirited here for safekeeping and Revolutionary wounded were nursed in the town. It grew through the 19th century into a humming center of textiles and cement, earning its city charter in 1867.
Allentown
South Whitehall Township, PA · est. 1947
William Allen, a leading colonial jurist, established this settlement in 1762; it answered to the name Northampton until 1834. In 1777 it sheltered the Liberty Bell from advancing British forces and hosted Revolutionary wounded. Incorporated as a city in 1867, it flourished as a center of textiles and cement manufacture.
Allentown
South Whitehall Township, PA · est. 1947
Founded in 1762 by the colonial leader and jurist William Allen, this town went by the name Northampton until 1834. During the Revolution its distance from the Delaware made it a safe haven — the Liberty Bell was hidden here in 1777 and wounded Continental soldiers were treated nearby. Chartered as a city in 1867, it became a long-lived hub of textile mills and cement works.
Brethren's House
Bethlehem, PA · est. 1964
The Moravians who founded Bethlehem built this stone house in 1748 to lodge their unmarried men, and it quickly became a hive of colonial-era craft — a bell foundry, silkworm raising, and other trades that made the community largely self-sufficient. During the Revolution it sheltered wounded Continental soldiers as a military hospital, and after 1815 it opened as a girls' school before becoming part of Moravian College and a museum.