Allentown
South Whitehall Township, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Founded 1762 by the noted colonial leader and 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
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.
Why it matters
The town's Revolutionary refuge for the Liberty Bell links the Lehigh Valley directly to the survival of a national symbol during a perilous chapter of the war.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the 1760s, the rolling farmland of eastern Pennsylvania was filling with mills, forges, and market towns. The colony William Penn had founded on a promise of religious tolerance had drawn German, Scots-Irish, and English settlers who cleared the land between the Delaware and the Blue Mountains. This was the Lehigh Valley on the eve of a revolution — prosperous, hardworking, and just far enough from the coast to feel safe.
Into that landscape came a planned town, laid out in 1762 and christened Northampton, a name it would carry for the next seventy-two years. It sat inland from the Delaware River, screened by miles of rough road from any British ship. That single geographic fact — distance from the water — would matter enormously when the fighting came.
When war finally broke over the colonies in the 1770s, the great port cities became targets and battlegrounds. Towns like this one, tucked into the interior, became something else: places of refuge, supply, and healing for a young army that badly needed all three.
People & events
The town owed its beginning to William Allen, one of the most powerful colonial figures of his day — a merchant, landowner, and chief justice whose wealth and legal standing made him a force in provincial affairs. He founded the settlement in 1762, and though it bore another name for generations, his mark on the place endured long after.
The town's most dramatic hour came in 1777. With British forces bearing down on Philadelphia, patriots feared the enemy would seize the great State House bell — the very bell that had rung out over the reading of independence — and melt it down for cannon. In a quiet act of preservation, the bell was hauled inland by wagon and hidden here, far from British reach, until the danger passed.
The same qualities that made the town a safe hiding place made it a haven for the wounded. Continental soldiers, broken by battle and hard campaigning, were brought here to be cared for. It is one thing to fight a revolution; it is another to nurse it back to health, and this town did both.
Its place in the American story
The Liberty Bell is one of the handful of objects Americans instantly recognize as belonging to all of them. That it survived the Revolution at all is not a foregone conclusion — symbols are fragile, and a retreating cause can lose its treasures as easily as its battles. The decision to spirit the bell inland and shelter it here is part of the reason it still exists to be seen today.
That makes this modest Pennsylvania town a quiet custodian of the national memory. It didn't win a famous battle; it did something less glorious and just as necessary — it kept something precious safe until it could be brought back into the light.
The town's later life tells another American story. Chartered as a city in 1867, it became a long-running center of textile mills and cement works, the kind of industrial engine that clothed and built the growing nation. From Revolutionary sanctuary to industrial workhorse, it lived out two chapters of the country's story on the same ground.
If you visit
Come to this corner of the Lehigh Valley with a sense of layers. The land looks settled and unremarkable at a glance, which is exactly the point — its safety in wartime came precisely from being off the beaten path, out of reach of the river and the enemy.
Let the marker reset your mental map of the Revolution. We tend to picture it in the great cities and on famous fields, but much of the war's real work happened in places like this: hiding what mattered, healing who could be healed, keeping the cause alive between the headlines.
If you're building a road trip through eastern Pennsylvania, this town pairs naturally with the region's industrial heritage and its Revolutionary sites. Stand here for a moment and picture a wagon rolling in under cover, its heavy cargo bound for a hiding place — a small, tense scene that helped a national symbol survive to become the icon you know.
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
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
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
Allentown, PA · est. 1947
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.
George Taylor (1716-1781)
Catasauqua, PA · est. 1947
George Taylor, an Irish-born ironmaster who rose from indentured labor to prosperity, made his home in this handsome 1768 house along the Lehigh. Elected to Pennsylvania's provincial Assembly in 1764, he stood against royal government and was sent to the Continental Congress in July 1776, where he added his name to the Declaration of Independence. His restored home is today a National Historic Landmark.