The Creation of Peach Bottom Township

Not surprising, even in the 1800’s the process of dividing took a year.
The original petition was dated April 4, 1814 titled “Petition to Divide Fawn Township”. At the time, even Delta Borough was a part of Fawn Township.
The citizens wrote about the difficulties of being sixteen or eighteen miles long from East to West on the Maryland line, with four acting magistrates and only one constable to perform his duty. They also wrote of the distance making it troublesome to give notice and have caused disappointments. The 83 petitioners requested the Court of Common Pleas of the County of York to appoint proper persons to review the length and width of said Township and divide the same into two Townships.
At the August 2, 1814 County of General Quarter Sessions, the court appointed three gentleman to view and enquire into the expediency, and propriety of granting the petitioners. Their duty was to make a plot of the township to be divided.
The survey took 15 days at a cost of $73.00.
These gentlemen appointed to divide Fawn Township returned to the next Court of Quarter Sessions on November 8, 1814 with an accurate survey of said Township. Using the Old English linear measurement of a PERCH which equals 5.50 yards or 16.5 feet, they began at a stone bridge on Muddy Creek at Donalds Mill; thence running a straight line till where it intersects the Maryland line sixty one perches west of the ten mile stone.
But, not all were happy. 31 Inhabitants of Fawn Township submitted their own Petition. They respectfully stated that a few individuals of said Township from motives to themselves best known signed a petition, and prevailed upon a number more of the unsuspecting residents of said Township to sign it. This second group of inhabitants noted the impropriety of having it divided at this time declaring that the Supervisors of the Lower end of said Township have had to pay over to the Supervisors of the Upper end a considerable sum for a number of years past. The Supervisors in the upper end sparing no pains and expense in the opening and repairing their roads, which when done require but little expended yearly on them again and as the lower end have commenced the same improvement and only drew for the past year on the upper end, it appears to us reasonable that the lower end ought to have the opportunity of pulling their roads in as good repair as the upper end before a division takes place.
“We your petitioners sincerely hope that your Honors will take the above into serious consideration and grant that the report for a division may not be confirmed”
Hence the TUG OF WAR
As we all know the division was entered into record on April 5th 1815 and the newly formed Township was for ever more to be known as Peach Bottom.