Handwritten meeting minutes describe the borders of the Village of North Wales in Gwynedd Township, and the town’s application to become a borough, in summer 1869. Photo by Dan Sokil | The Reporter.
A grant application could help North Wales residents travel back to the town’s earliest days.
Council voted Tuesday night to seek up to $10,000 meant to preserve records of the town’s founding, and beyond.
“Our handwritten minutes have still not been digitized. People aren’t able to read the history of the borough,” said borough Manager Christine Hart.
Preserving the town’s history has been discussed at length over the past decade, particularly in 2019 when the town hosted a series of events meant to mark 150 years since the borough was incorporated in 1869. Events that year included a visit by a steam train to the town’s rail station, a book publication looking back at the 1860s, an ‘Incorporation Day’ ringing of bells, fire whistles and sirens that August marking the official birthday, then a parade that September down Main Street.
Historic preservation has also come up in other contexts, including approvals in 2014-15 for a sober living facility in an historic rowhouse once occupied by famed local artist William Trego; zoning changes and development plans that could have demolished, but now may restore, the former North Wales Hotel, built in the 1890s as the Colonial Inn and last operated as McKeever’s Tavern before closing in 2014, and a new ‘Main Street North Wales’ nonprofit that taps the town’s history by evoking a local greenhouse that grew roses in town in the early 1900s in their logo.
A sign indicating the borough’s historic district is seen on Walnut Street near the former North Wales Hotel and McKeever’s Tavern building in North Wales Borough in 2017.During their council meeting on June 9, Hart unveiled a next step: a grant application seeking up to $10,000 from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission’s Historical and Archival Records Care grant program.
The grant was identified in conjunction with the town’s Historic Commission, which helped organize and operates a ‘Walls of History’ museum of town photos and artifacts on the second floor of borough hall that opened in 2017, and Hart said it could help scan and digitize a book of handwritten meeting minutes from the town’s founding.
“We certainly think that preserving those records, and making sure they can be accessed by the public, as well as having a catalog system for the historic commission to accept donations and label what is up in the museum, would be a good thing to do,” Hart said.
The grant application requires no match, and the borough’s portion of the application will seek $5,000, with a second applicant able to seek another $5,000; Hart said she’s had early talks with the North Wales Area Library about signing on to the application.
“Once these records are available (digitally), they would be an access point, as well as the borough. If (the state) recognize the partnership, we can apply for up to the $10,000,” she said.
Joanne Matthews, Chairperson of the North Wales Historic Commission, points to a newspaper clipping describing the opening of a local church as part of the commission’s “Walls of History” display during an open house on Tuesday, Sept. 19 2017.Assistant Manager Alex Turock has already begun working to secure quotes from companies that archive such historic documents, the manager told council, and the town’s historic commission already knows what’s at the top of their to-do list.
“If we were to get the funding, we would at least start with our minutes, to try to preserve and digitize them. And they are from 1869, handwritten, in bound, leather books,” Hart said.
“We feel that should be paramount: the minutes of our incorporation, the very first council meeting, and so forth. We’d like to start there, and see how much it costs to do that, and if we have anything left over, we would continue to take the documents by priority,” she said.
Council voted unanimously to approve the grant application, and details of the terms and conditions are included in council’s meeting materials packet for July 9.
Afterward, Turock showed off the records in question to The Reporter: a bound book, kept in secure storage, with handwritten pages detailing a “petition of divers(e) free holders and citizens of the Village of North Wales in the township of Gwynedd…and along the Springhouse and Sumneytown Turnpike Road…near where said road crosses the North Pennsylvania Rail Road.”
“That said village is a thriving, growing, rapidly increasing, and active business town, containing a depot, lumber yard, coal yard, three general stores, drug store, boot shoe and trunk store, feed store, flour mill, two hotels, restaurant, a saddlery, harness makers, shoemakers, blacksmith shops, wheel wright shop, steam moulding sash and door manufactory, brick kiln, churches, school house, conveyancer, real estate and insurance offices, a building and loan association, library association, and other institutions of learning and usefulness, and about three hundred and eighty inhabitants, sixty five of whom are freeholders.”
“Your petitioners are anxious to have said village incorporated and made a body politic with the name, style and title of the Borough of North Wales,” reads the first page, before the second page describes the boundary lines of the new borough, then states a “petition was filed November 16th, 1868” to formally incorporate the town, was approved in February 1869, a filing by Gwynedd Township backing that application in April 1869, witnesses withdrawing from the application in May, depositions filed in June, then county approval that August.
In addition to the handwritten minutes, a separate clipping also preserved by the borough dates to October 1884 and announces an application to county courts “to extend the limits of the Borough of North Wales, by annexing thereto the following territory,” and listing properties belonging to Samuel R. Gordon, Jacob M. Swartley, William T. Ray, Isaac Wampole Jr., Harry R. Swartley, Joseph K. Anders, and Jacob S. Zebley, with several of those property owners listed among the petitioners.
To help with the town’s preservation efforts, council also voted Tuesday night to accept the resignation of Christopher Harper from the historic commission, and appointed resident Mike Szilagyi to take his place. In a letter to council, Harper said he was stepping down due to increased family responsibilities.
Taking his spot will be Szilagyi, a former member of that commission who’s lived in the borough for 15 years, and whom Hart said residents may know already as the author of blogs on the historic commission’s website looking back at the town’s founding.
Council also unanimously approved two certificates of appropriateness for home repairs or upgrades within the town’s historic district, after vetting and approval from the Historical Architecture Review Board, and denied a third request based on a HARB recommendation.
North Wales borough council next meets at 7 p.m. on July 23 at the borough municipal building, 300 School Street. For more information visit www.NorthWalesBorough.org.
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