Governor William C. Sproul
Near Intercourse, Pennsylvania
About four tenths of a mile southwest of here, in eighteen seventy, William C. Sproul was born. He would go on to serve as Governor of Pennsylvania from nineteen nineteen to nineteen twenty-three, leaving behind a record shaped by pragmatism and public investment.
Sproul's term is best remembered for an aggressive road-building campaign that opened rural Pennsylvania to automobile travel. He also pushed through the Edmonds Act, which strengthened the public school system, and created the state's Department of Welfare, establishing a formal framework for social services. He died near Chester in nineteen twenty-eight. His birthplace nearby still carries a marker of its own.
